Sticky Toffee Pudding, Ben's KLCC

It's almost Ramadhan!

My stomach has already started to rumble its trademark cavernous roars at random times in anticipation of the coming month, as if it knows that it will soon be deprived of lunch (which breaks the monotony of my working day) and more importantly, caffeine (which allows me to stay awake to experience the monotony of the second half of my working day) (can you tell I like complaining about work?).

And if any of my organs deserve to be anthropomorphized, it would be my stomach. My stomach is the root cause of most of my emotions (like when I get upset because I'm hungry and I have to wait SOOOOO LONGGGGG for Alman to get ready to go out on weekends when I just want to GET OUT the DOOR so I can EAT SOMETHING) and tragedy (like when I get really excited about eating food that I've carefully put away in the fridge the night before, and then I open the fridge after a long hard day only to discover that my food has been PILFERED by a PILFERER) and relationship compromises (like when I get angry because I'm so hungry and take it out on my poor fiance. This is a compromise of sorts because he is a pilferer and so crankiness is his punishment, and also he's already promised to marry me so it's too late buddy, my stomach and I are all yours! But it's not all bad - we love him really, so sometimes we do nice things for him. Like give him the last longan in my ice longan, or the most cookie-ish scoops of ice cream from my Haagen Dazs cookies and cream carton. That is compromise, boys and girls, and that is true love).

So... this is going to be a trying month. The light at the end of the tunnel is Hari Raya, going home, being with my family, and forcing my sister to make our famed sticky date pudding with caramel sauce and cream that we have at our family's open house every year. The baking of the pudding used to be my specialty, until I realized that I would not be fulfilling my role as an older sister unless I bossed my sister around and made her do it. So now she does.

Sticky Toffee Pudding with vanilla ice cream at Ben's, KLCC
(Not as good as mine. Oh alright. Not as good as my sister's. Also I hate Ben's, but that's a story for another day.)

Warm Chocolate Chip Cookie with Hot Fudge Sauce and Vanilla Ice Cream; Bijou, Mont Kiara

Well girls and boys, it is that time of the month where I crave cupcakes and kisses and chocolate and ice cream floats. Okay fine, I crave all this every DAY of the month, but I know when it’s THAT time of the month (does anyone else think that combining uppercase letters and euphemisms is sort of like a schizophrenic literary technique: Pay attention to what I am saying! Wait, don’t pay attention to the fact that I am talking about something gross and unsavoury! But pay attention to the screaming uppercase disguise of this gross thing!) when I suddenly find myself irascibly argumentative and completely intolerant of stupidity, inadequate customer service, and, my personal PMS pet peeve: people who think they know everything when clearly they do not, or if they DO know that thing, then they should realize that I know it too, and how dare they imply that I didn’t know whatever they were pointing out to me, regardless of the fact that they probably thought they were being helpful and harmless by pointing it out? (“Hey Iman, the KLCI is below 900 points.” “YES. I KNOW. PLEASE STOP INFORMING ME OF BASIC KNOWLEDGE TO WHICH I HAVE ACCESS AND INSTEAD DUNK YOUR HEAD IN COFFEE”).

Basically, anyone who either talks slow or thinks slow grates on my nerves like manicured nails on a blackboard right about now. I feel like I need to quarantine myself from people with an IQ below a certain level. I am so mean. It's completely irrational. Most of the time I am a warm, bright ray of sunshine. Right now I am a ray of blinding sarcasm and razor-sharp-will-make-you-bleed contention.


Chocolate makes me feel better though... so I am posting this picture of dessert that was the SHIZZLE. All my favourite things--Haagen Dazs ice cream (albeit vanilla), warm chocolate fudge, chocolate chip cookies, cappuccinos-- literally served on a platter and ready to be ingested so they could come together in a hari-raya-fireworks-type explosion of the chocolate variety in my mouth. THE SHIZZLE.

Chocolate Chocolate Chip; Häagen Dazs Bukit Bintang

Had one of those weeks where you wake up at 5.45am every day and arrive home at 10pm almost every day and have your appetite sucked away from your stomach by the devilish creature known as Grand Lord Torturer Herr Stress (occupation: Right Hand Man of Satan), and subsist primarily on three coffees per day, each piled to the brim with an abundance of caffeine and sugar. And also potato chips (not in the coffee, obviously... though that IS an idea...). Lots of them, but only in the evening, because although your office thoughtfully started a snack food box at your petition, it is to be opened after 6pm only (silly fascist dictator dietician of a company). So I had one of THOSE weeks; you know how it is.

Then karma happened, and I got my reward for being diligent all week (I am aware it's only Thursday, but it's been a long four days):


CHOCOLATE CHOCOLATE CHIP ICE CREAM, MOFOS! Häagen Dazs finally restocked my flavour! Maybe the sad faces I made at the sales people the day they didn't have Chocolate Chocolate Chip touched their ice cream filled hearts and moved them to restock it asap. Maybe it was the sheer intensity of my desire to have not only chocolate ice cream, but also similarly flavoured chips in said ice cream, that magically brought the ice cream into the store. Maybe the shipment was due to come in anyway and had nothing to do with me? Yeah now I'm just talking crazy, it clearly wasn't the last reason.

Going to attempt to nap with my eyes open now/run off for Coffee #2 of the day.

Cookies & Chocolate Ice Cream; Häagen Dazs Bukit Bintang

First of all I feel the need to point out that I LOVE Häagen Dazs ice cream more than ANY OTHER ice cream brand in the WORLD. Occasionally, I admit, I give into curiousity-induced temptation and fool around with NZ Ice Cream (too watery, not milky enough), Baskin Robbins (too sweet, not creamy enough), Ben & Jerry’s (Phish Food has MINIATURE CHOCOLATE FISH and MARSHMALLOW SWIRLS in CHOCOLATE ICE CREAM. I mean I love my HD but no mortal woman is strong enough to resist that ingenious combination) or even slum it with—gasp, I know, I am ashamed— McDonalds (in my defence, their chocolate sundaes are decent and the fudge is always heavy and sticky). But I always regret it, and I always come back to HD. It’s the fattiest and creamiest: therefore it’s the best.


That said, I was super pissed off that they didn’t have my favourite flavour today. I mean some flavours are just staples: chocolate, vanilla, strawberry. If you are Häagen Dazs, that list of staples should also include Chocolate Chocolate Chip. That is not a suggestion. It is a fact. I made sad faces at the ice cream guy and he said he was very sorry but there was nothing he could do except make my ice cream scoop extra fat. Though Cookies & Chocolate was the closest thing I could get to my beloved Chocolate Chocolate Chip, fewer things get my goat than setting my mind on eating something and not getting it in the end. This is almost as bad as the time that I went to Planet Hollywood, got the set lunch with the expectation that I would be getting chocolate cake for dessert (I even asked the waiter to double check and he confirmed that the chocolate cake was in fact the dessert of the day), and after eating a chicken lunch that I only endured in order to get to dessert, was presented with a gelatinous excuse of a mango pudding for dessert. AFTER I had set my stomach on chocolate. And when I was like where is my cake, homies?! The waiters looked at me like I was a deranged woman. Like there's no difference, apparently, to the Planet Hollywood staff, between CHOCOLATE CAKE... and MANGO PUDDING. These things are important to some people, okay! My stomach has dessert expectations! You deceived, lied to and betrayed my sweet tooth and I will not take this injustice lying down! And while I am ranting, when I ask for Coke and waiters bring me Pepsi or, even worse, Diet Coke, and I'm like dude this isn't Coke... do not look at me like I am psychotic! I don’t drink diet anything! I hate the taste of Pepsi! Because it tastes different from Coke! They are not the same!!

Must calm down now. Am getting too agitated for a Friday afternoon.