Salmon Quiche; Coffee Club

I had a lovely little lunch yesterday: just me, a salmon quiche, a caesar salad, iced water (I am finally paying heed to the advice of my mother, who called me on Valentine's Day to wish me the very romantic greeting 'Happy Valentine's Day and for the love of all that Valentine's Day stands for PLEASE cut back on drinking fizzy drinks because I read your blog and you are SO going to have diabetes one day'... which is coincidentally a variation of the greeting that she wishes me on every major holiday) and a book, Twilight. On an unrelated note, I have come to the conclusion that I am in love with Robert Pattinson of the sexy-bloodsucking-killer-Edward-Cullen-of-Twilight fame, and not the sexy-bloodsucking-killer-book-character Edward Cullen of Twilight, because the literary version is doing nothing for me.

So I finished lunch all content, musing about Robert Pattinson's jawline and wondering whether his book version has a beautiful jawline too, when a random idiot guy hooted at me while I was walking back to the office, presumably because I was alone. Which thus forced me to give him the middle finger: the only appropriate and non-criminal response I could think of at the time. And that is the story of how my lovely solitary lunch was ruined. Thank you, misogynist asswipe. I REALLY enjoy it when strange men disrespect and hiss and holler at females. You REALLY know how to impress a lady. It's not the first time and it won't be the last, but you spoiled my lunch and if I were a salmon quiche I would throw myself at your face in angry protest. Unfortunately you will have to settle for a middle finger. Just as I settled for being in a bad mood after lunch.

Dim Sum; Spring Garden, Suria KLCC

Dim sum lunch (not from today, which shouldn't be surprising as I hardly ever post pictures in a punctual order. I follow the hmm-I-feel-like-writing-about-THIS-now Iman order, which is defined as order only in my own little topsy turvy world. Hmm I am digressing. Actually meandering while writing or speaking is also a big feature in Iman's Way of Thinking and Order of the World as my conversational tangents make sense to me but no one else. If you think I am exaggerating about meandering you should see my financial modelling excel spreadsheets, which are elaborately linked masterpieces spanning several colorful worksheets although apparently conventional wisdom dictates that it is more logical to have minimal straightforward spreadsheets. On the plus side it means nobody can ever decode my spreadsheets, so they can't be duplicated. Hmm this has now become the largest bracketed aside ever) from a Chinese restaurant in KLCC.


Similar to the not-so-secret sporadic pangs of longing that I experience to be Indian because I love Indian food and Indian weddings, are my more sporadic desires to be Chinese because I love dim sum. I also like the idea of Chinese weddings (the hearty yam sengs and the fact that the bridal couples make money from the wedding, because it's like a profitable party) so this is enough reason to feel random urges to want to be Chinese. I do NOT like Chinese desserts, however, but I have worked it out (in an elaborately linked excel spreadsheet) and should I ever suddenly become Chinese, I will just eat egg tarts all the time in lieu of other yucky desserts that contain red bean and yam paste and sago and all that. Crisis diverted! God, I am ready to be Chinese now. Or Indian. Either one.

Lunch Dessert; Red Box Plus, Pavilion

Damn you, Red Box karaoke and your buffet lunch special! I was coerced into attending because I: a) did not want to be a spoilsport partypooper, and b) did not really want to admit to my colleagues that I can't sing. Also reason c) (buffet for lunch! buffet for lunch!) factored into my decision making.


Sadly, neither the savoury courses nor the desserts were particularly remarkable (I don't even remember what I took a picture of but if I were to hazard a guess I'd say... coffee something, strawberry something, chocolate something, and mango something) but at least I had something to stuff into my mouth whenever the microphone was passed to me.

Even more sadly, I was eventually forced to sing. To Mariah Carey and Leona Lewis and Beyonce and Celine Dion songs. Yes, cruel coworkers, its not like those singers have ridiculously flexible voices and can hit ridiculous notes that I of the bullfrog singing voice cannot reach or anything. Luckily, most people I work with sound like bullfrogs (okay so I am mainly referring to the men, which just makes the fact that I sing like a bullfrog all the more stranger because I apparently have a high speaking voice... the point is I was not alone in my dissonant state) so the room sounded like a cacophonous tone deaf choir for about two hours last Thursday. A tone deaf choir with an affinity for the Carpenters and long deceased Chinese singers (my colleagues are old... and mostly Chinese) and the Spice Girls (I may have been the sole 80's baby in the room but I was the also the one holding the remote control).

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.

Passionfruit Ice Parfait in a Coconut Crepe; Mandarin Oriental

The dessert otherwise known as: Block of Solid Ice That I Was Not Able to Eat Gracefully For Every Time My Spoon Tried To Chip Away at the Ice it Would Hit the Plate With a Resounding Crack. Which is a little too long and Iman-centric to fit onto a menu, so I can understand why the Mandarin Oriental named it what they did.

Usually I inhale desserts like they're pure oxygen and I just ran a 100-metre sprint, but this parfait was just too pretentious and required too much effort to eat. Passionfruit... AND coconuts... AND the self-consciously pompous tiny portion... AND an icepicking adventure upon which one must first embark in order to even ingest it?

Oh, M.O., M.O.... no, no, no. Desserts should be soft, squishy and leisurely. If I wanted a workout and an overload of tropical exoticism I'd go jogging in the jungle.

MORE DONUTS; J.Co

The Crunchy Crunchy/my new favourite donut. (It has dethroned my former J.Co favourite, the Tiramisu, which I am getting sick of; partly because I've just realized the donut actually tastes nothing like tiramisu and the only reason I like it is the copious amounts of whipped cream it houses.)

Ten points for the intriguingly repetitive name: CRUNCHY CRUNCHY. Saying the name out loud forces me to open my mouth and mime a chewing motion, which makes me hungry, which makes me want to eat donuts, which means I will go to J.Co and order the Crunchy Crunchy, which means that when people ask me what I ate for lunch I'll be all, "Oh, the Crunchy Crunchy," which means that the whole process will then repeat itself in a neverending donut-shaped spiral of delicious neverendingness. Those people at J.Co are real crafty bastards.

Tiramisu; Angus House

Memo to Dome (yes, another one, bear with me): THIS is what a tiramisu should taste like. It should have the capacity to make me so excited about eating it that I forget to take a picture first (hence the chopped off tip of the slice of cake where I dug in to start eating only to realize that not only should I wait for other people to start their desserts too, but I should also discreetly try to take a picture). Sorry, lunch buddies. It was the tiramisu anticipation, I'm not usually devoid of manners and etiquette.

Beef Zen; Rakuzen

Berry Heaven, J.Crown Oreo; J.Co

A Lot of Donuts; J.Co

Oreo, Don Mochaccino, Tiramisu (2), Almond (2)

Chocolate Fudge; Baskin Robbins

Tiramisu, J-Crown Oreo; J.CO

Chocolate Fudge, Cookies and Cream; New Zealand Natural