Ice Cream Float; New York, New York

A gargantuan ice cream float at New York, New York. The restaurant, not the city. I feel the need to clarify that because frankly, it's confusing. Maybe it's just my excessively inquisitive mind, but I get confused easily, and what's with restaurants that aim to befuddle and perplex potential clients? I can think of a dozen restaurant names off the top of my head that thoroughly confuse people when they call you and are like "where you at" and I'm like "yo I'm at [insert restaurant name]" (I may not actually talk like this, but please feel free to use your imagination), and they're like "..... what?"

For example, and this not an exhaustive list:
- Manhattan Fish Market. Not actually in Manhattan. Nor a market.
- Secret on Jalan Damai. ("Where you at?" "Secret." "No, come on." "SECRET." "Where is the darn place?" "SECRET!" "I hate you." Confusion abounds.)
- Apartment. ("Where you at?" "Apartment." "Whose apartment?" "I don't know who owns it." "What is wrong with you!?" Confusion abounds.)
Anddd so on and so forth.

So I had my ice cream float at New York, New York not-the-city-but-the-restaurant. It was gigantic and monstrous, and is strangely fitting for my mood on this Sunday night, as I am currently sitting at Starbucks with an assortment of caffeinated drinks rushing something for tomorrow morning. Rushing three different projects for tomorrow morning, to be precise.

Do you know what stress looks like? Stress looks like a menacing ice cream float bullying you. And I know I'm stressed when I even start to villify my favourite drinks. Sigh. Back to work.

Cupcakes; Work

I am totally insanely swamped with work. Even though things are apparently slowing down. In fact to celebrate (or commiserate) the slowing down of work people have been bringing cakes to the office and just handing them out, out of the goodness of their hearts.

They are not really very tasty though. Or at least this one wasn't. It was like eating pure butter, deceptively made up in pink and cream hues to attract the unsuspecting eater in spite of its complete lack of taste. Like a cakey Venus Flytrap! And I'm the fly! Except... I ate the cake and the cake didn't eat me so... wait... my seemingly ingenious metaphor just fell flat on its flowery face. On its deceptively PRETTY flowery face.

Full marks for style, little cupcake, but zero for substance and taste. Also full marks for the evil genius category. You are the most conniving cake I have ever eaten, as you managed to get me to eat ALL of you just because you were so attractive and despite the fact that you tasted nasty. For that I must give you due recognition.

Edit - Holy crap I just realized that I am an evil cupcake! I too am a small pink wily evil genius! Thought to be continued later. Or perhaps just abandoned, since I just ranted about a conniving cake that I now find is the gastronomic embodiment of who I am.

Hello Twenty Four

Once upon a time twenty four years ago today at two in the afternoon (the parental unit from which the subject of the story emerged reminds said subject every year without fail of the time that she came into the world) a baby girl was born.


She would grow up too petite, too bossy, too clumsy, too verbose and too happy, with a predilection for cupcakes and pyromaniacal fascination with candles, especially birthday candles. The end.

Hello Goodbye 2008

2008 in review and in summary and in neither particular nor chronological order:

I turned 23, started a food blog, got OG the car, quit equity research, joined a sovereign wealth fund, traded painful 7 am starts to the working day for more bearable 9 am starts which helped to make the case for my career change being one of the best decisions of my life, bought Hermes the beloved iPhone, sold Hermes the beloved iPhone, took possession of Samson the BlackBerry, read more than 20 books, missed and then didn't and then missed Faten when she came back and went away again because plus ca change, sister, bid a teary goodbye to Nazzybutt who left all of us to study abroad, came to terms with the fact that Zahirah is at 14 years old taller than me, saw Ali lose his two front teeth and the baby fat on his cheeks, cried as Splotch the Kitten died a slow overnight death, made people vote in the March elections and in that way affected my change onto the political landscape of Malaysia although I didn't register in time to vote, took an IQ test, got 4 points below the cut off IQ test level, swore off IQ tests forever, held a snake, caressed an iguana, had arm used as a parrot perch, watched Spain become the champions of Europe!, went to Hong Kong, went to Macau, went to New York, went to Singapore, went to Malacca, went home to Brunei several times but not nearly enough to satiate my homesickness, watched as the financial world panicked and imploded in the face of an economic recession tsunami, watched friends fall in and out of and in and out of love, welcomed a niece to the family... and world, became eerily fascinated by Sarah Palin and what she represents as a republican mother and career woman, was relieved when Obama won despite said fascination, discovered Jeopardy archives online which almost singlehandedly made my year, spent too much money on coffee, spent too much time on the wrong guy, spent too little time with my closest friends because none of them are even in the same country as me, wrote too much, slept too little, got heart broken, got over it, fell in love again anyway, ate a lot of food.


So here's to you, 2008. You brought the good, the bad, and a lot of drama. May 2009 bring more ups and downs and the proverbial it.

Mushroom Chicken Chop; Cosy Corner, Ampang

Mushroom chicken chop drowning quite happily in its mushroom gravy. The 'quite happily' may actually apply more to how I felt when I was eating it rather than how the chicken may have felt about being drenched in mushroom sauce, but only marginally, because who WOULDN'T want to be swimming in gravy with french fries to keep you company?

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.

Dutch Tea; Dutch Harbour Cafe, Malacca

It's the day after Christmas and the Big Bosses are not in the office so the Lowly Underlings are savoring this rare and precious freedom and are roaming KLCC during office hours. If you see someone who looks like me in Kinokuniya or in the cinema anytime during 9am - 5pm, look away. It must be an evil twin doppelganger and you probably don't want to mess with her.


The end of the Malacca saga-in-pictures: coffee and cake at the Dutch Harbour Cafe, which overlooks the winding Venice-like river in town.

Koffie verkeerd, or, in English, coffee the wrong way round. Cafe au Lait with reversed proportions: 20% coffee and 80% milk, which suits my contrarian nature perfectly. Because why SHOULD something be the way everyone says it should be?! You should question everything and then do the opposite. I like this Dutch coffee mentality.

Dutch Apple Cake: I really only ordered this because I felt compelled to order something Dutch-y since I was in Malacca and at a Dutch cafe, but I was pleasantly surprised by the apple cake. It was warm and moist and comforting and it was raining outside and the whole effect was very under-your-covers-on-a-rainy-Sunday-morning.

Going to... umm... do work now. Remember what I said about the evil twin. She's very sneaky so really, remember that it definitely is not me waltzing around KLCC on a Friday afternoon, very blatantly not being in the office doing work.

Crema Catalana; Harper's Restaurant & Lounge, Malacca

I realize this is an inopportune time to write yet another post that combines my love for delicious, beautiful desserts and delicious, beautiful Arsenal, because the latter GAVE UP A GOAL ON SUNDAY NIGHT and in the chaos that ensued, my homeboy Adebayor got sent off, my man Fabregas got injured and I noticed that my boy Nasri is growing out his hair and it is in that awkward is-it-long-is-it-short-either-way-it's-agreed-that-it's-definitely-not-great-looking phase (don't worry, you're still my boy!), and all of the above effectively ruined the closing stages of my weekend. If you think I am exaggerating, think again. I even got sick on Sunday because I was in such a crabby mood about the win that should have been that my frustration boiled over into a fever.

Anyway. My point was this may be an inopportune time to talk about Arsenal, but quite clearly and as evidenced by the previous paragraph, I do not care. I had crema catalana in Malacca and I'm still thinking about it. And no, that's not a non sequitur.

I didn't even know the French Creme Brulee had a hotter Spanish cousin. I was sadly ignorant, but am now enlightened, and would like to enlighten you as well. People, meet Crema Catalana.

It LOOKS just like Creme Brulee, with the burnt sugar top coating, but once you break the barrier, you get hit with a custard 10 times more fatty than that in Creme Brulee. It's thicker and creamier and heavier and milkier and dang it, those Catalans have outdone themselves, because if I had a dollar for every time I had Creme Brulee and thought 'this is delish but I wish that the custard was so creamy that it would make the proverbial cat that got the cream keel over in a milky coma' I'd be kinda rich right now.


I like both though. Just like I like both the French and Spanish football national teams and can almost never choose between the two, though Spain wins out marginally this year (mainly because they do not consistently disappoint me and break my heart like the French do). And this is related to Arsenal because Arsenal is a combination of the Spanish AND French and the entire time I was eating this I was thinking about Arsenal and wishing I could also have a plate of creme brulee so I could complete the Western Continental Europe football love (cause I've got love for you too, Portuguese national team minus Christiano Ronaldo) but I didn't say anything to goosey because I thought he would have been like wtf, you are weird. So I stored it away and wrote about it instead.


If you really want a non-sequitur because you got excited by the almost-non-sequitur above: I am freaking obsessed with Katy Perry's Hot N Cold (even though it hurts my linguistically snobby heart to type the title of that song in all its abbreviated shortform slang). In fact, I am so freaking obsessed with the song that I've been listening to it on repeat for the past two days and STILL have to fight the urge, whenever I hear it, to get up on the bed/office desk/couch/LRT seat/wherever I may be and throw on a wedding veil (ala the music video, obviously) and shimmy my shoulders and ooze attitude and point at mirrors while simultaneously shaking my booty in a joyful 80's stupor. You can take the girl out of the 80's, but you can't take the 80's out of the girl. It is slightly disturbing that as an almost-24-year-old I am fighting the same urges that I succumbed to as a barely-6-year-old when I used to slink around the couches at home pretending to be Madonna on a gondola in the Like a Virgin video. AND we didn't have MTV then, no no. The brilliant idea and irrepressible desire to shake my booty was completely inherent. Viva la pop music!

Seafood Part 3; Malacca

I have a sneaky suspicion, first pointed out by an overly observant goose (he stares at me too much) and confirmed by my eyes, that my arms have gotten marginally fleshier. Although my weighing scales beg to differ. One of you is lying to and deceiving me! If it's the weighing scales I can just throw them out and get a new set. If it's my eyes... matey, we have a mutiny on our hands.

Plus I saw pbil and was like, "OMG you lost so much weight!" And then he was like, "YOU lost weight!" And then I said "really?" And he said "no, I was just saying that". Turd. Maybe it was better when he was scared of me and afraid that I would tell my parents nasty things about him and spoil his relationship with my sister.

Anyway my theory is that my body is stocking up for the winter in the form of fat. I think my body is somewhat confused by having spent every December over the past few years in the freezing arctic tundra that is Ithaca In the Depths of Winter and now come each December, it just starts to stock up on fat, even though it now resides in a tropical country that straddles the equator in so very intimate ways that the only way it could be closer to the equator would be if it WAS the equator. I do not like this fat on the arms business. I think I will pray for it to go away. I don't believe in dieting and I'm too busy (this thing that occasionally rears its virtuous head at me to admonish me once in a while and is called My Conscience has instructed to write that 'busy' is actually a euphemism for 'lazy') to exercise so it will have to be appeals to the Big Guy that will melt this stuff off my arms.

More seafood pictures from Malacca because I'm too busy to run down and get breakfast and want to feast on food in some way, any way, even just visually.

We had to choose our own fish. Like I know how to tell one piece of raw fish from another or something.

Our meal in all its precooked slimy glory


Sting Ray

Ikan bakar


Malay calamari

Chili crab... with peas. Yeah, I don't know why the peas were there either.

Why hello Mr. Crabby, it is very nice to meet you and let us shake claws (clearly my mother never told me not to play with my food)

I Can't Decide Whether I Heart Or Do Not Heart Chanel Beef Jerky Bag

Someone very awesome and ingenious once said that all art is quite useless, and that there is no such thing as moral art or immoral art, there is only art done well and art done badly (I am paraphrasing like crazy here; sorry Mr. Wilde).



This beef jerky Chanel bag is totally useless. It is also very totally art, because the House of Chanel did not actually go off the sartorial deep end and fashion a handbag out of preserved meat, an art student did. What I'm more interested in is how I feel about it as art though. And I'm on the fence about whether it's done well or badly. On the one hand, it actually LOOKS like a real bag, so points for technique. On the other... I always put food into my bag, but the reason I've never thought of my bag AS food is because that thought is disgusting. And in beef jerky bag's case, smelly as well.

I wonder what the message is. Designer goods are fleeting trends with the metaphorical life span of perishable foods? Or designer goods are lasting luxury investments, as evidenced by the smoked and preserved beef that was used in making the bag? It would be awesome if one could eat their designer bags? JERKY is awesome? I am stumped.