Nasi Kerabu; A Birthday Party

Ha! Too smart for YOU, office network restrictions! I'm posting this on Samson but I'm not divulging how. But ha ha ha!

Kelantan blue rice with accompaniments of which frankly, I don't remember the names, because I was so agog at the blue rice.

Goosey told me that the rice was blue because it was soaked in iodine but I later found out this was false and the story was fabricated because he just likes to pretend that he knows everything. The rice is blue because of the herbs it's cooked in.

Ha! See, nothing can get past me.

Fatty Crab; Petaling Jaya

Heaven is a plateful of fatty crab drenched in chili sauce. With toasted bread on the side to dip into the delicious sweet and spicy sauce, warm fried rice to wash it down, and barbequed chicken wings to start it off. And did I mention heaven is only RM40ish per person?

For once I will shut up, cease the verbosity, and let the pictures speak for themselves.

Birthday Cakes; Nando's, KLCC, & Sultan Lounge, Mandarin Oriental

WELL. It turns out I have been discovered. Found out. The popo are onto me. The pigs are on the scent! Big Brother is watching, and he doesn't like what he sees. The office network has blocked blogspot. This cannot be a coincidence. I've been sneakily and stealthily posting regularly since I started working here and now all of a sudden it is blocked and I know it's because of me. Dammit. I even tried posting on Samson the BlackBerry but he doesn't support the uploading of pictures. I will find a way to perservere though. Oh yes. I will.

More birthday cakes even though it is no longer my birthday. Cakes taste so much better when they are: i) surprises, ii) set on fire by way of candles, iii) eaten right after you make a birthday wish, and iv) accompanied by the sweet (figuratively) and not-so-sweet (melodically and musically) sounds of people you know singing to you.

Chocolate cake with ice cream from Nando's--thank you colleagues! I was totally not anticipating a cake so this came as a surprise to my stomach. My stomach and I had not budgeted for dessert, and so I couldn't finish all of it.

Chocolate mousse cake with strawberries, gooseberries and mulberries--thank you boss! I really want to rave about this cake because it was PERFECTION but since it was a surprise (and it WAS, because I got this four days after my actual birthday) no one will tell me where it came from. Or what it's called. Or whose idea it was!

But it was gorgeous and perfect and the mousse was just the right texture to melt in your mouth and the chocolate rice krispies at the bottom added just the right something extra to the creamy moussiness and I love love love loved it.

Does cake get better as one celebrates older birthdays? Because I can't ever remember being spoiled with three different kinds of cake before. This makes a very strong case for looking forward to turning 25.

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.