Eat: Ri-Yakitori, St. Giles The Gardens Hotel

Japanese cuisines have and will always be one of my favourite cuisine, from the sashimi to the udon and ramen. I have mad love for them all. :) But there is one type of Japanese food which I rarely been able to try which is the kushiyaki or may be more famously known as the yakitori. Here’s what the Wikipedia said about it.

The term "yakitori" can also refer to skewered food in general. Kushiyaki (skewer grilled), is a formal term that encompasses both poultry and non-poultry items, skewered and grilled. Both yakitori and kushiyaki are used interchangeably in Japanese society to refer to skewered meat collectively; however, when referring to a specific item, yakitori will not be used unless the primary meat is chicken. – as per Wikipedia

The reason why I don’t have yakitori often enough is probably because I don’t know of many Japanese restaurants that serves them delicious and yummy. Well that was only until I discovered Ri-Yakitori which is conveniently located at St. Giles, The Gardens Hotel. The restaurant is specialised in serving mainly grilled skewered meats cooked using charcoal!

Here are some pictures of the food that I had that night, which ranged from a few different types of yakitori and some other delicious yummy Japanese food.

Cabbage Salad | Complimentary

Fried Garlic Mussel with Steamed Sake | RM 29

Yakitori Moriawase (Assorted Grilled Chicken) | RM 38

Yakiniku Wagyu Beef On Skewer | RM 41

Tempura Moriawase | RM 58

Shake Ochazuke | RM 17

Shake Ochazuke | RM 17

Kamo Nabe | Enquire the price with the restaurant

Mochi With Green Tea Ice Cream | RM 20

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My favourite dishes for the night was the Yakitori Moriawase, which allowed me to sample the different varieties of chicken yakitori parts. Really loved the wings of everything else on that platter. My next best one would be ahh, the Wagyu Beef on Skewer. The beef was tender and very well marinated, almost melting in your mouth. Oh so lovely! Another dish I loved would be the Tempura Moriwase. I’m usually not a fan of tempura because of the thick batter used, but at Ri-Yakitori, the batter used was light, fluffy and crispy! Dipped together with the dipping sauce, yums!

All in all, I had a wonderful experience dining at Ri-Yakitori. It was one of the best Japanese meals especially the yakitori, that I have had. The ambiance there is cosy and it’s a suitable place to unwind after work. Or you can bring your partner here for a date night too. It’s located on the 7th floor of Gardens Hotel and there is an option to be seated by the window. You’ll be treated then to a view of the Mid Valley city and also a glimpse of Bangsar, I think.

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// Ri-Yakitori Bar //  

The Gardens Hotel
Level 7, Mid Valley City
Lingkaran Syed Putra

03-2268 1188 ext. 6323

Open from Monday to Saturday – 5PM to 1AM

Out & About: Maybank GO Ahead. Challenge 2015

Already in its fourth year running, the Maybank GO Ahead. Challenge 2015 is a multi-disciplinary talent recruitment competition, with participants coming from up to 14 different countries including Malaysia. This year saw more than 23,000 applications received from various participating countries. Campus level competitions were held at 27 Universities across the region, with over 1,700 Challengers in total! If I was still studying in my campus, I would have taken the opportunity to participate in this challenge. :)

Similarly in every year’s competition, there would be a final challenge to be completed. For this year’s edition, 60 finalists from all across the world battled it out in Bukit Bintang where they were tasked to sell ‘happiness’ to members of the public – with each team designing and creating their business strategy for success. The teams are judged on how much money they manage to raise, which will then be donated to a charity of their choice. Hence it was only apt that the final challenge was called the Seasons of Smiles.

For the final challenge, the teams each set up a booth around Bukit Bintang, and ‘sold’ various activities and products to members of the public, with the theme being ‘happiness’. With offerings ranging from makeover sessions to personalised magazine cover photoshoots, each team attempted to make their customers days a little happier while raising money for a good cause.

Here are some of the pictures I taken at the Seasons of Smiles campaign, where I managed to try out some of the activities held by each respective teams in the booths.

Of all the booths I visited, I really liked this one booth which got the theme supermarket for their case study and they came up with the game concept of shopping by estimating the groceries items be within a certain amount.

It was rather hilarious because  Fish and I spent quite some time trying to estimate how much each item was. The price range we were given was within RM49 to RM51. This experience gave us a glimpse of how we both would have been next time when we turn into aunties doing their grocery shopping. I'm amazed with the Challenger who had to put up with us both, it was hilarious!

Another interesting booth was this booth which had an automatic hot-dog vending machine. Since I have mad love for sausages, I decided to give this a try. It was an interesting experience, although I suspect there was someone behind the machine dispensing the hot dogs.

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Just as previous years, the Maybank GO Ahead. Challenge 2015 ended with the Global Finals Gala Dinner held in the Mandarin Oriental Hotel where the finalists were celebrated and the winners of the Maybank GO Ahead. Challenge 2015 were crowned. 

Compiling all the scores in the end, Team Star Wars  won the USD40,000 Grand Prize! Followed by Team Terminator, the first runner up which won USD 20,000 and the third runner up was Team X-Men which took back USD 10,000. Team X-Men also won the People's Favourite Team award.

As for the Ultimate Go Ahead Challenger #UGAC2015, the first place went to Ricky Low Yin Lee who won an internship in the Maybank office in New York, USA. The second places went to Phyllis Ng Hui Li & Chris Watkins who won an internship in the Maybank’s London and Hong Kong office.

To find out more about the Maybank GO Ahead. Challenge 2015, the Global Maybank Apprentice Programme, and this year’s Challengers, visit www.goaheadchallenge.com. Alternatively, you can check out this Facebook page for more information as well ; http://www.facebook.com/RoaringCareers.

Till next time,

xoxo

Snaps: Cameron + Ipoh Road Trip with Olympus M.Zuiko ED 8mm F1.8 Fisheye PRO

Somewhere along the years in my photography journey, I stumbled upon breath-taking pictures of milky way. I decided there and then, that it would be on my photography bucket list to shoot the milky way. I don’t know how and I don’t know when, but it was on my list and it stayed there for years on (collecting dust). I think it’s normal that that happens, just as how our dreams get forgotten as time passes by.

But thanks to Robin, I had my first opportunity of shooting milky way in Cameron Highlands. Together with my friends, Shutter Therapists (except for Jaslyn who couldn’t make it, else we will have full attendance!) we did a short road trip up to Cameron. I arrived much later at night at about 9PM. From the night drive up, I realised how windy the roads are (so we had to drive up slowly) and also how far the foot of the hill was from the top! It was close to 90 minutes drive up!

First stop was at the steamboat restaurant, where we tried the charcoal version of steamboat. It was comforting to have some warm food to fill our tummies before the midnight milk way shoot.

After dinner, we headed over to our apartment for us to drop our luggage and I managed a quick freezing cold shower (after not having shower for 16 hours, I had an early start because I was volunteering in Seremban earlier that day). We quickly grabbed our gears, then proceeded to the shoot location. When we arrived, I stepped down and looked up at the skies. For a minute or so, I was in awe by the sheer number of stars and the milky way. The view was breath-taking and coupled with the chilly weather, it was the best combination. All I wanted to do then was just lie down on the grass and marvel at the beauty of it.

But that didn’t happen because the mission that night was to shoot the milky way! Robin had helped me with the settings on my camera and also, created a cheat sheet for us all. It was super easy to pre-set the settings beforehand and assign a button to enable those settings on my Olympus PEN Lite E-PL7. And just a press of a button, I was able to shoot the milky way. For this shoot, I had the Olympus M.Zuiko ED 8mm F1.8 Fisheye PRO to use.

The fish eye perspective has never been my favourite one, because of the distortion but since we were shooting the milky way, it would be best to use the widest angle I could get my hands on and hence, 8mm F1.8 Fisheye PRO lens.

These two pictures are the best of the photographs that I have taken, which was not many to begin with. We only had a window of 2 hours before the clouds returned. Initially during the day, it was raining and I was afraid that we won’t be able to shoot the skies given the possible cloud cover. In the limited time that we had, temperature was dropping from 18 Celsius to 16 Celsius which caused the lens to fog up. I ended up having to constantly wipe the lens and ended up with more hazy shots. I was also shooting with Olympus M.Zuiko ED 8mm F1.8 Fisheye PRO which was little difficult to focus since there is no indicator to set the manual focus to infinity.

All in all, it was such a magical night being able to capture it all, I wish I had more time to explore other compositions. Here’s to many more milky way pictures in future! By the way, I would like to include the link which I referred to for my post processing of the milky way shots; http://petapixel.com/2015/08/13/how-to-post-process-a-milky-way-photo-in-lightroom/

The morning after, our alarms rang at 530AM and we headed out to catch the sunrise. But unfortunately we were only greeted with clouds instead of a glorious sunrise with the tea plantation in the photographs. It was disappointing to say the least, but these things happen and it’s way beyond our control.

Since I had the Olympus M.Zuiko ED 8mm F1.8 Fisheye PRO with me, I decided to try it to take selfies and some portraits with it. Here’s a selfie taken by Tian Chad together with the bunch of us who woke up for the sunrise shoot. Jackie and his girlfriend didn’t join us for this. Robin and Alex are behind me and Calvin is on my left.

Let me try a selfie! No make up face with only 3 hours of sleep.

Meet Calvin, my partner-in-crime!

Another wefie shot!

Tian Chad decided to do a time lapse with his camera. I can’t wait to see the outcome!

The last selfie at the tea plantation before we left :)

After the unsuccessful attempt of shooting sunrise, it was time for breakfast! And since I was the food blogger amongst my friends, I got to decide where we could head to for breakfast. I did a quick Google search and in some forums, there was mentions of a deaf couple who sold nice pancakes. I thought it would be a good idea to eat there. However Tian Chad did mention that it was just okay, in terms of taste. But since there was no other places Google can tell me of, so we decided on that.

With the Olympus M.Zuiko ED 8mm F1.8 Fisheye PRO, you can capture a lot more in your photograph. I find it extremely convenient how I managed to capture the name of the cafe I was at, coupled with the ambiance and the details of how the cafe actually looked like. Not to mention, my face in it as well since this is a selfie.

These were some of what we had for breakfast which to be honest was a rather huge let-down. Food was mediocre to say the least and it left me feeling rather incomplete. But to be honest, I didn’t know of any other locations for breakfasts and we were running out of time. So, we headed back to the apartment to get ready for check-out.

Initially we had plans to head to a strawberry farm and to visit a tea plantation. We didn’t because it was so jammed to get back up to the apartment. Instead, we ended up at a morning market in Brinchang because I wanted to get strawberries! And I bought two trays of strawberries for RM50. Unfortunately, because it was stuffed into the container, the strawberries were not able to be kept for days long after I returned from Cameron.

And yes, I bought sweet pearly corns at only RM15 for that one bag. Tian Chad and Robin got me some purple roses too, because I mentioned the day before that I wanted to get roses! Super duper sweet of them guys. :D The next time I’m in Cameron again, I’ll definitely going to buy more corns strawberries and even more vegetables!

Since breakfast was such a disappointment, I wasn’t going to head back home before feeding myself with delicious food. After all, we already drove this far. So, it was decided that we’ll head to Ipoh for yummy-licious food! I have been to Ipoh for foodtripping with my family, so I didn’t need to do any research on the places to eat. Plus, everything delicious is within close proximity from one another.

First stop was the famous Funny Mountain tau fu fah, which was extremely packed with people and there was a long queue. There was even a drive-through option. I took one scoop of the tau fu fah and to my surprise, the texture was not as smooth as the ones I have back home. Meh, that was rather disappointing. My favourite tau fu fah are the ones from OUG morning market where it’s so smooth, it can cause a car accident if you ever spill it on the road. That was what Calvin said, actually.

After Funny Mountain, we headed over to Pasir Pinji (which is still within Ipoh) for some yummy delicious yong tau foo, mua chee and rojak! The first time I was in Pasir Pinji, I tried the neighbouring yong tau foo stall and was severely let down by the mediocre food. The whole food court was filled to the brim, which let me to assume that the food must have been amazing. It was the exact opposite, so this time I tried the stall next door which was better! The laksa packed a punch and goes surprisingly well with the yong tau foo.

The mua chee was chewingly tasty, but was slightly overpriced at RM3 per plate. Put that in comparison with the plate of rojak for just only, RM5. The rojak will leave you craving for more with every bite, with hints of lingering spicyness. Having tasted the best rojak ever in my life here in Pasir Pinji, everything else falls flat. Thank you for graciously ‘ruining’ my taste buds.

And with that, it marks the end of my short but packed road trip with some of my lovely friends and photographers! As of the time of writing, we will be planning another trip to shoot the milky way and of course, I’ll make it a food-tripping journey along the way. Anyone who is up for that, do drop me a message and we’ll see how we can plan this!

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The pictures in this post above are solely taken with the Olympus PEN Lite E-PL7 and Olympus M.Zuiko ED 8mm F1.8 Fisheye PRO. No other cameras or lenses were used. :p Except the picture below, which was taken using Calvin’s camera.

Till next time,

xoxo

Out & About: Taking that leap towards fitness!

In a blink of an eye, almost half a year have come and gone. I’m also a year older now. I don’t know about you, but there is always something about growing older that makes you feel rather nostalgic. There is something I enjoy doing after every birthday is to think what about the year that was.

Am I happy? Did I manage to achieve my goals? Am I a step closer to achieve my dreams?

One of my goals has always been to have a healthier, more active lifestyle. Before this I have always been comfortable with my sedentary lifestyle, until one day when I realised that there was a lot thing I wasn’t capable of, in addition to constantly feeling lethargic as well.

So, I decided back then that I would try to be fitter. Gym was an obvious choice but I came up with reasons like, “Oh, my job is too demanding and I don’t have time for gym.” But I did try to do some body weight workouts at home, that lasted for a good few weeks and then I was back to my sedentary 12 hours sitting in office lifestyle.

After a few years of procrastination and half-assed attempts, I had a friend, Josh who told me to try High Intensity Training workouts on one fine day. He asked me more than a couple of times, making it sound interesting and so I decided, “Well, I’ll give this a try.” I didn’t even have proper shoes to begin with so I had to shop for shoes before I attended the High Intensity Training workouts. Little did I know that this decision to attend the workout would be a game-changing one for me. This decision would actually impact my life in term of achieving my fitness goals.

 Selfie with Josh after the first WOD

I then attended the first workout or WOD in short, which stands for Workout Of the Day and I was hooked. Ever since, I have committed to going for the WODs every week. I say committed because I didn’t want this to be a fad, where I’m just trying new things for the fun of it and then leave it after when I get bored.

After the first WOD, I realised that I was in an awful shape despite my age. It was at that point that I told myself I want to be fitter and stronger. To do that, I would need to really commit to it and not waver, to fall back into my old routine. I gave myself ‘pep talks’ and motivated myself. If fitness training was easy, many more people would have succeeded in it. I had to come to that realization, and I believed that a strong willpower will help me achieve my goal. Of course, it had a lot to do with making that first game changing step as well.

Here’s the group of us on 8th March 2015 WOD! Can you spot me?

  This was taken on 15^th March 2015’s WOD. I remember only having a couple of hours of sleep the night before, but still making time to attend the WOD.

This is the picture taken from the first outdoor WOD we had, the bootcamp edition. Man, it was intense. I remember having to push myself with my team members cheering me on.

With that willpower and determination, I have attended and completed many WODs, pushing myself with every workout to get stronger and fitter. I’ve always taken a healthier lifestyle by trying out other activities such as rock-climbing, hiking and even running. Fast forward to now, I’m still on my journey to achieving this goal but compared to before, I can say that I’m reasonably stronger than I was. I went from struggling to carry mere 5kg of weights to being able to lift half my body weight which is approximately 20kg. This is probably one of the most rewarding parts of this all; just being physically stronger and fitter. At the same time, I’m also mentally stronger (because it takes a whole lot than just physical strength to train). Not to mention, I made a lot of friends in this journey of mine and it’s motivating to have friends cheering you on. Looking back the best decision I ever made had been the game-changing decision of going for that first workout. That was the spark which gave me the push I needed to begin this journey of mine.

All in all, it feels good to let you know how my fitness journey started about, with that one decision I made. Would it be a surprise if I told you where my inspiration comes from? It was all from P1’s game changing approach of telling their customers how they are changing the game in the internet industry. They are currently running this #ReadyToP1ay’s campaign, where P1 is offering new customers unbelievable deals! Under the campaign, new customers are able to experience the service without any upfront fees! So, you don’t actually need to pay anything to get started. This can be your game-changing decision to upgrade your internet service to a high speed one, just as how I made that one simple decision to attend the WOD. In addition to that, customers also do get 1-month free Broadband Internet or mobile Internet that is applicable to all P1 plans - ForHome®, ForBiz® or ToGo® with 24-month contract.

Rock climbing at Camp 5

 Taking a break during hiking

During strength and conditioning class

The promotion is still on-going so do visit #ReadyToP1ay’s website to find out how to change your game and sign up to enjoy free delivery with an additional online discount too! By the way, #P1 is also running various giveaways in conjunction with the campaign, so you might want to stalk their social medias; Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Till next time,

xoxo