the wacky wombat weblog

You know those O’Reilly IT books that always feature a grayscale illustration of an (often time unrelated) animal on the cover? Make your own here at O’Reilly Maker. Here’s my very own cover:

If you’re unfamiliar on who is George Agdgdgwngo, check out this Wikipedia entry on Fonejacker.

As much as I enjoyed the shopping and sight-seeing, the majority of my Tokyo experience also revolves around food.

I pretty much love japanese food (ok, except for natto, which is fermented soy beans, and most things fermented taste/smell foul and should be ample warning for people to NOT eat them). But Japanese food in Japan tastes way better than japanese restaurants at home. It’s kinda like when you’re in US and chinese food taste nothing like the chinese food you have at home. (e.g. WTF is General Tso’s chicken?!)

A piece of Japanese food knowledge that I picked up in Japan was about wasabi. Behold - fresh wasabi!

Yes, this is the real deal, the root. To eat, you have to finely grate it first. The flavour is a little lighter and more fragrant than processed wasabi paste (which may not even contain wasabi at all according to this wiki article!), and the hotness does not rush up to your nose and threaten to destroy your nasal passage. It’s all very subtle and pleasant to eat.

Another big surprise about Japanese food (in Japan) is pork. Contrary to the popular belief that seafood and raw fish is all the Japanese people ever eat, pork actually does figure quite heavily in their cuisine. Not only do they eat pork quite often, but they can cook it darn well too! The kind where the pork literally melts in your mouth. It is that good.

Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures of their yummilicious pork to show you, because well, pork + soupy ramen = instant respite against winter chills and palatte satisfaction, so we basically attacked the food right when it reaches the table. There is no time for nilly-willy things like posing and selecting shutter speed on cameras. This is my 3rd trip and I still don’t really have pork-y pictures for you.

Besides the fine art of roast pork, there is also the very cute fast food pork: McPork burger (100yen only!). McDonald’s in Japan is Makudonaludo, and McPork is makupoku. And when Mario wins a challenge in Super Mario Galaxy (Japanese version), it is “star get”. English is a whole new language to me in Japan.

Anyway, I’ve posted some photos of my makan adventure in Tokyo. These are the few moments when we actually stopped ourselves from devouring the food just as it’s served and behaved all civilised and snapped away with our camera. Just go to our Photo Gallery and check out the album titled Eating Marathon.

Other food-related thoughts:

• Japanese people eat a lot of radish. I seem to get radish everywhere. I like it in oden (an assortment of boiled stuff in light broth soup), but not so much as a condiment. While shopping in the supermarket on new year’s eve, I see at least 1 big radish in almost everyone’s shopping basket.
• They also eat a lot of rice. I cannot understand how, in between slurping down a whole big bowl of noodles, typical salarymen can wolf down mouthfuls of plain white rice as well. Lunch sets with noodles + rice + condiment are pretty common.
• They eat horse meat too. I’ve seen places sell horse sashimi, but I cannot bring myself to eat horse meat. However it’s not really a common thing, unlike fish.
• I love how restaurants always serve water for free. Some even leave you with a whole big pitcher. Some restaurants in Malaysia should learn: We should not need to pay for plain water, especially when your food is salty.
• They eat innards too! Yay! I’ve eaten chicken heart, chicken gizzard, chicken butt, pork belly, bbq-ed (yakitori) and deep fried, and they taste great! I believe bak kut teh will do extremely well if sold in Japan.

Now that I’ve procrastinated for 2 weeks after my return from Tokyo, the time is ripe for me to upload some pictures and write about the trip.

One of the common thing I hear people say about Tokyo is that everything is expensive and you can’t holiday there without a ton of cash.

That’s only true to some extent. Yes — hotels are expensive, public transport isn’t cheap like in Singapore, and forget taxis if you value your money.

When it comes to shopping during sale time, it is fantastic. I’m talking about 10 bucks a piece and up to 70% for clothes, and for brands that are normally considered a little pricey back home, like GAP, Zara, Benetton, etc. And finding an XS isn’t like searching a needle in a haystack of XLs like the sales back home either.

This largely explains why I went there with one luggage and came back with two. LOL.

Also, it isn’t too costly to dine at a nice restaurant, where service is always top-notch. Ok, even the neighbourhood aunty shops have good service. And beer is cheap, and good. I will have a follow-up post solely dedicated to all that is fooood.

This post is all about my favourite place to shop: Harajuku, and adjacent to it, Shibuya. Trendy, with wide array of shops from quirky to classic, streetwear to couture, and cheap to expensive, it’s a nice place to just walk around even if you’re not out for shopping.

It is an interesting place to people-watch. But turns out it’s also a nice hang out for fashionable doggies out for a little sun-tanning on a warm winter day.

And beyond the glitzy main street of Omotesando are the little back lanes and quirky shops, which houses possibly the thinnest (yes, thinnest) building I’ve ever seen.

This is not an optical illusion. And I’m not sure if I can fit into the corner of that shop.

As you walk deeper into the network of criss-crossing alleys, you’ll find a few little houses squashed in between boutiques and designer shops. And that’s where we also found our favourite burger joint - Freshness Burger.

I like the concept of this particular outlet. It’s like going into someone’s little house and dining in their kitchen or in their courtyard (depending which table you get). But the whole look and feel is of a very homey and comfortable setting.

The front of the house is non-descript: small signage, a low black grill gate, and a cobble-stone walkway. Inside it’s warmly lit, with wooden furniture and kitchen utensils. And burgers grilled to order. We’ve eaten at other outlets of theirs, but this one’s the cutest.

For more pictures of Harajuku / Shibuya, just head on to our photo gallery. Check out the album titled: A day around Harajuku & Shibuya on page 2. Mouse over photos to read the captions.

=.=”

So I’ve fully converted to the Mac platform since mid-2006. Got myself a Mac Mini at work, another one at home. And naturally, when it came to replacing my work laptop, I got a MacBook as well. My computing life since then has never been better, pulling myself out of the Microsoft plug.

However, my biggest pet peeve with the MacBook is how it gets stained easily. My palms sweat a lot, you see. And it leaves grayish patches on the MacBook’s trackpad and surrounding surface area. I’ve tried to keep it wiped down as much as I can, and I religiously wash my hands regularly while at work. Even bought the Ava Softpads that were washable and reusable. No dice. Threw away the softpads after it slowly turned darker and darker after each wash.

Finally found a good solution after scouring through various Mac user forums - Mr Clean Magic Eraser! Many thanks to Alban and Benet to get me some of the sponge pads since the product line is only available in US. If you have a MacBook, you’ll want to get it cleaned with this magical sponge pad!

This sponge pad is really effortless to use - just dampen the sponge slightly with water, squeeze off the excess water, and rub away on the MacBook. Within seconds the dirt starts coming off and got my MacBook clean in a couple of minutes. Here’s a picture of my MacBook after a quick Magic Eraser treatment:

Stop wasting money on stick-on pads, films to protect the MacBook. Just get the Magic Eraser instead - and it works on almost everything else. I’m gonna clean my bathtub this weekend with it

I’m neither religious nor an atheist, but Christmas is always fun.

It’s a public holiday (auyongtc: not for me, Jesus is not that popular here ), and everything’s sparkly everywhere. That’s what I like most about Christmas. Not Santa Claus, Jesus in the manger, or turkey, but the trees and the lights. I guess I’m like a magpie that cannot resist anything that’s tinsly and shinny, especially the baubles.

Everything is prettier, and the atmosphere’s a little lighter than normal. Maybe because everyone’s looking forward to the drinking and partying, or maybe the end of the year is in sight, but it always feels a little more carefree.

Well, for whatever reason you celebrate this festive season, here’s a little wish from us:

And lets hope it’s going to be a better year ahead.

postscript: yay, will be in Tokyo on New Year’s day. But will definitely avoid the crowd going to the shrines. I prefer my shrines quiet and serene, not packed like a shopping mall.

It’s been months since my last haircut here in Tokyo. I’ve only been getting my haircut every 3-4 months while living here. And it’s always been at the QB House, those vending machine-based express haircut outlets that takes payment in one and only one denomination (a single 1,000 yen note in this case), spits out a ticket with a number, and makes you sit alongside other patrons patiently waiting for their haircut.

There isn’t much sense with the ticket number as I’ve noticed. There’s no wall display of next number to be called to the seat, there’s no announcing of the next number by the barber, there’s no indication that the number is of any use except to serve as a figure of interest while you stone at the bench waiting for your turn with nothing better to look at. People would sit down on the bench according to their turn, and when one leaves the bench for the seat at their turn, the rest of the people will shuffle around to fill up that gap in the same order. Why do they make me sit down at all the different bench seats just to get to my turn for my haircut?

The process is fast though, 10 mins per head with another 1 min overhead (pun not intended) to brush and sweep away the hair from the seat and scissors. There’s even a traffic light-like device out there with blinking lights to indicate how long you’re gonna be stuck there waiting for your turn, should you decide to part with your 1,000 yen note. At the end of the haircut, the barber will even offer to give you the disposable comb he just used on your head as a token of appreciation. That’s not a bad deal after all. After 2 times, I started to politely decline the offer as I’ve got no use for the extra combs at home.

My haircut there tends to be simple, just inform the barber (in whatever limited command of Japanese language I have) how short I want my haircut, in the same style. I’m not about to experiment, or let the barber experiment his skills. Not at 1,000 yen anyway. Keep it short and simple. And my hair seems to grow at a slower pace here, dunno for what reason. So that’s stretching my 1,000 yen a long long way.

In comparison, I often have my haircut every 1-1.5 months back home. At the neighbourhood salon, I get charged like RM 16 per visit, and that’s cheap. Dollar-to-dollar, my haircut here at the QB House is slightly cheaper. But of course, back home it’s a decent salon, and the stylist-cum-owner would talk to me about football betting and how the matches are fixed, so the skill is to bet on how you would think they fix the matches. When it comes to yen-to-ringgit, it’s like RM 120 (4,000 yen at 4 times) per year compared to RM 160 (RM 16 at 10 times) per year. Seems like I’ve been shaving off my haircut expenses while living here at a great extend. LOL!

Guess I’ll be going for my haircut this weekend, but not before a hearty lunch at Maru-kin for its excellent ramen!

The Writers Guild of America is on strike and the effects are starting to show:

I guess I’ll start embarking on the Super Mario Galaxy adventure in Japanese…

If you’re in KL, hop on over to Lot 10 at Bintang Walk. You’ll see 5 magnificent life-size painted horses on display outside the Samsung Digital Media Plaza. One of them is painted by my sis Yein, so go go go and take a look!

My mom called to tell me about it, that my sis was spending 4 days painting a horse sculpture at a shopping mall (Sunway Pyramid). I was like, huh??? Just cannot imagine painting a life-size horse, from 10 to 10 each day. X_x Or even imagine a horse painted.

After asking for about a week (-_-”), I finally got a picture of Yein’s horse as it was being painted. Pretty!!

Also, apparently the public gets to vote for their favourite horse. So if you want, go pick your winning horse now, because there’s a free lucky draw thingy for voting too (always an incentive there somewhere). Samsung gadgets and TVs to pimp your house and tickets to a horse race or something like that. If you’re lazy to go to the mall (or stuck overseas like me), you can vote online too. It’s horse #5.

No prizes for guessing which horse I voted for obviously. I hope it’s still there at the mall when I make my trip back to KL sometime soon next month!

(shall write this blog post in Malay language)

Memanglah Malaysia Boleh, boleh pergi ke angkasa lepas, boleh menjelajah Kutub Selatan, boleh mendaki Gunung Everest, boleh membina bangunan pencakar langit yang tinggi, boleh macam-macamlah. Boleh juga membunuh warga Mongolia dengan bom C4, menahan isteri diplomat Indonesia, dan segala gelagat ahli politik yang memalukan nama negara Malaysia di mata dunia.

Akan tetapi, semua ini tidak penting bagi saya. Saya tidak lagi kisah atau merasa teramat bangga apabila negara Malaysia berjaya sekali lagi mencapai kejayaan di angkasa lepas, Antartik, ataupun di puncak Gunung Everest. Apakah pula kebolehan Malaysia di dalam negeri?

Saya dah mula berasa bosan setiap kali “Malaysia Boleh” dilaungkan. Lebih-lebih lagi apabila wang cukai rakyat Malaysia yang mengalir keluar apabila ianya dilaungkan.

Sebenarnya, isu-isu penting seperti sistem kehakiman dan pilihanraya yang bebas dan tidak dipengaruhi kerajaan perlu diutamakan. Persoalannya, mampukah negara Malaysia yang berusia 50 tahun memperbetulkan isu-isu ini dan bergerak kehadapan? Pak Lah, apa yang lebih penting, menghantar seorang rakyat Malaysia ke angkasa lepas sebagai seorang pelancong, atau menghadapi isu penting yang menyekat kemajuan negara?

Dr Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor telah pun memulakan perjalanan ke angkasa lepas, bolehkah kita sekarang mula memberi perhatian kepada isu-isu sebenar di dalam negeri? Malaysia bolehkah?