Perfectly Imperfect.

I've heard a lot about Palate Palette but haven't actually been to the place till today.

In terms of atmosphere and decoration, Palate Palette did not dissapoint.

It was quirky with the mismatched chairs and tables as well as cool vector art lookalike patterns on the walls. And the chill out music was good too.

I particularly loved this part of the wall with the drawing that looks like it could be used to measure one's height and the polaroid pictures beside it combined with all the stars really drew me in.

If my art was as good, this is what I would've wanted to paint on my bedroom walls.

But sadly my art sucks. :(

Loved the multicoloured spiral steps as well.

My mom spoiled it by saying: "Having spiral steps no good for feng shui. Makes you luck and fortune go round round only- you will never get to enjoy it. Cannot trap the luck." 0_o

Such a typical mom thing to say.

I wonder why as people grow older, they become more superstitious. =.=

My sister and I with the cute walls behind us.

My sis and her umbrella ella ella man.



I really like this shot with the colourful wordings on the mirrors and the assortment of bottles beneath it. Turned out better than expected I must say.




Our first dish- Mushroom Soup which was a chef's recommendation.
It was made up of authentic mushrooms blended together but it lacked salt and pepper so it was a little bit tasteless in the beginning but we remedied that by adding more salt and pepper.



My drink- Iced Mocha with Hershey's Chocolate.
They used Illy Coffee so the aroma of coffee was really REALLY good. Plus the chocolate at the bottom tasted like melted Hershey's so that really added to awesomeness of the drink. :D



Tandoori Chicken Satay
It was good and the meat was pretty tender but for some reason all of us felt the sauce lacked something. Like that extra kick to push it into the awesome category. It wasn't bad though, it was actually pretty good but for some reason, it just lacked that special something.




Egg Salad Sandwich
Pretty typical this one but it was good nonetheless.

Palette salad

I liked this salad, especially the dressing because it was really flavourful.

And they were generous with the dressing too. :)

Chicken Lasagna

This was pretty standard too but it was delicious as well.

Asparagus and Smoke Chicken Penne

The portion of the pasta was huge! It doesn't look like it here though but the bowl is VERY deep. We couldn't finish this dish.

Overall, the pasta was not bad. The smoked chicken really gave it flavour.

However, we felt a bit cheated because the menu said it was white sauce and we all know white sauce should be creamy and sinful but it wasn't.

Oh and it lacked salt too. =/

Took a trip to the loo. My sister was fascinated with the many locks on the toilet door and asked me take a picture.

Then, we went upstairs (up the colourful spiral staircase) to poke around.

The colourful flamingoes caught my eye.

They have a carousel horse on the bar!!!

And a giraffe's bottom sticking out from the roof. So adorable!

Basically upstairs is used more for functions/ events or big groups of people.

They have a disco ball too!!

Sorry I am very fascinated with disco balls one....I considered putting one in my bedroom you know! But they are so expensive. :(

Pretty peacock wall painting.



All in all, I'd say Palate Palette is a good hang out/ chill out place for drinks.

But I wouldn't say the food is fantastic though.

I probably still prefer Alexis or Delicious food.

Neverthelss, it is quite worth visiting at least once. ^_^

Palate Palette Restaurant and Bar

21, Jln Mesui off Jln Nagasari,

50200 KL.

03-21422148

Closed on Mondays

Turn that frown upside down!

These past few weeks of holidays have been absolutely awesome! I think we don't learn to appreciate holidays enough till we've had a taste of working life. Because after that, holidays seem like something to be treasured.


I will never understand why people get bored during the holidays. It seems like there's endless possibilities of things to do, people to meet, places to go that we, or rather, don't have the time to do normally. And even then, there's opportunity cost involved because I can never seem to decide what to do next? Choosing to do one fun thing leads to forgoing another fun acitivity. For example, by choosing to watch TV (I can never seem to find the time to do this on normal days), I'm forgoing reading a good book (trust me, the list of books I want to read is staggering due to it being accumulated over the year). Or by choosing to go out, I'm forgoing all the time I can spend at home chilling- which is really hard to come by. Decision decisions. =/


Anyway, I was looking through all the videos we took during our epic badass sleepover at Ea's mansion in the jungle and I was laughing so hard, my cheeks hurt! To an outsider I probably looked crazy, staring at the computer screen, laughing to myself. 0_o


But some of them really are so funny. The crazy things we come up with! I'm just gonna post a few for remembrance here. Everyone else may not get what we were trying to do/convey or all our crazy jokes but hey, if you do understand, you're in for a ride!

This was our short choreography to Vengaboy's Boom Boom Boom Boom! in the car on the way to Janda Baik. What can I say, when you put crazily energetic girls in a confined space for 2 hours this is what you get! :P

And this is us trying to learn Pixie Lott's Boys and Girls music video dance choreo. Look at Ea! :D

Still trying to learn the choreo. Looking at these never fails to crack me up.

Wei-Lin's slim shady joke. Lol. XD

And this is Vicky's racist joke. Damn funny if you get it.

and this our little adventure in the buggy while it was pouring cats and dogs. It doesn't look like we're going very fast here but it was really scary when Wei-Lin turned super sharp corners. There's funnier, longer ones of us in the buggy but I decided not to put it up. Embarassing. :P

And to end it all, here's a proper video of us doing a cover of Black Eyed Pea's I Gotta Feeling.

Wei-Lin's voice is really beautiful- so soulful and soothing.

I'm sorry the sound isn't very good here though- what can you expect la, I used my camera to record so it isn't exactly very professional. =/

Anyway, I hope you had fun laughing at/with us. ;)

That Brilliant Streak Across the Sky...

“For one reason or another, most folks on this tiny little planet seem to be mesmerized by fireworks. Maybe it's the sheer pyrotechnics of it all, the power we have to make beautiful explosions. Maybe it's the overwhelming brilliance that comes with that final pop of light. Or maybe yet, it's that child-like thrill imprinted into us that comes from the unexplained phenomenon of night fires - something that still hasn't dissipated even after our however many years of living. But, maybe we see something more in fireworks. Something that most others can't recognize. Maybe we love these glorious shows of light because we can relate. Like these fiery lights, we are strong, explosive, thundering in unspoken magnitude, yet so incredibly mesmerizing. Quietly we shoot to life, shattering into a million tiny pieces of broken glass, and then in an instant we sizzle away into the night, leaving the world wide-eyed and staring. We disappear, the explosion gone, but that hazy trail, our smoky sweet dust powdered across the night sky will forever be there for others to blaze. We are tiny explosions all over the world, popping with every brush of greatness, and collectively we form a gloriously blinding blanket of light and life. We are stunning, captivating ; explosive diamonds broken across the night sky, falling back down to earth and leaving our mark on the world. Sometimes we may not shimmer like we intended and instead only stun our audience with a quiet pop. other times we may not fire at all. Nevertheless, our potential is there. And when we become kinetic, nothing can stop us. We are beautiful and strong ; brilliant and graceful. We are the fireworks show of the world, running year-round. And nothing could ever come close to the beauty we leave behind.”

– Penelope Bat.

And we are- so full of infinite possibilities and potential. We should never forget that. Let this be a reminder to myself and everyone who reads this:

We are everything we say we can be, and so much more.

Currently listening to- Linkin Park's Meteora album

Uprising

Currently in love with- The Baseballs

Gosh, y'll must check them out! They're a German band doing covers of modern songs in 50s rock and roll music. It's so awesome.

Check this out.

One of the best covers of Rihanna's Umbrella ever.

I really like their cover of Katy Perry's Hot n Cold, Usher's Love in this Club (which is saying something considering that I don't even like the original version), Plain White T's Hey There Delilah and Leona Lewis' Bleeding Love (I'm not a big fan of the ori version either).

On a completely unrelated note, finals are overrrrr so it's PARTAYYYYY TIME!

Ignorance is Your Best Friend.

People really piss me off when they say that a Degree in Communication isn't "useful". And this is coming from people who are actually PURSUING a Degree in Communication. Seriously, why are you even studying it then?

I hate it that there's this perception that pursuing a degree in arts is seen as a lowly, stupid thing to do for people who cannot study and have no idea what to do with their life. It seriously sets me ablaze when people think that because excuse YOU, my grades are just fine and although I don't know EXACTLY what I want to do in life (the specifics I mean, like become a doctor), I have a general idea and I WORK towards that which ultimately is better than having NO idea at all. Besides, I CHOSE to study Communication and Arts as I had interest in it. Not because it seemed like the easiest option available. Because really, when it all boils down, is anything ever easy?

Granted, I can't control what people think but I'll offer a little insight as to what I think. Coming from someone who used to do a double degree- Bachelor of Business and Commerce and Bachelor of Communication, I got a full experience of both courses. And if you ask me, both are equally useful, though in different ways.

With the Bachelor of Business and Commerce, I suppose one could say that it was more applicable directly in life in that, you could apply whatever you learnt straight from the textbooks, in real life. But the thing with Business is that it's really generic (at least for me it was). It felt like an extension of high school- where you're spoon fed with information, you memorize and you regurgitate it for exams. Even for assignments, I felt like for the business subjects... they had a formula you know? Like if you just applied the formula, you'd definitely score. Your examples and the way you apply the formula can be different, but ultimately there IS a formula and you have to do it EXACTLY the way your lecturers/ tutors want to score. It's easier in that sense because everything is sort of laid out for you and all you have to do is follow it. Plus the lecturers were never as interesting as the Arts lectures.

With the Arts subjects, I personally feel that it requires a lot of thought. While what you learn is probably not directly applicable in life, I think it's indirectly applicable. Whenever I do my readings for the Arts, it always makes me think. It makes me think about things that are so mundane and normal in everyday life that we sometimes forget that they're there or we take forgranted their existance and how they came to be. Take for example language, what I'm writing in my blog right now and communicating to you guys- it's a social construct, it's not innate and it's learned. How many of us would have considered that normally? Basically, everything is constructed. There are no absolute truths in black and white, just different versions of what happened when different people recount them due to different intepretations. So, what is reality? Is anything real in that sense?

See what I mean? One thought can lead to so many others, it really gets your brain whirring. And I'll admit it, my brain was SO rusty before this, it's not even funny. Blame the Malaysian education system of supressing questions and curiousity. Plus the discussions in tutorials are always so much more engaging and thought provoking in Arts which really encourages participation. In the Business subjects, hardly anyone says anything at all. But this may just be a Malaysian occurance la, I don't know about what happens overseas. Maybe when I hop over to Aussieland, I'll take one more business elective (if I still have room for more electives that is), just to see if there's a difference.

Another thing I'd like to point out are the lecturers. Oh the lecturers are SO DIFFERENT in the Business and Arts. I feel that Arts lecturers are more easy-going and friendly and that the distance between us students and them is not so far away. Probably because they treat us all like friends and when we have free time, we can always go to their office just to talk to them about whatever and they'll entertain us. And I may be biased saying this, but they always seem to be much more interesting than Business lecturers. Business lecturers always seemed to be a bit more rigid and strict. And they give off this air, like unless it's something assignment related or exam related, don't go and bother them.

It may be just me, but I feel like I learn more out of the Arts subjects that stays with me compared to the Business ones. For example, if you ask me after a Business exam of all the theories I studied and stuff, I probably can't remember all that much. But if you asked me about the Arts ones, I could probably tell you more. (Like I said, I might be biased coz my interest leans more towards the Arts).

Recently for JRN assignments, a couple of people did the whole Arts vs. Science thing, about how Arts is always looked down upon and seen as inferior. They traced it back to high school, on how we are streamed based on results eg: better results go to science, poorer results go to arts (that's where the biasness starts).

In part, I think that accounts for the biasness but only PARTLY. I think they forget to take into account that Arts in highschool and the Arts we learn in university are completely different. I don't know about you guys, but Arts in my high school meant that you had to take Accounts and Perdagangan and stuff like that which isn't even REAL arts if you think about it. More like commerce. And then's there's Seni which is all about drawing and handicraft and stuff which is fun and all but I don't mean Arts as in art, literally.

And so that's why a lot of people choose to do Science (I did it partly because all the science subjects are in English but the kononnya Arts subjects are all in BM- bad reasoning I know) but also because I felt more of a pull towards the Sciences at the time even though I knew I probably wouldn't be going down the Science road later in life (though I must admit at one point, I did consider pharmacy but soon realized it wasn't for me. Chemistry for the rest of my life weiii. 0_o) Anyway, I think I was always more interested in the Arts anyway which is why I took an extra subject for SPM- English Lit. And I think, that really sealed the deal for my future in Arts. Upon taking those extra classes, I realized just how horrible my thought process was and that I was all rusty and couldn't think on the spot anymore. My critical thinking was like zero. And for that I am thankful. Thankful to Puan Bahiyah, my amazing Eng Lit teacher who restored my love for learning and thankful that I did decide to pursue an extra subject even though it meant spending more money, time and resources for extra classes.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that hey, whatever floats your boat. No course is EVER useless. It just depends on where your interests lie and what you make of your course. As for me, I may have switched to a single degree for now but I do plan to take up the Business degree for my Masters hopefully, because I DO want to know more about the business side of things as it IS useful. (Then again, that may be society's pressure to get a real degree talking. =/) But we'll see how that goes.

First of the Gang to Die.

For as long as I can remember, I've disliked cigarette smoke. Someone recently asked me why, which got me thinking.

When I was maybe 4 or 5 years old, I once thought that it looked cool to smoke. (Sorry, blame it on all the movies, bad baaaad influence) But gradually, smoking started becoming repulsive. I really can't pinpoint when it started. It may have been when my eyes started to water because they were sensitive to smoke. Or maybe I just have an overly sensitive sense of smell, which I recently just found out. Wee and I walked into a lift in uni the other day and I immediately knew that the previous occupant of the lift had been smoking. And Monash is a smoke free campus mind you, so the smell had have to come from the person's clothes and body. I scrunched up my nose and made a face but Wee said she couldn't smell anything. Maybe that's the reason why I dislike it so much. I can smell it so abundantly and others can't. Sometimes when I walk into Mr.Ben's office I can smell it too...the distinct smell of tobacco.

Maybe it's because I've been stubbed by a cigarette before and it wasn't a pretty sight. I was walking the streets of Mongkok in Hong Kong and well, in Hong Kong half the damned population are smokers so it's not uncommon to see the locals walking the streets while smoking. The thing is, they like holding their stupid cigarettes at hip level while walking so it sticks out. And of course, it's HK, the population is damn crazy for such a small place so it's supremely crowded, I was weaving through the streets when this idiot decided to take a drag of his cigarette and then put his hand down while I passed by him effectively burning my hand with his cigarette. It effing hurt and I had a nice, red, round burn mark for the next few days.

But I think my passionate dislike for smoking started a long time before that incident. That incident just served to increase my dislike of smoking. I think the real reason that I really hate cigarretes and the act of smoking so much is because it's so inconsiderate. I mean, hey you wanna destroy you teeth and lungs and release stress please be my guest! But don't destroy everyone else's in the process with your icky secondhand smoke.

I'm not saying I hate ALL smokers (I know lots of lovely people who happen to be smokers, but they are awesome nevertheless), just the inconsiderate ones. Like the ones that burn people with their cigarettes, no matter how accidental that was. And the ones that know you don't smoke, yet blow all their disgusting smoke into your face. Pregnant ladies smoking also pisses me off- do they not know they it harms the baby or do they not care? It's the same for parents who smoke in front of their young kids. Not because they're being a bad role model or whatever because all role models come with flaws. But do they not know that smoking in front of kids increases their chances of developing asthma? Or even the idiots that think they look so cool smoking. Urgh. The reasons that people start to smoke sometimes disgust me. I mean, if you started smoking because it helped you release stress or kept your weight down by supressing your appetite I can still understand.

But if you started smoking because of peer pressure or because it looked cool, THAT I cannot accept. I think it's stupid that you can be such a pushover. Just because other people smoke doesn't mean you have to. This applies especially for guys. Let me reiterate: it's NOT COOL to smoke. In fact, it's disgusting and repulsive. No matter how manly you think you look when you're smoking, you don't. You just look stupid holding a cancer stick. Besides, there are already so many things we're doing to ruin our health, you don't need to add smoking to that list.

Wee once asked me if I was ever curious about what smoking felt like. I'm not. Not for one second. I have no desire to be a chimney for even just once. Which is saying something because I'm usually pretty curious about everything. Maybe I'm biased. But really, morphing into a puffing chimney is not high on my to-do list but who knows? If ever I feel the compelling urge to understand why smokers smoke, I might try it one day.

Until then, you guys smell and taste like cancer.