BBQ Hotpot opens its doors at 1Borneo

For lovers of Beijing BBQ Steamboat at Tun Fuad, a branch has opened up in 1Borneo with a new name Kampung Nelayan BBQ Hotpot.


Just like Beijing, there are several varieties of meats and seafood to choose from. For those who are concerned, this place serves no pork :)

What's it gonna cost you?

RM32++ for BBQ Hotpot.

RM18++ for Buffet Lunch, note that this doesn't include the hotpot.

They are also open in the morning serving nasi lemak and other morning favourites like Konlo Mee, fry noodle etc. As far as i know this is the only buffet place in 1Borneo at the moment.

Petrol Station Strike rumors false

According to The Star, it has confirmed with Petrol operators that the petrol station going on strike is false and is purely rumors. Check out the article here.

An extract from the star:

"Shell retail stations nationwide continue with normal operating hours,” a Sabah Shell spokesman said in a statement

Petrol Station Strike over Commission

Long queues again in Malaysia as rumor spreads that petrol stations are going on strike today or tomorrow. Petrol Stations here in Kota Kinabalu are swamped with cars as rumors spread about the strikes. So far unable to confirm whether its true or not. Guess better to be safe than sorry.

Only references to the Petrol Stations disputes are at the following

• Malay Mail
  
• The Star

An extract from today's Malay Mail

"In fact, in a show of force, some 3,500 petrol stations had threatened to shut down for eight hours on June 26. However, yesterday, PDAM called off the strike after it was hinted at that the government had agreed to the association’s demands."

So why the panic? Could it be a hoax? The latest sms rumors I heard was that the petrol station would be closed for 3 days. How true, probably we will only find out tonight.

Losing 80lbs with a McDonald's Diet

Dubbed the McMiracle Diet or Chris Coleson's McDiet, Chris Coleson has managed to lose 80lbs on a McDonald's diet, it sure is different when compared with the Super Size Me movie a while back.

Checkout what's on his menu

Breakfast
Strong Black Coffee

Lunch
Southwest Salad with Grilled Chicken
Chipotle BBQ Snack Wrap® (Grilled)
Apple Dippers

Snack
Apple Dippers or Walnut Salad

Dinner
Southwest Salad with Grilled Chicken or any other salad
Chipotle BBQ Snack Wrap® (Grilled)
Walnut Salad

Lets compare the calories and sodium content of these.

		Calories	Sodium (mg)
	Apple Dippers	35	0
	Walnut Salad	210	60
	Chipotle BBQ Snack Wrap (Grilled)	260	830
	South West Salad with Grilled Chicken	320	960

Nutritional values taken from the McDonald's

The average calorie intake of American adults is around 2000 calories. If you sum up Chris Coleson McDiet you'll find that it works out to be around this range.

Mario's Pizza at 1Borneo

Decided to brave going into 1Borneo for the weekend. Was rather worried that there would be problems with parking. Anyway, managed to find a parking and took a look around to see if there were any new stalls in 1Borneo.

Well, after walking around, this store Mario's Pizza caught my attention. I really love pizza and this stall sells snack sized portions

Picked up quite a crowd

Plenty of patrons, waiting and deciding what to order

I ordered three different pizza's. The heating up of the pizza's was slow because they only have one oven. Duno what the owner was thinking having only one oven. The staff kept opening and closing the oven, leaving the oven to unevenly heat the pizza's. This caused the service to slow down due to staff all queueing up to use the oven. I thought it'd probably be better to have multiple inexpensive mini ovens to speed up the heating up process. I had to wait at least 5 minutes before I my pizza's were ready.. Thats a bit long just for warming it up.

Workers queueing for the oven

What I liked was that they wrapped the pizza in some greaseproof paper for you to carry around the mall and munch at the same time. The staff was polite and did apologise for the delay in heating up the pizza.

Overall I found the price quite reasonable (RM2.60-3.20 for a slice of pizza). Upstairs in Tasty Food Village your able to get a slice of pizza for RM3 and double the size. Unfortunately, in Tasty Food Village they only heat up the pizza upon request and well, the taste just isn't as nice as Mario's. Well leave you all to decide which is better :)

My Wii Fit has arrived!

Got a call from the Pos Malaysia today to say that my package has arrived. Having waited a week since my cousin sent the Wii Fit from the US I quickly grabbed my car keys and drove down to KK town pos central to pickup my parcel. Woohoo.. no tax. I was worried bout any duty fees..

The moment I got home the package was torn off in a flash. I have been waiting forever for this and couldn't wait to try it out. I quickly tore out the batteries that came with the unit and plugged it in and hit the power button. Oh no, nothing happened?!?! How could this be? Blown away almost RM500 and waited so long and it doesn't work?? Could my luck be so bad? Well.. it wasn't.. seems that in my excitement I put the batteries the wrong way. Gosh, what a relief. Thats what you get for not concentrating.

Anyway, I poweredup my wii and followed the instructions on the manual to sync the wiifit to the wii console just as you would the first time with the wiimotes. After trying for about 5minutes repeating the same steps over n over again, I was unable to get a sync. Desperate to reset the sync settings by holding down the sync button of the wii console for 10secs. This means I lose sync with my existing wiimotes. I ran the sync again and got my wiimotes, but was still unable to sync the wii fit to run.

Frustrated, I sat down and started to think.. after i'm an engineer I should act logically and break down the problem. Well, let's try putting in the wii fit disk. When I did that, it prompted me to do an update which I did. Maybe this will help my wiifit board. So I tried the sync again and well.. still the same result.. no sync.

Ok.. Last chance, i ran the wii fit cd and a nice screen popped up asking me to connect my wii fit. I powered it up and did a sync and wallah it works! the blue light of the wii fit board remained steady and I was ready to use it. Well, it was a big headache for me just to set the wii fit up, hope it wasn't the same for any others. Now I gotta find some accessories here in KK if there are any :p

FLOOD!!

Looks like its flooding again. Just outside my place its already flooded, the road leading to KK highschool and Lido is covered in muddy rain water that overflowed from the open drain. Outside my house also the drain looks like its gonna overflow.. Hope high tide passes soon.. don't think the drain can tahan much longer

Before

After

Petrol price causes massive jams and chaos

Been driving around to take a look at the impact of the sudden announcement by our PM. There is chaos everywhere. At this point in time might not be worth to queue up to pump. The queues at some places stretch to almost a kilometer. Take for example the Petronas station along the way from Lintas to the Terminal 1 Airport, the queue stretched way pass the Citreon dealer. There were lots of people cutting in from the curbside and on the right lane causing some deadlocks and traffic to stop.
I think the next time the PM decides to announce this mayb he should get the traffic police to go to major petrol stations to direct traffic flow. Glad to be home after a long jam.

Petrol and Diesel Price increase in Malaysia announced!

Looks like there is a mad rush for petrol and diesel as news spreads about the increase in price on 5th of June. Here's the story.. As of midnight tonight there will be a major increase in fuel prices in Malaysia.

Fuel	Old	New	Percentage increase
Petrol	RM1.90	RM2.70	42%
Diesel	RM1.58	RM2.58	63%

*Fuel prices based on Petronas prices

For those who drive to work everyday have to find ways of cutting costs. But I can imagine that the public transport sector such as buses are going to be hit hard. I am not sure if the government is helping them cushion the impact(Taxi's are receiving help from government), maybe someone can enlighten me.

Transport and logistics are also going to be heavily affected a few friends in transporting goods from KK to Tawau are going to have a nightmare with these sort of increments.

But wait.. The government isn't going to leave us hanging dry. Looks like there are still some subsidies available to most of us. Let's take a look at how it works now.
Whenever you renew your road tax the government will send you rebate via a money order.

Vehicle Type	Rebate/year
Cars > 2000cc	NA
Cars <>	RM625
Motorbikes > 150cc	RM150

I personally am not ready for the price increases. I was under the impression that the increases would be from August and they would be introduced incrementally. Or is this is the planned increment that the government is planning? How will the people react to this government? The next few months is sure gonna be scary. Looks like time to ask for a pay rise from the boss.

I'll leave you with pictures of the long queues encountered near the hospital in KK while having a last taste of old price fuel.

Wow busy day today

Queue queue queue

30mins later, almost there..

Toilet advertising

Was walking around 1Borneo again today when nature called. This might not be new to some, but this is the first time i've seen a tv screen on well.. err urinals. Guess its not a bad way to advertise since you will be pretty focused on looking at the advertisement.

While I was using the facilities, they were showing movie traliers. Not a bad idea.. Maybe next time they'll be showing 1Borneo stall promotions