Plants vs Zombies 2 on android gets updated!

Woohoo! Finally a plants vs zombie 2 update! Fingers crossed for a new world or new plants!

A snippet from what's new on their play store description below:

There's loads of cool stuff in our latest update! We have a new map, fun new features and we introduce a new foe!
• We've upgraded the map to make game progression quicker and easier.
• It's simpler to know how much you've done, where you're going, and what loot you'll get along the way.
• You can invite your friends and send ‘em gifts.
• Use the Turbo button to speed up your planting – and speed up the zombies.
• Be warned: when we were upgrading the map, somebody let in the Gargantuars.

Visible changes

• The maps looks like they have been overhauled. It is now linear. 

• No more keys, they get converted to coins

• No more stars, they get converted to costumes (roughly maybe 10 stars per costume?)

• New World Key

• New Gargantuar zombie. Have yet to meet one. Feel bad if I play zombies while i'm still in the office. 
• Turbo mode. Tired of the long wait in the beginning of each level? There's a turbo mode now to speed up game play.

What not to expect

• No new plants
• No new maps or worlds

Malindo Air Review (Kota Kinabalu to KL)

Decided to try out Malindo air after reading a lot of great value it was providing on their website. 

• Extra legroom 32” seat pitch
• In-flight Entertainment
• Included baggage allowance (20kg)
• Included refreshments

Booking Experience

I initially had a problem with my booking, where my payment did not go through and when I tried to rebook, it warned me that I could have a potential duplicate booking. Settled everything with customer service even though I had to wait for one day to rebook, lucky the prices were still the same. 

The Malindo Air website is still a little primitive in functionality and I'd assume that this would improve in time to come. Web checkin at the time of writing was not functioning. 

Boarding Experience

Malindo Air seems to use a slightly different way of boarding its passengers. They setup 3 queues. The initial queue is for older people and people with children. There is another queue for business class passengers and another queue for passengers sitting in the back seats.. if I'm not mistaken rows 20 and above. There was a little confusion as some passengers would queue up at the business class queue to get in. Some signs would have been helpful.

Anyway, I like the idea as it spreads the queue out instead of having a single long queue. 

Seat space

Malindo's website says it has a 32" seat pitch. I'm not really sure what that means, but the assumption is that bigger is better hehe.. Comparing with the other airlines flying to/from KK/KL, Malindo has the largest seat pitch.

Seat pitch comparison

My previous flight was on Malaysia Airlines flying into KK. I can tell you that the legroom on Malindo was definitely bigger than the standard economy seats on Malaysia Airlines. Airasia looks like a sardine can compared to Malindo! plenty of space here! I absolutely love it, great for people with long legs. 

Feels just like airasia's hotseat.. so spacious..

I tried to measure it using a spritzer bottle that I carried on board. I think its about 1.5 spritzer bottles in legroom space. 

About 1.5 spritzer bottles of legroom

Entertainment system

One thing that interested me about Malindo Air was the provision of an entertainment system even for a 2.5 hour flight. 

Entertainment Unit

It has built in USB (with nice blue illumination) on every seat for charging portable devices.

Headphone jack, something unknown connector and USB plug

Woohoo.. able to charge my handphone on the plane.. Didn't need to bring my heavy powerbank. 

It charges!

Movies for longer flights. Watched a full show of The Croods. 

Movies

TV shows for short flights. Manage to watch a full round of Just for laughs. 

TV Shows

The screens were touch screens which made me wonder if they attached tablets to the back of the seats hehe..

Ok now, here's the catch. Headphones are not provided but they are sold on board for RM15 per set. So remember to bring your own headphones the next time you take Malindo Air. 

Food

The light refreshments was a bottle of water and a piece of fruit cake. 

Mineral water and fruitcake

If your still hungry after that, its possible to pay RM12 for a main meal or around RM5-6 for snacks. 

The Menu

Snacks and Drinks

Main Meals

I didn't order any meals on board, as I wasn't very hungry. As the cart moved closer to my seat, I was very tempted to buy one, it smelt pretty good. 

Safety

My only gripe is the lack of safety concerns by the stewardess. During landing, all passengers were required to straighten their seats. The person in front of me had theirs inclined almost all the way down. One stewardess came to do the check, looking left and right, strange that they would miss this. Worse yet was there were another two stewardess later who came to do the checks and didn't even notice it. 

Summary

Besides the safety concerns, I'd say that Malindo Air is definitely worth the money if you get the discounted prices. It can get fairly expensive if its selling at its normal price. 

Malaysia Airlines had better get their act together, if Malindo Air keeps this up, there wouldn't be any reason to take Malaysia Airlines anymore. Larger legroom, in-flight entertainment

Brussels Beer Cafe Jaya One Review

Finally decided to try the set lunch at Brussels Beer cafe at Jaya One.
The set lunches come with a drink and access to the buffet salad bar.

Perfect view of the salad bar

The set lunch is well worth with the salad bar included. I loved the potato salad and the herb flavored croutons.

The mashed potato was hard and chewy, could have been old or overmashed. The bratwurst was nice though when combined with the mash and gravy.

Farmer Bratwurst RM15 set lunch

This bacon & egg panini set came with hand cut fries. I rarely see that nowadays especially at this price.

Bacon & Egg Panini RM12.80

Overall great value for a sunday lunch, great service and would definitely pay another visit. Will need to keep track of their menu as it rotates 4 set lunch menus every week.

Goku Raku Ramen Midvalley Review

This is my second visit to Goku Raku Ramen after over a year. From what I remembered, they have great tonkotsu ramen.

Ordering is a little bit tricky, when ordering ramen, its not just point at the picture and that what you get..
When you place an order, you have a choice of a Tonkotsu ramen or the Tokyo ramen.

Choose main soup:
Tonkotsu = pork base
Tokyo = seafood base

Choose sub-soup base:
Original, shoyu or miso

Choose size:
Small: 1 ball of noodle
Medium: 1.5 balls of noodles
Large: 2 balls of noodles
Price of medium and large is the same. 

Choose noodle type:
Thin or flat

That completes the ordering.

I ordered the Super Charsiu Tonkotsu Ramen with Original Tonkotsu soup.

Super charsiu tonkotsu ramen RM25.90

Can you see the creaminess of the soup?

The gyoza came later.. I ordered this because of how it looked in the menu. Its kinda interesting that they have a giant piece of crispy flour attached to the gyoza.

Gyoza (small) RM8.90

Too bad the gyoza was tasteless.. I'm not sure if it was meant to be like that. Dipping it in vinegar made it taste better. Won't be ordering that anymore.

Back to my ramen.. The soup was full of volume. This is probably cause they boil their stock for very long hours. The charsiu was so tender that it started to melt as I lift it up with my chopsticks. It tasted absolutely heavenly!

Super Charsiu ramen 20 minutes later..

The large really has a lot of noodles, I think I would get the regular next time. It is the same price as large, I guess I wouldn't mind having more soup hehe.. Simply delicious!

Coconut House Jaya One Review

Dropped by Jaya one to have my glasses adjusted. After settling that, went to look for a place for lunch. Almost settled for set lunch at Brussels Beer Cafe, but instead found a new outlet (to me anyway) called Coconut House.

Surprisingly, regardless of their name, they serve western and mainly italian food. Their specialty, I was told are the wood fired pizza's. I did see lots of blocks of wood by an oven at the back.

Wood fired oven at the back

Looks like they serve set lunches here on weekends. Set lunches are basically a selection of mains plus a drink.

Set Lunch

 We ordered the Honey lemon drink with our set lunches. They seemed to have left out the lemon in the drink. It was way more lemon than honey (if any).

Honey lemon drink

 My dish was the first to come. The roasted italian sausage which is a chef's recommendation (I think 70% of the menu are chef recommended). I was probably expecting something at german restaurants where they serve sausage and a side of mash hehe.. Well over here they serve it with a piece of focaccia.  The sausages were topped with a tomato based sauce and what do i see? bacon? Yuuumm....
Well here goes, tear of a bit of bread top it with a little sausage, bacon and sauce.. wow! I loved the flavors that were reacting in my mouth, herbs and spice from the sausage, slight sweet and sour from the sauce and the silky smooth bacon melting in my mouth.. drool.. :p
Safe to say, I loved this dish.

Roasted italian sausage set RM13.90

Closeup of the italian sausage and bacon...

 This next dish was the focaccia dish (not chef recommended). Its basically some focaccia bread with couple slices of bacon and salad consisting of lettuce, onions, mango and rocket leaves (seems they top most of their dishes with this). It was a nice dish, only complaint would be the portion. But then again, you get what you pay for. The bacon just tastes so good that a couple of slices just isn't enough hehe..

Focaccia sandwich set RM9.90

The set lunches are great if your not looking to gorge yourself in food. Its a nice light meal and big eaters would definitely need to order a couple of sides or maybe try their specialty, the wood fired pizza's. I'd probably give them another visit put their specialties to the test.

Bluetooth Wireless Serial Port

Thinking of buying a bluetooth wireless serial port for my arduino so I can control my arduino with my Galaxy Note :) Seems the cheapest place to buy it is via DealExtreme.

Cheap Breakfast or Lunch in Brisbane CBD!

There's a great deal going on for those working in Brisbane CBD at the moment!

From $5 for a gourmet wrap or roll with a cup of jumbo coffee.

Grab a cheap breakfast or lunch via groupon below:
Get deals on the best restaurants in your city for up to 70% off!

Simcity is available for pre-order!!

Its almost here SimCity is now available for pre-order on Amazon! I can't wait! Didn't get a chance to try it out during the beta trials but the Youtube posts look really exciting.

New formless system for passport renewal and application

There's a new formless implemented just today that seems to actually be slower.

When I came there were 45 people in front of me and the numbers were moving about 10 numbers every 20minutes..

The staff mentioned that there is a new system implemented today and therefore making things even slower.

First you need to show your passport and two passport sized photos and original IC in order to get a number.

Good news if your over 60 you get a special lane. My mum only had 2 people in front of her whereas I had 45.

Anyway, after collecting your number, sit and wait for a while till it gets called. Once it's called someone will enter your details into the system and ask your to do a thumb print scan. Since the system is new. We were asked to do a traditional thumb print on a paper form.

After that you have to sit and wait again.. This time to pay for your passport. After payment then only the 1hour passport processing time starts..

Well I'm not impressed with the new system as it seems to have slowed things down compared to the self service kiosk 4yrs ago.

Chilli's at MyDeal.com.my!!

MyDeal is having a promo on Chilli's and its delivered!!!


Enjoy the best Restaurants in Your City at 90% off!

Lazada purchase experience

I decided to try online shopping for large items a few days back (19/01/2013) and purchased an oven through lazada.

Only after that I started doing more research and it seems that lazada has a lot of customer service and order fulfillment issues. There are so many complaints on blogs and facebook about them. Oh boy.. I hope I didn't make a wrong decision about them.

Particularly interesting was a blogger who ordered an IPod and didn't get it till after 73 days. Check it out here.

As of day 3 the status has been stuck as Processing even though the item was already paid. I thought it would be in Paid, not shipped state. Their product page stated that the item would be delivered within 4-6 working days.

Fingers crossed!

Update 21/01/2013: Lazada sent an email requesting for a picture of the credit card for verification purposes. A couple of hours after that then the status was updated to Paid, not shipped:

Update 25/01/2013: Lazada updated their status to Shipped! but by that time its Friday night. Next Monday is a holiday.. haiz.. means gonna get it on Tuesday.. so long.. I just hope their delivery service works on Saturday hehe..

Update 26/01/2013: Got a call from security saying a courier is here!! Yay!!! They do work on Saturdays hehe.. Found out they use GDex as their courier service. Well the box was pre-opened (because i noticed it was resealed), I'm guessing by lazada because there was an lazada invoice in it. Hopefully they were checking whether the item works?

Lazada had promised on their website a delivery deadline of between 4-6 days. I received the item in 4.5 days (considering saturday is half day work hehe..). So I would say they fulfilled their delivery promise there.

Overall Experience: 

Seeing so many complaints on lazada I was very worried about whether they would deliver the item on time or what would happen if the purchased item had a fault in it. The whole experience honestly did make me lose a little sleep.

Despite all the problems reported in blogs and forums on order fulfillment issues, poor customer service and poor after sales service. At this point in time, I'm just relieved that I managed to receive the product and hopefully I do not experience any problems with the product and need to deal with the after sales.

My advice, if ordering from lazada, be prepared for some issues along the way as I believe they have only been operating for less than a year (as of this post) and I guess they still need time to work out the kinks in their system and customer service training.

I would still order from lazada but I would be really cautious when ordering again. Best of luck if you do  decide to order anything from them :)

Dubu Dubu Midvalley Review

Heard good things about Dubu Dubu korean restaurant. Everytime we went there for lunch it would always be full. So this time we had an early lunch so we could secure a seat.

Place was quite empty at 11am

I had a hot barley tea which tasted like brown rice tea. Imagine soaking brown rice in water for a while and drinking that. This was refillable.

Wife had the citrus tea which had a sweet and sour flavour. The bottom looks like citrus skin which was mostly sweet and mildly bitter (in a good sense). This was nice, I should have ordered this.

Citrus tea

The Toboki was not very good, it tastes much better at Food Garden, a food court located at The Gardens mall. Found the rice cakes were too soft till a mushy like texture but yet very chewy. The sauce was nothing to shout about, spicy, sweet and watery.

Toboki

Can't say much about the side dishes they gave, pickled vege, kimchi, bean sprouts, kosong soup. Not worth the extra ringgit for the set. However, I quite liked the Dolsot Bibimbap. The presentation wasn't really that appealing, the colors were dull but after mixing it all up, it tasted quite good. Probably the best bibimbap i've ever had (I've only had bibimbap at maybe 3 other places).

Dolsot bibimbap

Bulgogi was extremely generous with onions, not sure if bulgogi is suppose to be that way. Anyway, the beef was not carmalised enough, we are normally use to beef being browned so they have a slight crispyness to it.

Bulgogi rice

Won't be returning too soon, maybe just to try the Korean spicy wings set which is quite raved about at goodyfoodies. I would rather head to my favourite korean place at Amcorp Mall.

Kungfu Paradise Paradigm Mall Review

Went to Paradigm Mall for lunch today and ended up in Kungfu Paradise. They have several set lunches (or power lunches as they call it) during weekdays. Basically its one of the following:

• Rice sets from RM10.90++
• Noodle sets at RM9.90++
• Burger(or they call it bumger, no idea why) sets from RM9.50++

Rice sets

Noodle and bumger sets

Their menus are very 'kungfu' themed.

Rice warriors anyone?

If you don't mind ordering instant noodles, at least you know they are using Nissin brand hehe..

Nissin Noodle Power!

I had the bumger set.. why did they name it like that? It doesn't even sound appetising. Anyway, I chose to have the mashed potatoes instead of french fries. Never had kungfu mashed potatoes, who better to mash potatoes than a martial arts expert. Well the mash was chewy, it was probably over mixed. The gravy was very nice though. 

Kungfu Bumger Set

What can I say.. Its probably the best bumger I ever had.. and also the only bumger I ever had :p To be fair, lets compare it to burgers..  If I were to compare a bumger to burgers I've eaten, this would probably be on the average. I'd probably order this again if that was all they served, but it wouldn't be anywhere on the top of my list. 

So thats what a bumger looks like

The rice sets came with a lemongrass drink, soup, a choice of fried sotong balls or wantons. I took a sip of the lemongrass juice and didn't really like the taste. The lemongrass had a strong rough like taste that didn't seem to compliment well with the tea (I think there was tea in it) that it was mixed in.

Iced Lemongrass Juice

Soup was a typical kosong soup, if your lucky you might get some chunks of vegetables in it. 

Kosong soup

Yummy, can't go wrong when u deep fry stuff hehe..

Fried squid balls and wantons

The sweet and sour chicken was the best item among what we all chose. I stole a bit of this and it was crispy on the outside yet tender on the inside, just what sweet and sour dishes are suppose to be. 

Sweet and sour chicken rice with lava egg

Yang Chow Fried rice came out very yellow as if it was coated with kunyit or curry powder. Colleague said it didn't taste anything like that though and it sucks. Well sometimes food tastes as bad as it looks. 

Yang Chow fried rice

Service was quite efficient and they cleared the plates almost immediately after you finished your meal. This could be cause it was kinda empty during a weekday lunch. 

The set lunches weren't all great but Kungfu Paradise has a huge range of items on their ala-carte menu to try, so I would be back for more to try their other dishes.