KUKaki

Brief visit to Sydney, Australia

flush — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 06:19:18 +0000

Jumped on a short 2 day workshop for a major customer here. The flight time for the trip is equal to the time in town.

Weather is amazingly warm and wonderful. Sydney is very walkable (at least, the downtown area).

Managed to creep up to Chinatown in a roundabout way, found this restaurant called Mamak. This definitely warranted a lunch stop. It didn’t disappoint, wonderful food, if a bit expensive. Come to think of it, everything is expensive here. A regular can of soda cost AUD$3.20 ?! Anyways, tried the curry lamb, sambal shrimp, fried rice and a regular roti canai. All good stuff. Like the name implies, the place focuses only on a limited range of Malaysian food – specifically, selections of the more popular mamak-style food. Great business decision, serve only a few things but cook them well. Was told that this was the best Malaysian restaurant in town, what luck!!

Baby furniture

flush — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 21:45:47 +0000

Have had several discussions regarding all the baby “stuff” that needs to be purchased. Am amazed at how everything is built to look good but assembled cheaply (won’t last long).

This Delta dresser I just assembled, was quite impressive when assembled. However, the drawer bottoms are simple slide in boards (like IKEA furniture), as is the back of the dresser.

Looks like if you want something to last and built well, you’ll need to spend the few hundred bucks.

CES, Las Vegas

flush — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 06:28:59 +0000

Wahoo, Vegas and CES, fun times, right? Wrong. Came down with a cold earlier in the week so I sounded pretty bad. And caught a bout of food poisoning from one of the restaurants in the MGM Grand, that pretty much knocked me out of commission for 2 days, so much for enjoying Vegas.

Anyways, was not happy with the whole situation and it impacted my work significantly. ’nuff said.

Lexus Hybrid SUV

flush — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 06:31:59 +0000

Convinced the wife to try out a 2006 Lexus 400h (the hybrid SUV). Drove smooth, had decent mileage for its size. And it was priced lower than a new Honda CR-V that we were originally thinking about. Made this deal easier to swallow.

Have to like Lexus quality – everything was nice and comfortable. RX design is spacious, that trunk can hold plenty of cargo and still seat 5 comfortably.

A couple things however, changed the air filter, cabin air filter right off the bat, they were filthy, as expected. As this was a hybrid, there’s more wear and tear on the normal car battery, so had to replace that fairly quickly as well (within the month) – Costco has cheap car batteries with 3 yr guarantees, only $70 to replace.

Chisinau, Moldova

flush — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 21:38:28 +0000

This is one of the smallest, less affluent countries I’ve been to but it looks like any other eastern european locale. I do like observing the old Communist-era buildings vs newer construction in the past couple decades.

The city is small enough not to have any major hotel chain present, which leaves you with the only option for a 4-star establishment.

Again, the weather sucks in winter – snow, snow and more snow. So from what I could tell, Chisinau is white and slushy at times. Suffice to say, too busy again to explore the surroundings.