~45 mins up 60 floors of KOMTAR Tower, Penang

I am really very tired today. It took me approximately 45 mins to run 2 km around Komtar tower, then climb the stairs up straight to the 60th floor of Komtar Tower.

Woke up at close to 6am. Left home for Komtar at about 6.30am after a glass of soy milk and a banana. Then arriving at Komtar, I have got to squeeze in tot he secretariat counter to redeem my t-shirt, my participant number, 2353 and my very lucky, lucky draw voucher...0704.

2353...not sure if I was the 28th or 29th place :D

My run started at about 8am. It was a long wait, for the I was in the 2nd flag off catagories...women open... :S Before I even started running, I was already very tired for the long stand and the place was very crowded and packed up...very stuffy and everyone was sweating.

So we were flagged off at the Komtar Foyer at Lebuh Tek Soon. Continued into Penang Road, Jalan Dr Lim Chwee Leong, Lebuh Carnavon, Jalan Magazine and back into Penang Road before we started our climb up at the staircase beside Pacific Supermarket along Jalan Dr Lim Chwee Leong.

It was very exhausting to take the stairway. Into half of the way, i have to switch gear to continue my struggle up....every 3 steps I took, I would stop for few seconds for rest...

Was glad that I was able to make it to the 6oth floor and according to my friend, we were still able to make it into the first 30 placing of our category.... bravo! We finished at about 8.45 am...so all in the whole journey took us 45 minutes only...

It took us so long to reach the 60th floor but it was split seconds, we were back on the ground...oups...I mean 5th floor where the podium was. We quickly headed to the drinks stall...glurped in 2 cups of sunquick and 2 cups of 100 plus within second....really thristy!

After resting for a while, we waited patiently in the Q for foot massage...really nice...managed to relax my muscles...

Poh Doo...still can V...

Then it was the long waiting lucky draw session...my 0704 won me the 10th price...a buffet lunch for 2 in Parkroyal Penang and a Rm100 voucher from the Priorities Fitness Center.

my lucky draw price...couldn't remember when was the last time I actually win in a draw

This was really a great experience...another event in my sporty days...

my certificate of participation...received another certificate of completion too

An Eat Out Week..Fattening

This was my first whole eat out week since I was back in Penang.

Monday, I was in Hongkie Kopitiam and Old Town Cafe with my GG gals...

Tuesday, I went out for lunch with PD, SL and MY at Bukit Jambul flat pan mee stall...cheap and satisfying compared to our money sucking cafe.

Wednesday, out for lunch with VTSM gals. I ate a Kimchi ramen at 长春馆, Chou Shun Kan.

Thursday, went out with PD and SL again. We were all bored of the food served in cafe. So we thought of driving down to town for a little get away in the mid of the day. So we visited the Salsa Restaurant next to Continental Hotel at the junction of Upper Penang Road and Jalan Sultan Ahmad Shah...conducive environment...each table comes with a small push buttons device, you can easily call for bill or waiter...thumbs up!

D entrance to Salsa Restaurant

nice interior...

ding-dong...waiter will leave you for some private time...you can page them if you need any assistance

We ordered 3 sets lunch. Each set lunch came with 1 main course, 1 soup with bread or 1 salad, 1 drink and 1 serving of desserts...and it was only RM13.50++ each.

planning another trip there for the double jumbo chicken sausage

For appetizer, we all have pumpkin soup served with butter and bun. I love the pumpkin soup. It wasn't too sweet and less thick with less flour and with mild butter aroma.

yummy pumpkin soup

Didn't feel like eating meat today. So for my main course, I have vegetarian fettuccine. The fettuccine was served in a very big portion. Fettucini was cooked till just nice and sir fried with lots of vegetable in tomato sauce. This was surely good enough for a vegetarian dish.

my vegetarian fettuccine

PD has a grilled chicken breast while SL has a seafood spaghetti. The chicken breast meat was tender and juicy. It was good for PD's liking. Seafood spaghetti with very generous serving portion...lots of seafood :D

grilled chicken breast and seafood pasta...all very big portion

For dessert, we got a tapas...or rather 3 mini desserts. They came in a nice rectangular serving plate with 3 different section. There's a scope of smooth vanilla ice cream, a moistless cheese cake and few cuts of fruits which were not fresh.

Overall the food was good...great main course and appetizer. Sadly the desserts were below average. Anyway what can one complain considering the service and the portion of the food with the price.

Friday, we have our Q1 team building buffet lunch at G-Cafe, G-Hotel. There were 32 of us. There wasn't many customers there. We have got almost the whole restaurant to us.

The interior and exterior of the cafe was nice and calming...no crowd...VTSMers ruled!

VTSM gals... :D

simple and nice cutlery

The food presentation...good...big portion and with many decorations items in between. However the food wasn't warm enough. I wasn't sure if it was due to the chilling air conditioner in the restaurant or the malfunction food heater.

clean and nice food presentation

The food... :-( ...rather disappointing. I started my course with salads. The cold tossed jellyfish was awful...extremely salty. It was believe eating jellyfish can help to lower ones blood pressure but hell no for this case. The chicken salad was good. Other salads were so so.

my salad...jelly fish yucks!

Then I continued on with soup. There were 2 soups choices available. Asparagus cream soup and chicken & herb clear soup. I chose the cream soup...and there, another disappointment! Too much butter in the soup. The aroma of butter covered the other ingredient...not even any hint of asparagus besides the few words on the label... :S ...oh I got another small bun and unsalted butter to go with it and needless to say I could not finished them since the soup already failed.

buttered soup!

Finally into the main dishes. My colleague started of on main courses before me and nothing seem remarkably good according to them. However I proceed to get a little of each...a little of each :

vegetable lasagna(over baked cheese topping...making it hard and difficult to serve and eat) seafood pasta (pasta too soggy)mussel northern curry (overcooked mussel...taste so so...no longer has the mussel sweetness), fried prawn with chili sauce (frozen prawn :S ... taste ok), prawn curry (same as the previous prawn dish...frozen prawn but tasted worse) beef stew (extremely hard)stew mushroom@roaster garlic with kailan sauce (i wonder if the got the name right..turn out to be like a soup) battered fish (my col first suggest that it was chicken...haha)chicken kapitan (best of all....but still too creamy and not spicy enough...guess to cater to foreign guess)

Moving on....proceeded with dessert...best were the mango pudding and apple crumble pie. Averagely, desserts served were too sweet...cakes were way below my expectation...however the presentation was good!

my dessert...too sweet...coffee needed to go with them

nice food presentation...especially desserts...all so tempting but not all taste good

the desserts corner

ice-cream & ice kacang corner...didn't try them as I was very full...too much of sweet desserts

Saturday...drove about 50km south to Serdang Kedah. I was on a food trip to Serdang with my fellow CCCers. We were there to feast the famous fried porridge...yes...you were right, we were there for fried porridge, 炒粥 at the Fong Ting Siew Restaurant...

CCCers and Motorolians...missing in photo is Hooi Fang...thanks her for the meal!

the signature dish...炒粥

The fried porridge was good...rich and thick with generous prawns, dried prawns and dried oyster. I love the tomyam (strong lemon grass aroma...hot, spicy and sweet!), stew pork (yummy with yam...love the cinnamon spice aroma) and 3 flavoured fish (fish deep fried till golden brown and crunchy, served with mango kerabu, cili padi and sweet sauce) too.

3 flavoured fish

spicy tomyam

must eat a little meat and a little yam in every bite

Sunday, I thought my stomach would get a rest but no. My sister wanted to dine out. Since she was always busy at most weekdays and didn't to get proper food, so I decided to go ahead to eat out with her. We went to the Mummy Wang at Lebuh Carnavon. Appreciation set in for RM8.90...one main dish (rice or noodle), 1 jelly dessert, 1 drink, free flow of soup (available on weekdays only) and their special introductory side dish, a golden ball, 金球. The 金球 was crispy noodle like made into a round ball and sprinkled with their plum and chilli powder. Taste a little like my childhood snack, Mimi but much crunchy and sweet. Overall the food was ok there.

So this was how I fed myself over a week. And due to all these consumptions, I have to have longer workout sessions in the gym...anyway I have set very good record...5.85km within 40mins jog and 5 mins walk. :P

26th April - Sony Warehouse Sale & Penang Street Market

Woke up early today despite sleeping late yesterday or rather today technically. Has got to beat others to get to the Sony Warehouse Sale. My sis and I arrived at Han Jiang school at close to 10am. Waited patiently in my car while having bites of my Sausage McMuffin...

We entered the crowded hall at about 10.05am. It was already very crowded and many items on display has been labeled sold out even before we learn the specs...scary! Buying power was still so high despite the economic turbulence.

Finally I ended up empty handed as I was not sure of what exactly I was looking for or how much I was willing to pay for the outdated new gadgets...

DSLR?...price is lower than the market but still very expensive, not willing to fork out over 1.5k for camera...

HandyCam?...not really into video, so no...

CyberShot?...there were already Canon G10, Panasonic Lumix FX7 and Sony CyberShot DSC-W100 at home...don't even need to pay a single cent to use them
Other gadgets...either I was not fancy of them or they were far from my affordability :-(

So we left after a round in the hall.

Next we went to the Lorong Kulit. I have been there once when I was very young but have heard a lot about it recently from my uncle. He claimed that there were lots of stalls selling old coins. So I wanted to try my luck to dig some treasures here.

However we were a little disappointed to learn about the money sucking sellers there...a commemorative coins of RM1 would cost me RM12...darn...it would cost me not more than RM10 on ebay and lelong...if I am lucky enough I could easily get a deal under RM5...but this was still a good trip to look around...lots of things sold here were really unexpected...eye opening!

not sure if this uncle is trying to sell these old torn shoes...anyway he was dozing off at most of the time.

wondering who would buy these pipe...

lelong! lelong! ...u can get all sorts of things here...more than u could imagine...old steering wheel, kerosene lamp and etc

Then we drove to the Upper Penang Road to catch the monthly Penang Street Market. My first time in the market...many masterpieces of local artistes were exhibited and on sale here...there were also live performances by local musicians...a recommended spot for cultural lovers and foreign tourists....and remember to check out the stall which sells painting made of beans and nuts...very impressive!

this is one of the stall put up by a community service home...can help others when u buy and sell...good deed!

egg basket and necklaces...all made in Penang...all are unique master pieces of the artist.

a great place for young and old...

Finally we ended our trip with Teow Chew Cendol, asam laksa and char kuey teow at Penang Road....yummy!

my yummy Cendol!

Then in the evening, my sis and I went shopping at Queen's Bay Mall...bought 2 pairs of shoes at Vincci...hooray...long time no new shoes ready...satisfy my crave for coffee at my favourite hangout place, the Coffee Bean :D

Have dinner at Canton-i. Rather disappointing with their signature dish, wanton noodle...it tasted better in Hong Kong...more pork and less crunchy prawns filling here. For dessert, I ordered my favourite dessert when I was in Hong Kong, a dessert that had almost caused me to miss my flight...the Mango Pomelo dessert or 楊枝甘露 by 許流山...However I was dissapointed with what Canton-i could provide. The pomelo was bitter and 楊枝甘露 which came without mango sorbet/ice-cream and without mango pudding..merely mango puree plus bitter pomelo. Overall experience in Canton-i was nothing close to Hong Kong...unlike claimed by many others.

wanton noodle soup...tasted not as good as it looked...noodle was fine enough, soup was clear and sweet enough but the essence of this, the wanton was so so.

canton-i version of 楊枝甘露...NO GOOD!

my blooming tea

So this was just another great Sunday of mine in Penang...I love Penang!

*sorry...this post took me ages to complete.