Tandoori Subway

Yes Malaysia's subway restaurant has its first ever special menu. And it's brilliant. The Chicken Tandoori obviously borrows cuisine from our Indian brethren. And because it's already heavily spiced, the sauce combination required is minimal. Alas, a strong flavour Malaysians rarely get from Subway. For the sauce, try mayonnaise, sweet onion sauce and if you really want another, barbecue sauce.

Petite Millie

There's a first time for everything. So this is my first food blog. Located at 1 Utama, this unassuming French restaurant serves gratifying French and Italian fare. We had a a smorgasbord of entrees, main dishes and desserts to try out, so much so, that we Asianized the eating of French food, breaking whatever related taboos.

To be explicit, we had the salad, Luv a Duck Tartine, Fish Pie, Chicken Aglio Olio Spaghetti, Clam Spaghetti  Mille Crepe and Bread Butter Pudding. My favourite would be the Duck Tartine and the Strawberry Mille Crepe.

The Duck Tartine is the perfect combination of a done just right duck slices, a lightly dressed salad and a cream buttered bread. It is not to be missed.

The strawberry cream mille crepe is served ala mode. The strawberry cream is all natural and delicately made. I'd recommend this melt-in-mouth dessert to finish off your meal.

Toastmasters - Toasting Each Other

Subra the speaker, like a magician, transfixed us with a matchbox which he held high. He told us to watch. Removing a match from inside, he then struck it against the side of the box. The match lit aflame, but he continued to let the fire swallow the wood till it reached his fingertips. With a puff, he snuffed it out; a trail of white fumes decorate the air.

He coached us, “All your speeches must be like a match.” – A fiery beginning, a steady burn, and a lingering finish. I’ve heard of the Toastmasters before, and their public speaking prowess but this was my first encounter with this organization. I was enrolled in Toastmasters Speechcraft training course along with the rest of my colleagues.

Speechcraft is a program where the fundamentals of public speaking are introduced to non-members in an atmosphere of a Toastmasters club meeting. Speechcraft is therefore under the guise of a public speaking seminar, when it really is a recruiting platform. My company was interested in building confidence among some employees and fostering overall communication skills. Hiring the Toastmasters is an interesting albeit indirect approach towards that end.

So, through a slightly misdirected company initiative, Speechcraft let me into some of their secret rituals. Meetings are held regularly. Each club has around 40 members plus or minus 20. They wear full suits and tie to all their engagements. They have worldwide annual speech competitions, many of them quite impressive.

In meetings, they have impromptu speech exercises called Table Topics. A random topic is revealed to the terrified speaker only seconds before he or she is supposed to present. He has to organize his thoughts on the spot, just like a politician would.

Besides that, Toastmasters present speeches in front of each other. Their speeches will be evaluated by a fellow toastmaster or two. Their evaluations highlight what they did right, while suggesting a few points to improve on. One good thing is they would never blatantly disparage the speaker.

Because of their overly forgiving and self-praising nature, Toastmasters rarely shun a prospective new member. Therefore, they are not an elite club as I envisioned them to be. Instead, judging from the speakers that presented topics in Speechcraft, I deduce that they can range from the remarkable, awe-inspiring and charismatic to the god-awful, please-shut-your-face and please-use-half-a-brain nitwits.

The Toastmasters may not pique my interest at this point of time. Maybe I’ll join them if my career edges me in that direction. Nevertheless, the best thing I can take from them is the analogy of the matchstick, that every article must have an explosive start, an enduring body and an unforgettable end. It probably means I have to polish up my endings with ones you can’t forget, like a smoke after the flame.

Windows 8 - Another Vista

Oh no, I fear Microsoft has birthed another Vista. It’s none other than Windows 7’s successor, Windows 8. How could Microsoft let history repeat itself again? It all started when tablet computers become all the rage, and Microsoft with its juggernaut desktop OS is trailing Apple’s IOS and Google’s Android as the platform of choice for the hottest gadgets in the marketplace. Consequently, Microsoft inspiringly decided to create an OS from the ground up which can support both desktops and tablets. If you don’t know, the user interface for desktops which rely heavily on mouse input while tablets rely more on finger input or stylus pen. Hence the user experience for each device is correspondingly different.

Using the same OS for both devices is fine. You get to reuse a lot of overlapping code, saving cost overall. (Apple decided to keep its phone/tablet OS separate from its desktop OS for now, by the way). However, it’s conceptualization of the interface is disastrously erred.

The Metro UI or Modern UI is comparable to Android and IOS in nature. It has a pretty different aesthetic and operation, so it really depend on the individual if it suits them. For a tablet PC, you can go Metro all the way, and it’ll be perfect. They have special features if you peel the screen from any of the four corners too.

However Windows 8 has a desktop mode which we are familiar with. The problem is the desktop mode is easily accessible from the Metro UI start page (that multi coloured wall of blocks). Herein lies the problem, the Metro UI is meant for touch input, while the desktop is for a mouse input. For a mouse to drag the start screen to flip between pages is tiring, since the motion is almost from the far left to far right. And with the popularity of large screens, it’s not practical. And as for the Start button we are so accustomed to in previous Windows versions, it’s gone, replaced with that whole Metro UI start page.

That’s a lot of relearning to do, especially if you want to work on Windows 8 the way you use Windows 7. That’s fine, however, if the new way of doing things makes it more of a hassle, then that would be wrong. Unfortunately, I did find it a greater hassle.

In Windows 8, programs are duplicated, or doubled to serve both desktop mode and metro. For example there are two media players, one is your ordinary familiar media player, and the other is one that is similar to the Windows mobile’s media player, full screen and all. Both programs are independent of each other and even have their own codecs, in fact both can play different media at the same time. There is no syncing whatsoever.

My last gripe is about aesthetics. Design philosophies teach that your design must be different, must stand out. And Windows 8 does. However, the Metro style features monochromatic styling without any colour gradient or transparencies. Each program is assigned one drab colour and is assigned an uninspiring tile on the Start Page. Different Yes, Boring Yes, Ugly Yes. What happen to cool icons? I missed Windows 7.

Tablet modes are great when you using a tablet. Desktop mode is also fine when you are at your desk. Unless your device is the Asus Transformer laptop series, the way Windows 8 forces the user to switch between the modes is outright impractical. Alas, Windows 8 is a software which can’t decide what it wants to be, an OS for touch based tablets, or an OS for mouse based desktops, so it settled on a hybrid of sorts, with a notable detriment to desktop users.

But they can fix it. There are some devices that can benefit from this dual modes, like a PC that’s hooked up to be a media center in the living room, or those touch based all-in-one PCs that gets displayed at store fronts. So, in my opinion, the decision is clear, the two modes should be available as the click of a switch. And when you’re in one mode, you should stay in it. You shouldn’t be allowed switch arbitrarily. And bring back the Start button!

Windows Vista may have failed because of its inefficiency, but Windows 8 fails because of a lack of conceptualization. Windows 7, we’re going to get cozier with one another. Will it beat Windows XP’s record?

Resident Evil: Retribution

Guilty. I admit not remembering the first three movies of this franchise. It’s too long ago and I’m too lazy to rewatch. I only really remember the Afterlife. While that movie seemed like a stylistic movie-length video game cutscene, Resident Evil 5 is kind of the opposite.

Retribution made me feel like I was actually playing the game itself, complete with badly acted cutscenes. Yes, the acting was cheesy and robotic, but if the aim was to recreate the gameplay feel, they succeeded exceptionally well.

Nevertheless, if you like the Resident Evil movies, you can’t miss this one. Apparently Retribution is setup as the penultimate movie to the series. Can’t wait for the next one. Milla is still hot though.

6/10

Why Does Malaysia Have 2 National Days?

 

For 52 years since 1957, Malaysia celebrates its national day on the 31st of August. It commemorates the day when the Federation of Malaya (West Malaysia) was granted independence from the British. It is usually known as Hari Merdeka or Independence Day.

Six years later on September 16 1963, after much political wrangling, the states of Singapore, Sarawak and Sabah agreed to join Malaya to form Malaysia (the additional ‘si’ in honour of SIngapore). Singapore was the crown jewel, while sadly economically backward Sabah and Sarawak were added just to balance the racial composition. It was envisioned to be a strong united country that comprised of former British colonies.

Even Brunei was encouraged to join Malaysia by the British. However Brunei’s Sultan repeated refusal to join led to a very late independence in 1984. On the other hand, Singapore was kicked out of the Federation in 1965 due to outstanding social and political issues.

For the Malayans, or West Malaysians, or Peninsular Malaysians, August 31 1957 holds greater significance as all the struggles for independence culminated on that date. For Sabah and Sarawak, or East Malaysia, that date has little significance; it certainly does not commemorate their own state’s independence. Instead September 16 1963 was more important as shortly after they gained individual state independence, they joined Malaysia.

The reason why Aug 31 is the sole national day for so many decades is because the Peninsular Malaysians greatly outnumber those of the East, and they dominate the economic and political scene of the country as a whole. East Malaysia forms 61% of Malaysia’s landmass, but just under 20% of the population and only 15% of the country total GDP.

In 2009, the prime minister declared that the Sept 15 be made a federal public holiday known as Malaysia Day. The obvious objective is to garner more East Malaysians votes for the next general elections or to reward them for sticking to the ruling coalition during the 2008 elections. It is regretful that Malaysia Day is only rightfully recognized because of a political maneuver.

It is also regretful celebrations for Malaysia Day are largely confined to the minds and hearts of East Malaysians, when rightfully it should supersede Hari Merdeka as the National Day for the whole Malaysia. We should not forget that Malaysia did not even exist before Sabah and Sarawak’s accession to Malaysia.

Does Malaysia need two national days? Malaysia’s total number of public holidays are among the most numerous in the world. One solution I can think of is to alternate the national day, meaning that one year, Aug 31 will be the public holiday, while the next, Malaysia Day is made the sole national day public holiday. Would that make everybody happy?

The Inequality of the Paralympics Games

London 2012 delivered a fantastic Paralympics games, probably outdoing the previous also fantastic Beijing Paralympics. The reality remains however, that despite what the Paralympics committees say about viewership, disabled sport is not what people want to watch lounging in their living rooms or cheer on at the local ‘mamak’ shops. If someone even glances at a newspaper article on the Paralympics, that is already considered a win.

The only people that would watch it are the host country citizens, who have been fed with non-stop marketing, the disabled themselves, more sympathetic Western nations, and gold hungry countries who actually have a chance to win (China).

Actually I applaud the Brits for filling the stadiums to the brim. But in the rest of the world, less commendable human instincts prevail; able bodied people just feel uncomfortable watching disfigured and less able people competing in sports. Perhaps a reflection of a fear for their own unwritten fate, mortality.

How uncomfortable is it? I was watching a 100m S1 freestyle race. S1 represents the highest degree of disability, many taking part have cerebral palsy, one usable limb and other motion restrictive diseases. Some swimmers were in wheelchairs, and their able bodied helpers just plonked them into the water. My immediate thoughts were: Your trainer just dumped you like garbage from your wheelchair! He’s not swimming, he’s just quivering in the water. OMG he’s going to drown! Oh wow how brave! Should they even be in the pool? It’s the pinnacle of human perseverance. So many conflicting thoughts swirling in my mind.

The Paralympics got me thinking about the sport and life itself. And how everything in spite of how equal it is in design, really isn’t equal in real life. The Paralympics tries to level the playing field by introducing a roster of categories. But science still hasn’t caught up. Are single below the knee amputees faster than double below the knee amputees? Is your paralyzed right hand causing more drag in the water than someone without a hand? Arbitrary allocation into categories is no exact science.

If you contemplate on such things as equality between contestants, it would serve you better if you quit now. Life is invariably unfair. The Paralympics simply casts that aspect of life under the magnifying glass. The difference is that those disparities between contestants are more visually assessable in the Paralympics. All disabled men (and women) were created unequal, as are able bodied men.

So while the Olympics has a narrow minded view, the celebration of the greatest, fastest and the highest (but nowadays it’s a commercial driven gala), what then is the Paralympics all about? Their mission statement is ‘to enable Paralympic athletes to achieve sporting excellence and inspire and excite the world’. It is not to be confused with the Special Olympics where participation alone is a cause for celebration. The founder of the games aimed to create an elite sporting competition for people with disabilities.

I completely see the rationale for a disabled person. If I were incapacitated physically, excelling in a particular sport would be the ultimate motivator. But the rest of the world, what would it really be? Inspiration, yes, excitement, maybe. Could it be a pity sport? Sincerely I question what role the Paralympics should play for the abled world.

Increasingly, Paralympics broadcast has been gaining popularity over the years. I fear that the Paralympics might follow the same over commercialized path as the Olympics. While Europe, America and China may have slowly warmed up the Paralympians, South East Asia isn’t so enchanted, Malaysia included. But when it does arrive, let’s welcome it for the right reasons and with the right motive, this most unequal of sporting events.