Korea Barbecue and IT apathy

THad a first try of the now infamous Korean Barbecue recently with an old friend. We patranoised a joint at SS2 Petaling Jaya called Korea House. I am not much of a food blogger, and therefore forgot to take many pics of the outing. Shame on me, shame on me ^.^


The decor and ambience is ok. Yellow lights, dark wooden furniture. On the night we came, we were served by a senior and junior staff. I don't think they were Korean. Their English wasn't so good, and was heavily accented. When asking for recommendation, the senior rattled off for 2 minutes on 2 items off every page of the menu. I guess the food must be really good then hur hur hur... We settled on pork and beef meat, one kimchi soup and an egg dish.

Sizzle sizzle... BBQ pork with the many condiments surrounding the hot plate

The meat was quite tender and juicy with 4 different dipping sauces. It was quite tasty on its own. The barbecuing was done by the restaurant staff. First, some hot coals are placed under the iron dish. Once it's hot, the meat is cooked. Once the beef is done, they changed the plate for cooking the pork. Guess this keeps the meat flavour pure? There are many accompanying side dishes of vegetables, achovies, patatoes etc. Something out of norm is that we were served cold tea with our food. To cool down from the fires of BBQ maybe?

Kimchi soup, green leaf vege, BBQ Pork, Egg, BBQ Beef

After polishing off the beef... the senior staff came over to explain which dipping sauce goes with what. A little bit sooner would have been better leh big bro! The my friend suddenly recalled that the fresh green leaf vege (the name eludes me at this moment), is supposed to be used as a wrap for the meat and fresh garlic. The kimchi soup was quite delicious. The egg dish was really plain.

All in all, the bill came up to RM100 for 2 pax. The food is decent. We were overstuffed. Could've gone without the extra egg dish.

Over dinner, we moaned about work, clients and all the usual stuff. We did discuss why Malaysia was not an IT frontrunner in the world. We realised that while it is normal to develop pretty looking applications that meet business requirements, Malaysians don't think ahead about making something the best or something that is innovative. Now can work, means good already lor. I wonder what technology R & D departments do in Malaysia. Do they aim to come up with good methodology to solve problems for present and future needs? Or are they doing 'needle in haystack' kind of work, where finding the elusive solution ends the research part of R & D? When the business of IT holds absolute power on time and resourcing, and passion for ideas and risk-taking relegated to lower priority, we can't help it if we are stuck in this rut. We have lots of brilliant and fast thinking young minds, born and bred in our country's soil, that are snatched away, often willingly, to more attractive lures from foreign bodies. I too am increasingly satisfied to 'finish my tasks' and escape from my desk as soon as possible. Are we apathetic about such things?

Such apathy doesn't work well in the food business. If your food ain't tasty, and if you are not on your toes regarding changing trends, you will definitely run into business problems.

Maybe bored and apathetic IT guys should try their hands at the food business for a real challenge in life? Hyuk hyuk hyuk...