Indian Heritage and Panna Cotta

Went out last weekend for dinner with my folks, and we decided to drop by a Northern Indian place newly opened in Taipan USJ called "Indian Heritage". It is facing the main road, same row as Thai Corner and EON Bank.

I am no expert in Indian cuisine. In fact I will say this is my first time trying Indian fine dining in Malaysia. I did try one similar restaurant in Melbourne Australia.

Indian Heritage had an attractive looking buffet lunch promotion for RM15.90++. Sorry for the blur image... my Sony Ericsson W700i isn't great in dim lighting.



Decor is quite classy I guess... there is a feature chandelier in the middle, the walls have a texturised pattern on them, and the captain is dressed in a formal looking suit. He actually wished my dad "Happy Father's Day to you sir"! Heck, I had forgotten myself... oh, the shame...

The restaurant has a lot of patrons on the weekend dinner time that we were there. A lot of wealthy looking Indians came, and some westerners too.

We went with Fish Methi (very very tasty), Chicken Kadel and a saag (spinach dish). Ordered a briyani and 2 portions of plain naan.

As a testament to the taste, you can see our bowls are scraped quite clean.

The total bill came to about RM75 for 3 people. It is a little on the high side I feel and the meat and fish was a little on the small side for portion size. They do give you tonnes of gravy though.

The service was good. The captain was friendly and the staff do come by occasionally to check if everything is good, is the food alright etc etc.

Definitely a good place to have a meal with family and friends.

On another note, I had bought back a packet of vanilla pods from my earlier trip to Bali, Indonesia. It is so expensive and hard to find it here in normal supermarkets. I tried to make a Panna Cotta with them.

Below are my results...

Panna Cotta is basically cooked cream with some hardening agent like gelatine. The only flavour I added was the vanilla pod and brown sugar. I didn't put enough gelatine so I couldn't get it to slide out of the cup easily. I also used cooking oil to grease the cup beforehand, but I think the gelatine was not making it hard enough.... so the oil didn't help. Plus, I didn't realise it was peanut oil... so it left a weird aftertaste in your mouth after the creamy vanilla custard sat in your tongue.

The recipe recommended tart fruit like strawberry or rasberry, but I substituted for seedless grapes instead. I did find a cool tip in a Jamie Oliver recipe to freeze the grapes to make it more interesting. Don't they look cool below?

When you bite the frozen grape, it's like a popsicle!



My parents loved it. I not so much... I still have quite a few pods left, and maybe I can try again next time, with much more gelatine, and margarine instead of peanut oil!

Bali Hai.... Bali Hai

Some months ago, some of my colleagues invited me to join them on a trip to Bali, Indonesia. Since I love travelling, I said "Count me in".

We didn't count on the Swine Flu now permeating all corners of the globe. Indonesia however has not officially declared that it has any confirmed cases of the disease. Well, whether this is knowingly true or not, only God knows I guess.

So just to be safe, I donned a face mask in KL's LCCT and in the plane going to Bali.



So Bali is known as "the ultimate island". It's got nice beaches and seas, hills and volcanoes, and remains largely rural. The busy tourism business however makes the locals quite globalised: many Balinese are multi lingual, know the value of foreign currency in relation to their own, and lots have satelite tv.

Here is my room mate buddy, Chien Hui with me at Kintomani, a hill area close to the Bali volcano. I am doing a "kawaii" pose. Don't I look charming?



Here's June, our other travelling mate. She thought she looked kawaii enough by herself.


For the most part, Malaysians need to be aware that Bali is more expensive than Malaysia. A simple lunch of rice at a roadside stall can easily cost you US$1.50 (more than RM5.00). Back home, a similar plate of rice costs RM3.50 or RM4.00. To save costs, I highly suggest you stay at Legian or Kuta, which, while being the more touristy area of Bali, is also very centrally located on the island.

We did take a trip up north, to Lovina Beach, which is famous for its dolphins and black sand. However, the statue erected on the beach, is unlike any images of dolphins I am familiar with. They look rather beastly and frightening instead.

I aM tHe FRieNdLY DoLPhiN oF BALI!

No Bali trip will be complete without enjoying some fun on the beach. Here are my two smiley friends on an inflatable raft called "Big Mabel". This raft is dragged across the water by speedboat. We also spent some time snorkelling and diving. All this was done in Nusa Dua, south Bali.

We are lucky June had an underwater casing for her camera. We had some fun taking shots like the ones below.




We also had our first taste of Balinese food, called "bakso". Basically it is pork or beef mixed with flour to form meat balls. We must have been a bit unlucky, because the one we tried was not good at all. But we had other food which was okay, so that's fine... can't be roses all the time right?


One of our visits was to an art factory. In there, there was a piece I absolutely fell in love with: a painting of golden padi fields with some farmers. I am told it is done by a famous artist and is a limited edition piece. The asking price? US$100... which was out of my budget. I do pine for it sometimes... At least I have this digital photo for a keepsake.

So beautifully simple and stunning

We went to other places as well, like Hard Rock in Kuta. This hotel is really pretty. The bar has a raised stage in middle, the pool has an area with sand to simulate a beach, and the hotel walls are lined with electric guitars. Cool, cool, cool.


We spent 5 nights in Bali, blew our spending budget out of the water, two of us had slight fever (gasp!), but all in all, it was a nice trip. I may think of coming back here again in the future.

Bali Hai... Bali Hai...

Grandia III

Another RPG that I had the chance to play some time ago is Grandia III.

Again, although quite a few of the games I've played are long established series, I regret to say I have not played the predecessors. Grandia III is a Square Enix effort, the masterminds behind the phenomenally successful Final Fantasy series, which I love to bits.

Grandia III follows the exploits of young pilot, Yuki. Kinda sounds feminine, but I am no expert in names. In this picture, Yuki tries to 'touch the sky'...


The environments are beautifully drawn, as expected from Square. Some environments look really cool... you can even see hints of northern lights from this snowy landscape area.


On to battle mechanics... RPGs are all about fighting lots of baddies, right? One cool feature in the game is the ability to knock enemies into the air. Then, once they are freefalling back to the ground, you can do some extra moves that are more damaging and look cooler than your normal ones.

4.6 metres high... a new personal best!

The other nice part is the way magic is contolled. Anyone can do any kind of magic. Some are better suited to the job, but to have anyone to be able to do the super insane magic attacks gives you a lot of flexibility. You can even 'hatch' new magic by combining special items called Mana Eggs in a little machine that looks like a robotic chicken with 2 heads. You have to play the game to find out what I mean...



As usual too, all the characters have special moves that have lots of coloured lights and are real flashy. Also, you have to practice these moves to make them more powerful and also to learn new moves. However, the fights are rarely very challenging. Maybe because it gets quite easy to churn out special move after special move towards the end.

One of the key things I was hoping for was an engaging story line. All Final Fantasy games have such gripping story lines, so how did Grandia III fare?

To me, this game had some hits and misses. They reused the tried and true formula of a young upstart male hero protecting the fragile heroine. That's fine... it is a tried and true formula. The dream about Yuki striving to become a top notch pilot is believable. The plot development to bring all the main fighters together was also quite good and flowed naturally.

The final climax fight that leads you to meet the big bad boss was kinda boring. The struggle between Alfina and her brother, which is like the 2nd level big bad boss was also kinda boring. I guess there was not enough plot about character attachment or loss, so it felt like a let down. I guess not every story fantastic.

Also, not too many secrets or in game activities to delve into, and feels too straight forward at times.

I enjoyed the journey getting to the finale more than the finale itself for this game.

Still it is an okay game to while away the hours.

Lest we forget what reality TV really is

Two things really struck a chord with me recently.

Firstly, it's how much we need sensationalism to draw out the tiniest response from our being nowadays.

Recently, a lot of news has been sensationalised on some contestants of Britain's Got Talent year 3 (2009). The most famous name is Susan Boyle.


An elderly lady with a great voice, but did not look polished in appearance. Whether the numerous Youtube clips of the judges frowning and giving cynical smiles actually happened or was edited into the video for sensationalising purposes, the effect was good. It made it look like the odds were against Susan and when a good singing voice was produced from her cheeky grinnng face, the contrast made for good entertainment value. See it here

Society nowadays can be so de-sensitised that something that was considered remarkable not so long ago, is considered common place and mundane today. Is it any wonder that we need something that is presented at such extreme ends of the spectrum to trigger some emotion from us? A lamentable situation in my opinion.


The second thing that really caught me is how much expectation we put on those in the limelight nowadays... It can be really unbelievable sometimes.

I am a fan of reality talent shows. A shameless fan I am. American Idol, Malaysian Idol, Britain's Got Talent, America's Got Talent etc etc. Being a huge music fan, I always love hearing new voices and singers trying to make their mark on what must be an incredibly arduous process of star making.

No disrespect to established and yet to be established artists going the conventional route i.e. doing gigs at clubs, sending audition tapes, going through performing arts courses... But the amount of stress, scrutiny and work that is crammed into that short space of time to make the filming of a show is truly frightening at times. One such casualty is ten year old Hollie Steel, also from the same show as Susan Boyle.



Also doing singing, Hollie did wonderfully in her auditions, just like Susan. Weeks go by, the machinery of reality TV chomps on ahead... and Hollie had a breakdown during the next show. She made some mistakes in her voice control, and after a couple, she couldn't take it anymore and cried. She didn't finish her performance, and requested a second chance. See it here. Susan is also reported to have had a breakdown and required medical care.

Truth be told, the public would have forgiven her mistakes the first time round, but she herself felt she was a disaster. When we see those in the media always performing flawlessly, we lull ourselves into thinking THAT is reality sometimes.

We forget that when movies are captured onto film by cameramen, there's that little black and white board that marks down how many takes it needs to get the scene perfect. We forget musicians practice as many hours as a programmer spends writing code. We forget that masters of their craft still spend just as many hours maintaining their skill level as a beginner tries to hone theirs. We just forget...

Reality TV show, judging scene, Take 70!