Saturday, June 28, 2008

Penang: A week in Review: Part2

Monday night after an OK day at work, I decided to try the buffet at the hotel restaurant. Each night there is a different theme buffet (one night is Louisiana Cajun, I think it’s best to avoid that cuisine this far from the bayou. The theme that night was Cantonese, the food was decent but not great.

The rest of my workweek was much the same, exercise in the morning, go to work around 9, and get back to my hotel around 7 or 8 then venture out to find food. Tuesday after work I went to Kapitan Restoran, an outdoor Indian food place that serves excellent curries with fresh naan. I had the chicken vindaloo with garlic naan, with fresh mango juice to drink and it was excellent. By Wednesday I was having MSG overload and decided to try to avoid it if possible. I spent Wednesday and Thursday night at the Chili’s which is conveniently located next to my hotel.


Penang - Nachos n' Rita

Friday night I was exhausted from the week, so I had dinner at a restaurant in the plaza next to my hotel called Manila's Place. The only thing worth mentioning there is that I picked up a Marie Claire magazine (Malaysia edition) and there was an interesting article about marriage and the modern Muslim woman. The article was stating that most women are afraid of marriage becaue they will need to give up their jobs, their life, to be a slave to their husband, even in the case where they dated for years before getting married. After marriage, husbands often expect the woman to take on the domestic role. The article stressed the need to marry someone that is a peer. In a "peer marriage" you can be friends as well and live with respect and equality.

Friday, June 27, 2008

Penang: A week in Review: Part1

Suffice to say work has kept me sufficiently busy and I have neglected to update my blog since arriving in Malaysia. Here is a recap of my week…


I arrived in Malaysia on Sunday around noon. After getting to my hotel and unpacking I ventured next door to the Gurney Plaza mall to wander around for a bit. The mall is 7 stories and has many stores also found in the US (Guess, Esprit, Versace, Body Shop, etc) along with some Asian retail shops and eateries. Next I decided to go for a walk up Gurney, which is the street my hotel is on (aka, G Hotel).

I stumbled upon a new little café that wasn’t there the last time I was in Penang, called the Martini Café. I went inside and I was the only one in there except for a group of 3 people, who immediately asked me to come join them. They were a very friendly group, on holiday from Australia. When I say very friendly, I mean they had been drinking for several hours. The group consisted on a married 50-something couple (Brian & Jules) and Jules’ sister Sally (Sal). Over some Tiger beers on draft we chatted about US politics (they find Obama to be quite charming), the geography of Australia (did you know it was larger than the entire US?), world travel, and various other topics. Sal and I got along quite well, and were pleased that the music selections were relevant for both Australia and the US.
Malaysia Trip - June 2008 007

After happy hours, Sal and I grabbed a cab and headed to Nagore Street for some traditional Nyonya cuisine. It was a family owned restaurant called Baba Nyonya and we were the only ones in there other than their own family (about 10 people) having dinner. Needless to say it was very authentic and the food was quite good. We sampled about 6 different menu items.

Saturday, June 21, 2008

En Route to Malaysia

So far so good, made it as far as Singapore at least...
The flight to LA from Austin was interesting...In first class I was seated next to a Hawaiian native 40-something hippy chick. Upon getting to her seat she immediately is in panic mode that her sunglasses had disappered. It was like that infamous video from the Intervention show, where they take away the lady's kids...

Only more like
"wherearemyshadesatwherearemyshadesatwherearemyshadesat.......wherearemyshadeat!!!
and then she proceeds to remove everything from her giant purse 4 times. I eventually showed her that they were on the floor of the aisle...
Singapore Changi Airport - Crowne Plaza Hotel

Monday, February 11, 2008

Rock the Creek!

Although I've seemingly abandoned this blog I've stared a new one to chronicle the open mics we're hosting. Our first one was a success so we've decided to make this a monthly thing.

rockthecreek.com

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

big bend birthday bash

here are a couple of shots from Terlingua Ranch right outside of Big Bend National Park. We had a great time and we'll post more details soon.




Monday, November 12, 2007

thirty-one

Well, I'm 31 now. We celebrated my birthday at Billy's on Burnet this year and even though we're there at least once a week I had a blast. They've always got great beer on tap and the burgers are most excellent. I feel like every blog post deserves a pic and since this post is about my birthday it should be a pic of me, right?



and since we're talking about Billy's... here's one of Billy and I at Ginny's Little Longhorn during one of our Burnet Rd. Pub Crawls.



This weekend we're headed to Big Bend for more birthday celebration. Stay tuned for pics of the west texas desert as well as some more pics of the new crib. Yo. We close on our new house in 1 week!

Saturday, November 3, 2007

vallecito dr.

Well, here's the first post in our blog and we've got some big news... We're moving! We found a house a half mile from our current house and we're moving in at the end of the month. Call it an impulse buy I guess, we weren't even seriously looking for a house but we fell in love with this one. Last Sunday we went to the open house, we made an offer on Monday and by Wednesday morning the deal was done.