KL Bucket List #1 Chee Cheong Fun

It's taken me a couple of days but I finally ticked something off my bucket list! Crikey, at this rate I may have to do 4 or 5 a day towards the end!

Anyway, the kids requested chee cheong fun this morning for breakfast, and I was only too happy to oblige. We go to Lucky Garden markets down at Bangsar for this particular version. The reason we like it is the unusual curry sauce option.

This is the stall, run by a friendly Chinese couple. Several choices of noodle - we get some of the plain rolled ones (rice noodle) for the kids and the flat sheets with dried shrimp inside for us. To accompany they sprinkle with roasted sesame seeds and have a variety of fish balls, fish cakes, sausage, tofu sheets, and a heap of different other options. But what stands out here - an in general for this food in Malaysia (to my knowledge anyway) - is the curry sauce option. CCF usually comes with both sweet and chili sauce, but having this curry one is just awesome. It is a thin, chicken flavoured version, and really lovely. Photo below is it served ready to eat at home!

Lego BrickLink Project - 10030 UCS Star Destroyer #1

Right, so about time I posted about one of my projects. I have been back into Lego for a couple of years now, out of my "dark ages" as the hardcore fans would say, and keenly collecting, as well as building with my kids.

I was spewing to realise that I missed a heap of simply awesome sets, which to buy on the private market now costs thousands. One of these was the simply awesome UCS (Ultimate Collector Series) Imperial Star Destroyer - see below.

Isn't it magnificent? Well to buy one of these suckers will cost you a few grand, unless you're willing to pick one up without the box, which is quite acceptable for me. I honestly don't understand those that need it mint - unless you are purely a Lego trader. But for me, building the sucker is all that matters! Too much crap in my house already for me to store boxes, so there you go.

So, the upshot of all that is that I am in luck, in that I don't need to focus solely on the MISB (Mint In Sealed Box) market. But even so, to get one second-hand, including the manual (which I do favour having the original of), is about AUD$1,500 at the cheapest.

So I began my journey. Last year I picked up the sticker for the plaque and an original instruction manual:

As you can see, the sticker was nice and cheap, but the manual was a big investment. In hindsight, perhaps I should have just printed the bastard off the internet and used that $200 on bricks. Anyway, whatever happens, this is a learning experience.

What I am mainly learning though, is if one plans to BrickLink a set, one should start off small, and do a LOT of research. I have learned the hard way by going in hard on a big set. I think I will do ok with this, but I could have done a lot better. That is in no way a dig at BrickLink. Frankly I think it is a magnificent site, and in my experience, the best place bar none to buy Lego parts online.

Right, enough for now, got to go hunt for more parts...

KL Bucket List

So, my employer hasn't paid me since August last year. Obviously money is becoming a problem. So much so that we are leaving KL and heading back home to Australia in June.

Apart from 6 months in sunny Texas, Queensland, I have spent the last 8 years here in Malaysia, largely in 2 different jobs, although with a few smaller consulting/contract gigs thrown into the mix. I have been freelancing since Feb 2012, so recently passed the 4 year mark doing that.

It has been wonderful, particularly with regards to how much time I get to spend with my family, but in all honesty, I was not financially prepared to freelance, and that, coupled with my fucking employer not paying me, well, we are in the shit financially. Probably could have done a better job of it.

Anyway, more on that another day. Today I was going through my checklist of things to do before we leave KL, and decided I should make my own bucket list, as I can't see me coming back here anytime soon. If we do get overseas, we'll take advantage of better countries than Malaysia quite frankly.

Without further ado, here it is:

1) Night out at Changkat Bukit Bintang
2) Card night with the boys
3) Session at La Boca
4) Session at Cathy's
5) Visit Kinokuniya bookshop one last time
6) Eat dim sum
7) Eat pork noodle
8) Eat beef noodle
9) Eat banana leaf or chicken rice
10) Eat nasi lemak
11) Have chee cheong fun
12) Do one of my big walks, to Changkat or Desa Sri Hartamas
13) Do another big walk to somewhere new, try Malone's at Jaya One
14) Buy some Chinese jerky
15) Visit Uncle Chili's, where I met my wife!
16) Go to Lipis and have a beer with Harjeet
17) Eat satay
18) Eat rojak
19) Eat sosej roll

There it is, my KL bucket List! I wanted to post it today because I noticed that I came up with 19 items, and have exactly 38 days left in which to do them. That's one every two days... A bit of a challenge, although I can kill multiple birds with one stone on a number of them.

Also interesting that 10 were to do with food, 6 with booze, and only one with shopping! Well hardly surprising, food and social life are definitely highlights of this place. I love the malls, but a mall is a mall, anywhere really, and I know I get ripped off a lot here anyway. Kinokuniya on the other hand, is possibly the best bookshop I have ever been to, anywhere in the world, so it must be visited again before we go. And both my walks will end at pubs, so it could almost be 10 food and 8 booze.

I'll take some photos of my journey through this list....

Dipping the toes in...

I have been thinking about writing a blog for years, but apart from a couple of half-arsed attempts, have never done it. I think mainly because I have a multitude of topics that I am half-interested in blogging about. These are:

1) My Top 100 songs of all time.

2) A record of how my ongoing attempt to develop a profitable horse racing betting system is progressing.

3) Possibly a link to the many Tripadvisor reviews I write.

4) A few posts about my extraordinary family history.

5) The awesome fun I am having with my kids rediscovering Lego!

6) My own awesome family, life as an expat, and who knows what else!

So I was out walking the other day (I think that would also be an interesting blog post) and thought why not just have a blog of all of it. After all, it is 90% for me, maybe 80%. There may be a few curious friends and family who would browse past occassionally, but that's about it. I am interested in writing though, and have toyed with the idea of making an alternate career out of it, so it makes sense to have a go.

And here I am. Dipping my toes in the water so-to-speak, and finally having a go. If I can figure out how to make this page actually look half decent, then I may even stick with it!

Sold

Well, I'm liking what I see so far.

In fact, within 5 minutes I had the blog looking how I roughly envisaged it should. No other platform I have played with has allowed me to do this!

So Blogger, I am sold.

I toyed with the idea of putting a family pic as my background, but I have never actually posted a picture of my kids online, seriously, never once. I don't trust the world, too many of you are too fucked up.

But for those that aren't, hopefully my words and non-family related photos will reel you in hahahahahaha!

Yeah I know, whatever.

Checking things out...

Hmm, an interesting blog format to be sure. I both enjoy and am slightly perturbed by the simplicity. But I have had a gutful of blogs that claim to be simple but end up not delivering.

I have most recently been with Wordpress, and hey maybe I am just incompetent, or maybe I got unlucky, but too much stuff seemed not to work, and it was not easy enough for me to customise my blog's appearance.

So here goes, trying again.

Will see how this goes, and if I can perhaps bring in some of the posts from my old blog, before I get too carried away here.

Hope it is good, I have a lot to say. Don't really care who reads it as it is largely for myself, but anyway.