I wasn’t fond of any phone ever since I got my N70 as it has all the features I ever wanted and everything was working perfectly (albeit lagging) until my phone got stolen.

I needed a phone, badly and quickly.

Not knowing what to get for myself this time, I turned to other people’s opinions and a number of them recommended the Sony Ericsson P1i. While I am not a Nokia die hard fan, I prefer Nokia due to its user friendliness and high compatibility.

Looking at all the phones and N-series by Nokia, none of them caught my eyes. I decided to just jump right in and make the switch to Sony Ericcson, hoping that it would turn out decent and me not selling it away.

RM1620, with a 1GB Memory Stick Micro (M2). It was slightly more expensive than the price my friend offered me, but it was two days before Chinese New Year and I needed the phone badly.

Weighing at only 124g, the P1i feels rather sturdy, sleek black and silver casing, with black keypads and a little red to distinguish the numbered keypads. On the left hand side, you have the jog dial and cancel button while on the right hand side, there are the shortcut button, camera button and Memory Stick Micro (M2) slot. On the front, you have a mini camera (for video call) and a brightly lit and stunning 240 * 320 pixel with 262,144 colour screen.

Another feature of the P1i is the touchscreen capability. Although it is a touchscreen phone, most of the time, you would find yourself switching between keypads / fingers and the stylus. The touchscreen feature is far from being perfect, considering that Apple iPhone is fully usable by tapping with your fingers only. There is a slot to store the stylus on the top left part of the phone.

Flipping the phone over, you have the looks-very-much-like-a-digital-camera camera side. Equipped with a 3.2 mega pixel and auto focus camera, you can take really decent pictures with the phone. By setting it to macro mode, you can even take macro pictures. There are many options for you to play around with, such as white balance, burst mode, video, special effects and on-the-spot editing, you name it, they have it. In case of dark environment, you have two LED lights to brighten up your subjects to give you a clearer picture. Nonetheless, it is still a camera phone and you should not rely on it to capture precious moments or fast moving objects. As for me? The camera is just for MMS purpose.

A sample shot taken while I was cruising around the city during Chinese New Year. Not too bad, I would say. Not sure about night shots though.

The phone fits nicely into my giant palm but not the keypads.

The keypads is a full QWERTY keyboard and each button has two alphabets on it. It took me a day or two before my fingers got used to it and able to punch the right alphabet. Of course, you have the option to write your text but I reckon you can type five times faster than writing on the screen. However, for Chinese text, its faster to write than type.

It does what a mobile phone supposed to do, make and receive calls, send and receive SMS, calenders, clocks, alarms, notes, games and the basics.

I shall not go into details of those puny stuffs but rather highlight the more important functions of the phone. The most useful feature of P1i got to be the WiFi. With WiFi included, it opens up a whole new world of functions and convenience. It is practically a mini computer where you can check mails, reply emails, read blogs, surf the internet, chat and etc.

With BlueBerry installed, I can read blogs easily on my phone now. In fact, I even tried to blog on my phone before and the post worked just fine. To fully utilize the screen space, you can switch the browser to landscape mode by tapping on the landscape button. Unlike Apple iPhone, it doesn’t auto rotate.

By logging into Ebuddy, I can even log on to my MSN Messenger or Yahoo! Messenger and chat. Wicked! Another feature that I really like is the built in RSS reader. I can now subscribe to the blogs I read all the time and read them on the go, without having to login to my Google Reader. However, there’s no import function and to visit all 108 blogs to subscribe the RSS is going to take really a lot of time. I tried loading Google Reader on BlueBerry, the result wasn’t that good.

It comes with a cradle, that acts not only as a charging station, but also as a file transfer station. Connect all the relevant cables and you can transfer files to and fro your phone and notebook easily and without much troubles and at the same time, getting it charged. Whenever you plug your phone into the cradle, there’s a green light emitting from the bottom of your phone, pretty neat, if you ask me.

Overall, the phone is simply stunning and powerful because you can install any applications you found on the Internet into your phone. For example, Tien Soon installed an application that turned his P1i into a GPS system. Hence, one really need to dig out some really cool programs and incorporate them into his or her P1i to make it even more feature packed.

However, there are also a number of things that I didn’t like about the phone.

1) It takes a great deal just to send and receive a MMS (especially those above 1MB), as most of the time, the connection times out. I never have such problem with my previous Nokia phones.

2) Reception of the phone is not decent enough as I get no / low signal quite often. It doesn’t know which to pick for best network reception, often, I find it alternating between a one bar signal strength 3G network and a full bar signal strength GSM network.

3) While the task manager feature is supposed to ease the user when switching from one application to another, I reckon its not that useful yet. Also, whenever I close an application, it should be closed right away, not running in the background, taking up the memory. In other words, the more applications you open, the slower your phone is. You need to close them ala Windows’ task manager style to gain back the used memory.

4) The overall speed of the phone is on the disappointing side. They should have put in a bigger internal memory or a faster processor.

5) Vibration is not strong enough to notify the user. Come on, I need vibrations, not some tingling sensations!

It is a nice phone to use, but its going to take a wee bit of time to get used to it due to the small keypads and such. While the software speed is not hair pulling yet, I reckon its just a matter of time before it does.

P/S : For those who are in Malacca and wants to buy mobile phone and any accessories, do contact Yeong Kit at 016-6444662 as he always give me a very good deal. You can check out his price by visiting his very simple website at http://mobilespec.com.my/.

A year has passed, but it still hurts.

While I have personally visited Asian Havana Cafe twice (first and second), it was my third visit that I came in the name of work and that means free food.

As I have written about them before and feeling lazy (again), I shall just post a raw (unedited) copy of my write up on Asian Havana Cafe. It’s tiring and brain exhausting to write the same topic / material twice with two different style and yet have the same points, you know?

While other cafes are die trying to woo tourists and locals with authentic Nyonya, Portuguese and Hainanese food, Calvin Loke dares to be different by introducing authentic western and fusion dishes to the local food scene through Asian Havana Café.

“The western foods here have been localized to suit the taste buds of Malaysians and have lost the basic elements like fibers, proteins, vitamins, carbohydrates and minerals.

“I not only retain the basic elements, I also emphasize on the foods’ presentations, textures and retaining the true essence of western food. In fact, I have improvised it and created a whole new fusion menu,” said Loke who started the restaurant in 2004 after returning from the states.

Capital of Cuba, Havana, is very similar to Malacca when it comes to the historical values, colonization history, cultures and peoples.

It was from there where Loke got his idea of naming his restaurant, Asian Havana Café, intending to recreate an Asian version of the Havana in Malaysia.

“Everything is made using the freshest ingredients and from scratch, with no artificial flavouring and preservatives used,” added Loke.

One could expect a huge variety and extensive menu of food and beverages, serving a wide array of local, western and fusion main courses, cakes and desserts, coffee and other beverages.

Best sellers and top favourites among the customers are Havana chicken cordon bleu, seafood baked carbonara, pan fried miso fillet, saba teriyaki, pad Thai Noodles and Thai pineapple fried rice.

Seafood baked carbonara is highly recommended to those who like strong and milky sauce to go along with their spaghetti.

Unlike most carbonara, mozzarella cheese are melted evenly on top of the noodles and seafood like mussels, prawns, clams, fish fillets, bamboo clams and slices of Australian giant squids.

“The combination of cheese and carbonara is the best, complementing each other and bringing out the full flavor of both ingredients, creamy and cheesy simultaneously,” said Loke.

To avoid the customers complaining that the chicken breast meat used in the Havana chicken cordon blue are too dry, Loke added layers of ham and mozzarella cheese in it before rolling them together to keep the meat moist and juicy. The meat is then wrapped with bread crumbs and deep fried.

You get two different textures combined into one, absolute crunchiness on the outside, soft, creamy and succulent meat on the inside.

Served together with spaghetti noodles and homemade Napolitana sauce as the base sauce, the sweet yet with a tiny bit of sourness sauce does a great job in opening up your appetite.

“We got ourselves a Thai chef to teach us the original and better way to cook Thai style pineapple fried rice and the key to a good plate of pineapple fried rice lies within the amount of turmeric powder used,” pointed out Loke.

Just the right amount of turmeric powder is used to bring out yet not overpower the taste of the fragrant rice and mixed seafood inside the dish. Raisins, sultanas and spring onions are used to garnish and add more colours to the fried rice.

Another specialty of Asian Havana Café is the flourless cheese cakes, mainly the white chocolate, dark chocolate with orange, Baileys’ Irish cream and the almond and orange cheese cake are a must try for diners to complete a wholesome meal.

“Only a flourless cheese cake is able to produce a pure, soft, moist and non sticky cake texture. It should melt in your mouth,” said Loke.

There are different promotions throughout the week, with coffee lovers’ day taking the lead on Monday, “Ho Cake Ah” on Tuesday, Queens’ day on Wednesday, sport days on Thursday, chill out Friday, “Yummm Sengggg!” on Saturday and hot plate Sunday.

On Fridays and Saturdays, diners can even order freshly made and rolled sushis starting from 7pm till 11pm.

Asian Havana Café
No. 2 & 4, Jalan Melaka Raya 26,
Taman Melaka Raya,
75000 Melaka.

06-2827117

Flaunt your student card and you are entitled to 10% discount, that was what I remembered during my last visit. Heh!

Thanks to my parents and a few friends, I have gotten myself a new notebook and mobile phone. My notebook, fully sponsored by my mum, cost RM4527 while my phone cost RM1620. As much as I like my new toys, I still prefer my old ones because the old ones were bought with my own money and effort. Nothing could beat that factor.

Sony Ericsson P1i.

Dell Vostro 1500 Notebook.

Nonetheless, thank you to everyone who helped me one way or another, I truly appreciate it.

It was a not too hot afternoon when Yih Tian called and asked to meet up for a cup of coffee as she needed my help to fix her notebook. After our cup of coffee at Old Taste Kopitiam, we headed out to Plaza Mahkota and ended up at Ming Sate Hut for some pork satay. Pork satay is very common in Malacca and you just need to drive around to look for it. Currently, there are more than four places that serve pork satay and Ming Sate Hut is just one of them.

Ming Sate hut is just few doors before Nadeje Patisserie.

There were no customers when we first seated, however, after few minutes, there were more and more customers coming in. I think it has something to do with me, really! It happened many times already. Heh! Anyway, nothing fancy about the shop and everything is down right simple.

While I am fine with paying RM1.00 for a plate of ketupats, I don’t really agree with the idea of paying RM0.50 for the cucumbers and onions, which are supposed to be given for free. This gesture makes them look bad and very profit minded, in my opinion.

One thing I find weird about the peanut sauce in Malacca is that they like to put pineapple inside to make the sauce tastes sour. I don’t really like it as I always think that I am eating some left overnight and spoiled peanut sauce instead of the aromatic, oily and a wee bit of spicy peanut sauce. It’s an acquired taste.

Then, you wait… And wait… And wait.

Finally, here comes the satays.

While I have eaten better ones, these aren’t that bad actually. Nicely marinated, tender and succulent. It has this charcoal burnt texture on it, rough on the tongue but delicious. A thin layer of natural pork fat is sandwiched between two pieces of meat. Hence, for the girls, you might want to take the time to take it off before you gobble it down.

Not too bad, but there are better ones out there. I heard the one at Jalan Kuli and Ranger College are quite good too.