We gathered once again.

Since I was in KL and we have yet to really celebrate Ah Yong’s birthday, Ah Kit and I decided to treat Ah Yong to a scrumptious meal. After some discussions, we decided to dine at Serdang Little Kitchen Restaurant (沙登小厨美食馆) again for its relatively cheap price.

I have blogged about this restaurant before, you can click here to read about it.

There weren’t many customers around when we arrived around 10pm. We proceeded to sit ourselves at a table near a television since we had to wait for Ah Kit to finish his classes at MMU Cyberjaya.

Ah Kit finally reached the restaurant at 10.30pm and Ah Yong was literally starved to death as he didn’t have dinner earlier. Although I had my dinner around 6pm at Pasta Zanmai, I couldn’t help it but felt hungry for I knew that we were going to have a very good meal in a short while.

First up was the free soup of the day. Since it’s free, I am not complaining. We drank this while waiting for Ah Kit.

When I walked in, I saw a clay pot curry that looked really tempting and delicious. Hence, I inquired about it and the waiter said it was clay pot curry fish head. Figuring that all of us don’t really know how to enjoy fish head, we opted for slices of fish meat.

When the dish was served, immediately, the aroma caught my attention and I took a sip of the curry. God! It was simply delicious. Judging from the colour and thickness of the curry, I reckoned it was cooked with ridiculous amount of coconut milk. Thick, aromatic and strong flavoured, definitely worth recommending. The three of us finished a bowl of rice by just mixing the curry sauce with our white rice.

Towards the end, I even suggested to the guys to order another pot but without the fish, just the vegetables alone.

We actually ordered the two flavoured pork ribs, but the waiter got the orders mixed up and we ended up with a plate of pork ribs cooked with fermented bean paste. It was nothing close to the awesome two flavoured pork ribs which I had during my previous visit. It was overcooked, hence, the stiffness and rubbery texture of the pork ribs. It was okay, but I would recommend the other pork ribs, which tasted much better.

Calamaris cooked in butter sauce wasn’t as good as I expected, considering their deep fried calamaris tasted really good. It was not entirely bad, but compare to the deep fried version, it lost out, by a pretty huge margin. However, the squids were still tender and juicy, but lacked the butter flavour.

Their deep fried seafood tofu, well, tasted average. We ordered this because we didn’t want to order vegetables. Ha! We wanted a slightly more balanced diet, instead of an all-meat meal.

Steamed prawns, probably the most expensive dish among all, was to show our respect for our brother, Ah Yong. Heh! The prawns, thank God, were really fresh and juicy. Opting for the steam version was indeed a wise choice, as we could savour the natural sweetness of the prawns without too much seasonings. Although the size of the prawns were on the smaller side, it wasn’t too bad as each of us had about three or four prawns each. There were a layer of steamed eggs at the bottom of the prawns as well.

Pardon the lousy picture, the dish was quite a mess to begin with, with all the coriander leaves and ginger slices on top.

Overall, it wasn’t a disappointing meal although there were two dishes were a slight disappointment. The bill came up to RM96, which I think it was still reasonable as we had seafood and all meat meal. Besides, we had a total of seven bowls of rice, if not mistaken.

Before we left, we had papayas and watermelons for dessert, which, I think was on the house.

We definitely had a good time eating dinner again.

While walking to our car, Ah Kit asked,

“Why do we always have to eat such big and heavy meal each time we meet up?”
“为什么我们每次四个在一起就一定要大吃大喝啊？”

I gave him my sneakiest and biggest grin ever.

I am not even 1/3 as popular as most celebrity bloggers out there.
My traffic barely touches the 1,000 visits per day mark.
10,000 unique visitors per month always seem to be a dream for my blog and me.

Like it or not, I don’t see myself as a celebrity blogger like Kenny Sia, Ringo Tan, Timothy Tiah, Shaolin Tiger, Kimberlycun, Fireangel, Suanie and the many more heavy weight bloggers in Malaysia blogsphere.

However, I think I am blessed with a lot of loyal and nice readers who never stop reading my blog over the years, treating me as good friends, buying me meals, baking me cookies and muffins, writing me snail mail and cards and even buying me gifts or souvenirs.

I woke up feeling drowsy due to insomnia during the previous night and saw a package sitting on top of my notebook. It was from Chong, a relatively new reader of mine who happens to use the same camera as me, Canon EOS 40D. We never meet up before.

Looking at the fragile sticker behind, I carefully opened the parcel and I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the writings on the box.

B+W Circular Polarizer Filter for 67mm. This piece of glass, I estimated it to be somewhere around RM250 +- RM50.

The function of a CPL filter, an illustration I grabbed from Wikipedia would explain it clearly.

For the uninitiated, B+W is probably the best filter manufacturer around since the early age of cameras. It is considered a branded item and very well known among photographers. It is made in Germany and using brass. Hence, the excellent built quality and weight.

Inside the box, was a short note that reads, “Souvenir and be-late-d birthday gift from Singapore. Cheers, Chong.”.

Friend, while I truly appreciate the gift you got for me, isn’t the gift a little too expensive? I even feel guilty about it. I was merely joking about getting one for me as a souvenir while you were in Singapore. Honestly and seriously, thank you very much. It could probably be the best birthday gift I ever received so far. I owe you one, big time.

Honestly, this could be one of the most creative and best birthday card that I have ever received. Not that I receive lots of them every year either. I got it two days earlier, in my letterbox.

Upon opening it, I saw these - “Don’t let a stick person be the victim of a horribly clumsy accident. Use this card sensibly.” and “This health warning is brought to you by the Anti-Ouch Association”. I was dumbfounded.

I opened it and was greeted with a small figure on top of the card. Ta-da!

So, that’s a stick people! Can you see his tiny little wooden hand? No wonder they call them the stick people. Damn cute, right?

Flipping over the card, I saw this sentence - “Not suitable for children under 5 years due to small parts”. Sweat. This is a dangerous and life threatening birthday card. Evil!

The price was printed on the back of the card as well, AUD 8.95, that’s a whopping (close to) RM30 for a birthday card. To make sure the money was well spent, the person wrote a message so long that it practically filled up all the available blank spaces on the inside of the card. Heh!

Thanks, you know who you are. ;)

Last Saturday, February 23, was my 24th birthday.

Special thanks to my parents who brought me to this world and also Pei San, Suet Lei and Yih Tian for celebrating my birthday with me.

And of course, thanks to everyone who wished me. Apparently, not many people remember my birthday.