Back to my old routines ...

Before my days travelling around in a suitcase, and practically living out of it, I had a weekend routine ... I would sleep until the day's practically half over, then I'll wake up, meet up with the gang, do something like furniture scouting or crystal shopping or something equally and then adjourn for food and / or movies.

This job, even now, is not making it easy, but I think that routine is finally coming back to me.

Today, me, Taiko and Sean went antique shopping. Now, before you decide to start rumor mongering and accuse me of being siong dang again, we just went antique WINDOW shopping. Window shopping only, OK? Taiko did buy a chair, but it wasn't any more expensive than the IKEA ones.


After a few years overseas, it's amazing how much of the roads you DON'T remember. I was supposed to drive to the heartland of PJ, Jalan 222 ...


It just looks like a lot of factories to me ... and then i called up Sean ...

Moz: Eh ... I reach Jalan 222 liao ...
Sean: OK. Hold. You know, it's called Zi-Tan. It's further down the road.
Moz: ??? I survey the whole road liao, no such place lah.
Sean: Where are you?
Moz: 222 lor.
Sean: There's this little road you need to get into once you're there ...

So, apparently, the furniture shop is ON the way to Jalan 222, and I passed it. **Sheesh**



But I found it. It's on Jalan 225, which is before Jalan 222.

This place we checked out first was called Zi-Tan. Taiko had a chair he spotted - he broke his computer chair sometime back and had been scouting for a replacement.


Wah ... full of stuff I would have found in Thailand anyways ... but in Malaysia the price gets marked up a bit. Actually, a lot. Now I know why people go hunt their antiques or high end decor items in Bali or Chiangmai directly. Even with freight, it's probably cheaper.


Zi-Tan has a good variety of Chinese, Tibetan and Thai decor items and antiques. What you really have to be mindful of is that antiques really means restored, pre-owned furniture. I don't think I want that. But there are pieces which are modern, up-to-date reproductions, which seems more attractive to me.

Then we crossed the street to Chinatown.


This place have so much more pieces, and they're mostly Chinese pieces, with some Tibetan ones. But what separates this place with Zi-Tan is that the sales people are more friendly. Peggy basically helped us a lot and talked about each piece, the history and the nuances. Very helpful to the noobs like us.

I know it's really worth nothing ... but I took the world's smallest roundabout 3 times today. How small was it? So small it's a joke. I mean, let's just scrap it and turn it into a proper cross junction with functioning traffic lights, shall we? It's probably a meter or so in diameter only.


And we went to Leisure Mall to catch Ultraviolet. There's plenty of action - the fight scenes were great. But I was disappointed with the quality of the special effects - watch out for the motorbike chase scene at the start ... it's utter crap. You'd expect better nowadays. Or maybe you'd only expect those sort of effects in Hong Kong / Korean movies where the budgets are more modest.

And then, off to Yulik for hawker food dinner. I haven't had hawker food for a while, so I jumped at the chance. The famous yong tau foo stall wasn't open today, so we settled for the fish ball noodle, which wasn't too bad. It was too dark for any photos there - and I certainly didn't want to take the chance that when my camera flashes and takes the photo of whatever I'm eating a roach or some huge rodent will appear, so I thought I'd just assume everything is ok and eat.

I've gotta say - somehow it's true - you can make food as elaborately as you like - like how hotels and fancy restaurants do it, but the best ones are in simple road side stalls. Food, it appears is all about the simplicity and essence. Ever taken shark fin's soup in a roadside stall in Bangkok or Hong Kong? Sure beats the thousand bucks' bowls I've had elsewhere. (Of course, sponsored one lah .. )