…my cuppa iced coffee…

Yesterday was definitely not a good day for me. I’m not sure whether it was the chicken rice I had for dinner the night before, or the fried rice I had for breakfast the next morning. The result was diarrhea the whole day and 3 rounds of  puking my guts out. Man, that was painful!

After twice depositing my breakfast into the toilet bowl, I went to the clinic with the hope that I would get medical leave from the doctor. Alas, the doctor did not believe I was sick. He checked my blood pressure, my body temperature and my stomach.. and everything was normal. The fact that I looked completely okay did not help one bit, of course.

But then, what was I supposed to do? Puke right on his lap just to prove that I was sick?

Then with this sceptical look on his face, probably irritation as well, he gave me 5 packets of oral rehydration salts, some pills for diarrhea and vomiting, and no medical leave. Damn! He probably thought I was faking the whole thing.

Maybe I should’ve puked right then and there.

Anyway, I got back to the office, had lunch (or tried to) and got sick all over again. My friend gave me a packet of the local cure for diarrhea and vomiting – the Chi Kit Teck Aun pills. They definitely worked wonders because right after that, I puked my guts out again. Arrggghhhhh!!!

But hey, wonder of wonders.. I immediately felt better.

Not having the energy to wait until 6 pm, I applied for a half-day emergency leave (even though it was already 3 something pm), took the lrt home and promptly collapsed on my bed.

So, if something like this happens to you, my advice.. unload your breakfast/lunch/dinner right on the doctor’s lap. He’ll send you home in a blink of an eye.

Are you into bargain food? Good taste, generous portion at affordable prices? If you are, then I recommend this place at Taman Mayang, Petaling Jaya. It’s just a simple road-side stall just like the ones you see everywhere. Simple. Nothing fancy. But the food… you can see for yourself. Yummm… 

Those are only 4 dishes out of probably 10. You can choose chicken, seafood, even lamb. Everything was fresh and with the huge servings, it’s definitely a haven for big eaters. Prices? From only RM15 to RM40. Or maybe RM50. Reasonable, no?

Taste? As good as the ones you can get from 5-star hotels or restaurants. Definitely can’t beat the value, though, since you don’t have to pay for the plus plus.

So… have I tempted you yet? Contact me if you want to know how to get there. You definitely won’t regret it.

I had lunch today at Secret Recipe KL Sentral. Not in the mood for rice, I ordered the Tom Yum Kung with noodle.

It tasted off right from the beginning.

I mean, if you’ve eaten the dish several times already, you’d know something is not right. I ate several spoons of noodle and vegetable before touching the prawns. They looked sickly, soft to the touch and smelled bad. I was rather disappointed that there weren’t any maggot when I peeled the skin.

Needless to say, I totally lost my appetite.

I showed the waitress the smelly prawns and she took them back to the kitchen. I was kind of expecting that she would come back and apologise and maybe give me a discount or something as compensation. Nothing happened. When I got the bill, I asked her whether any action will be taken regarding the matter. She only said no and that the kitchen staff apologised for the bad prawns. I told her, since they were not taking any action on this, I will take action.

So… what I did or going to do..

1. The moment I got back to the office, I complained to Secret Recipe via their website.
2. I wrote about it in my blog and other community boards.
3. Write to the newspapers.

Why did I not complain to the manager, you asked. Simply because I am not the type who likes to make scenes in public. If I did complain and they give me a new bowl of Tom Yum Kung noodle, I’d probably get slightly fresher but still bad prawns as before. Just so that you know, a colleague of mine sitting several tables away also had the same dish, and she also had same bad prawns.

So, my motive is more to teaching them a lesson. The more people know about this, the better they’ll learn that serving bad food is totally unacceptable.

It’s very disappointing that something like this is happening at an established food outlet like Secret Recipe.

___________________________________

Updates (05/01/2008)

I sent this message to Secret Recipe via their website on 30/12/2008:

“I had tom yum kung for lunch today at your outlet at KL Sentral. Did you know that they served prawns that already went bad? The smell was awful and I was surprised that they didn’t have maggots on them. I did not call the manager to complain mainly because I had already lost my appetite. I asked the waitress whether any action will be taken on the matter but she said it was the kitchen staff’s responsibility and not hers. So because of that, I will take action. A lot of people will know about this. Highly likely the newspapers as well.“

Their Customer Services responded a couple of hours later:

“Dear Mr Awangku,
.
Thank you for your email.
.
On behalf of the team we apologize for your unpleasant experience. We will forward your comments to our higher management for further investigation.
.
Our outlet manager should be contacting you soon about this.“

I responded by informing them that similar incident happened to my colleague around the same time and left them my phone number.

Today, around noon, the Secret Recipe franchisee manager (if I’m not mistaken) called me. We had a little chat, which you can easily guess what we talked about, and around 20 minutes ago, I received this email from her:

“Dear En Awang,

As spoken this morning, first and foremost our humble apology for the unpleasant experience at our KL Sentral outlet. We are investigating the matter and our outlet Manager, Ms Farah will get to you shortly. Your friend’s incident will also be investigated and we will revert to her shortly. Yes, as agreed, we are prepared to offer you and your friend, Cik Mahani a complimentary meal at our outlet.

We assure you that this unfortunate incident is unusual and it does not represent the overall standard and quality of Secret Recipe ie it could be due to some mistake at our outlet only.  In any case, we thank you for patronising our outlet and hope to see you again. Thanks for the feedback, you will be contacted shortly for the detail explanation and complimentary meal.“

To be honest, I’m not really pining for the complimentary meal and it doesn’t bother me at all whether they gave me one or not. I’m just disappointed that something like this can happen in a respectable food outlet. They should be more strict with the food quality control.

I signed up with Internet-Webhosting.com when I decided to have my own .com blog and do away sith the free hosting at Wordpress. The main reason for the choice was the package they offer: RM 80 per year for 2 GB disk space and 20 GB monthly bandwidth. A good choice for a new blogger like me.

Throughout the months I was with them, I encountered a few hiccups – setting up errors, server hard disks went kaput, my posts disappeared… but their support staff were extremely helpful and the problems were fixed moderately fast.

Along the way, however, I started to look for other web hosting options and stumbled across Senihost.

Hosting packages

Senihost offers 2 hosting packages: Valusite and Prosite.

Unfortunately, the Valusite package is already sold out, or so they say. I think it’s just a tactic for people to sign up for the Prosite packages.   But don’t get me wrong. The Prosite package is still a bargain.

I chose Prosite Standard to test things out: 20 GB disk space, 60 GB monthly bandwidth etc etc all for only RM 100 per year. Not bad. They have Prosite Expert, but at this point.. maybe not. That was in October 2008 and so far, everything is running smoothly. No downtime, no database error, no nothing. Excellent! 

Affiliate program

If you are interested in earning some extra income, you can look into their affiliate program. It’s activated automatically when you sign up for any hosting package. They even give you RM 50 to start you off. And for every client you referred, as long as they maintain their subscription, you will get 12% recurrent income. Nice, huh? 

So… if you want to try hosting your own blog, why not try Senihost? You can even register your own domain name through them at only RM 40 for one year.

How the time flew. It felt like a couple of months ago since I had those cheeky cupcakes from Aziz for my birthday. No cupcakes this time, though. Although, thanks to my team at work (kak Zef, Chee Choon, kak Ita, Chew, Affa, Yean Ming and Sam), I got my first surprise birthday party ever. It was probably the first time ever anybody celebrated a birthday with several slices of tiramisu and cheese cakes instead of a whole one.

But thank you, guys.. I really really appreciate it.

As for birthday wishes, the first one I received was from Nor Syam – like 6 hours before midnight. Very advanced, this woman. Hehehe…

Thank you to everybody for the wishes. I’m going to list all of them here. It’s tacky.. but who cares 

SMS

1. Safuan 15/12 11:51 pm – “Selamat hari jadi semoga hari2 yg mendatang memberikan seribu kebahgiaan, dipanjangkan umur, dimurahkan rezeki & sentiasa bahagia disamping yg tersayang ”
2. Zue 16/12 12:00 am – “Happy birthday lelaki”
3. Nai 12:15 am – “Hapy bday. May Allah bles u”
4. Sayang 12:29 am – “Epi bday.. Tua da.. Haha.. Rndu kat abg ni. Sayang pun da makin syg”
5. Syed Mufadzal 12:35 am – “Happy Birthday Yus… ”
6. Aziz 12:56 am – “See? I almost forgot. Happy birthday handsome. Love ya lots ”
7. Syaril 2:46 am – “Happy birthday!”
8. Shakderaman 8:59 am – “Hepy Besdey Sayangku.. Muahkss.. Dah tua ye ye hehe..”
9. Fid 9:18 am – “Hepi besday nok! Semoga lg pjg umur, dmurahkn rezeki & dpjgkn jodoh.. Amin.. Hehe”
10. Eina 9:22 am – “Hepi besday u olls! Aku doakan semoga d limpahkan rahmat, kesihatan dan murah rezki slalu. Syg u olls! Take cre n teruskn muhasabah diri ye.. Hehe”
11. Zamri 10:39 am – “Happy Birthday”
12. Zai 10:42 am – “Awang darling. HAPPY BIRTHDAY. Luv, Zai”
13. Amy 2:23 pm – “Salam.. eppy beday.. sweet 36.. hope pjg umo n dmurahkn rezeki..”
14. Eva 8:30 pm – “Happiest bday to u wahai Awangku! B-)”
15. Calvin 11:09 am – “Hey awang, many happy returns n may u have joyous bdays to come! ”

Facebook

1. Nor Syam 15/12 6:08 pm – “epi besday.. epi birday.. hepi buffday.. and happy birthday to you.. wish u all the best..”
2. Rizal Hamdan 16/12 1:29 am – “happy birthday !!!!”
3. Syed Mufadzal 7:57 am – “Happy Birthday Yus… (“,)”
4. Azmiena Najibah 9:14 am – “happy bufdaaaaaaaaaay tooooo uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu !!”
5. Muhamad Pitrah 9:21 am – “eppy bday 2u.. eppy bday 2u.. eppy bday 2 awg… eppy bday 2u… (sambil nyanyi…)”
6. Azlina Hashim 9:34 am – “awang, happy birthday. Lunch nanti naik tingkat 4, i belanja hahahaha”
7. Taikoh Ong 9:39 am – “Happy Birthday… Webman… hahaha”
8. Muhammad Tabrizi 9:43 am – “Happy Birthday Bro…!!!”
9. Hasrina Ismail 9:58 am – “Happy birthday awang..”
10. Shahamir Fariz 10:04 am – “Happy Birthday!!”
11. Khairul Nizam 10:46 am – “awangg!!! selamat hari lahirrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!! semoga panjang tgn lagi nak spike… hahahahahha….”
12. Encik Alangz 10:52 am – “Salam bro… slamat hari lahir.. moga success slalu..”
13. Aznee Othman 12:01 pm – “happy birthday…..”
14. Na’dhir ‘Arzd Fahmy’ Radzi 2:21 pm – “Happy birthday….”
15. Nor Haidawati Ab Malek 2:29 pm – “Apy Besday awang….. May Allah Bless U Forever….”
16. Faidz Othman 3:41 am – “happy birthday!! ”
17. Amir Azhar Jamaluddin 4:07 pm – “Happy Bday n best wishes…. nanti aku langgar ko…. muahahaha”
18. Gyna Zakaria 4:27 pm – “eppy besday eppy besday to uuuuu… lallallalalalla”
19. Aziz Draim 4:47 pm – “MUUUUUUAAAH!! Tak leh lebih2, pasal orang tu dah ‘in a relationship’ katanyer.. Happy birthday, Yus. Hugs, A.”
20. Teoh Pei Hsia 6:07 pm – “happy birthday….”
21. Andre Amir 11:45 pm – “hey babe! Happy birthday! Hope you have a good one! Enjoy! ”

To top everything else, my volleyball mates bought me a cake. Thank you guys… really appreciate the whole thing.