This weekend is gonna be a total blast!

Atmah (Action To Mobilize All Humanity), an organization that was set up at advocate for and educate the lower income communities is running a charity treasure hunt from the 14-15 August.

 

Starting point : PJ. Destination : Cameron Highland. Total distance travelled : 219km

Prizes : RM 3000, 2000, 1000

Why would I be that excited about a treasure hunt (besides the prize), you might ask? Could it be because it’s gonna be held in Cameron?

 

To be honest, I’m not all gungho about Cameron Highlands. There’s nothing to do there except drive up and down endless rows of tea trees and hunt for strawberries.

 

There’s also the legendary Cameron Highland Pasar Malam.

Contrary to popular belief, the Pasar Malam is NOT an attraction. It is a major Disaster… the main cause of daily traffic havoc from 4pm – 8pm.

 

The pasar malam is STRATEGICALLY located in Brinchang, smack in the center of the ONLY road that goes through all the towns in Cameron Highland.

 

 

How not to have traffic jam gila babi you tell me? How to treasure hunt there you tell me? By the end of the hunt, even cactus will fall asleep laa.

 

 

 

Anyway.

 

I’m still excited.

 

That’s because it is my first Motor Treasure Hunt ever. I’ve joined normal treasure hunts, but this is one that needs me to drive around woh. Best.

 

I received some even better news this evening, that we’ll be receiving petrol coupons. Free Petrol wei.

 

My car is gona get an orgasm when she finds out about it. Yeah baby.

 

And the Bestest part is this:

 

Out of 60 cars that will be participating in this event, there’s about 7 cars whose members are Salsa Kakis. Which means that when the treasure hunt part is over, it’s gona be Salsa All Night Long..!

 

And since we’re taking a night in Equatorial Resort, our salsa uncle Ganesh has arranged for us to crash the ballroom for the night. There is Nothing that can be better than that babeh.

 

I wonder if I’ll be able to revive the memories from the Salsa Cruise last year. Man. I think about it also I gatal liao. Feet moving and tapping around too. LOL.

 

This time, I will be joined by @NatC, @Andygts & @Rachelmeiq in our team of 4. We will fight to navigate our way through the treacherous roads of Cameron, dodging strawberry attacks and random road animals.

@Rachelmeiq                                                   @andygts                                         @NatC

 

And this 3 fellas in my team are super smangat. Siap dengan laptop, mobile broadband, thesaurus, dictionary, GPS etc.

 

It was all good…until last night when we were required to submit a team name.

 

After about 2 hours of major debate (over BBM chat), and coming out with an exhaustive arsenal of names, we finally rested on a final suggestion. But before I announce it, here are some of the ideas : LOL, OMG, WTF, OMG NOM NOM, Don’t Follow Me I’m Lost, Trailblazers, Hensem, Pirates…etc…

 

I personally liked ‘Team OMG’. But there was a 2 vs 2 vote against it, so it was taken off the list. And finally, we ended up with..

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Team Macho Divas.

Sigh.

 

I know, it sounds wrong on so many levels. To me, it initially sounded like we are a team of AH QUA running around Cameron Highlands. ‘Machos AND Divas’ is perfect, but it just sounded too long…So it was decided. We would remove the ‘AND’ to be ‘Macho Divas’ this weekend.

 

And seeing that we have such a mixed-up team name, it only makes sense to have a mixed up team banner as well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh boy, I can’t wait. If you want to know what happens this weekend, make sure you follow me on Twitter at @euveng. There’ll be plenty of time to tweet when we inevitably get stuck in traffic jam haha.

 

Cheers!
EVo

I was invited for the Club Launch at the Desire at the Manor last Thursday.

It’s really unusual of me to hang out at events on a Thursday night, because as some may know, my salsa class falls on a Thursday.

Due to unfaltering attempts by someone who always invites me out (for some strange reason, always on a Thursday night), I finally relented and decided to call off my class, just to layan her.

@Meiyingt, thanks for the invite. For me skipping my class, you owe me only 1000 dances when you actually start salsa-ing.

Desire at the Manor has three rooms: Desire, O Walk and The Terrace.

One side of the dining area is made up of tables…

….the other side is made up of an entire row of plush mattresses and pillows.

It’s really quite perfect if you’ve had enough of the formal tables and chairs..and if you choose to get a little less formal..and cosy up a little. Yeah baby. *ahemmarcky*

The manager of the joint was pretty accommodating and we were asked to order anything we wanted off the menu. Now THAT’s how a food review should be like!

Note or warning : The snacks you will see from this point are enticing. If it’s just before lunch time, I don’t really suggest reading on

#1 Cajun Chicken Wings

These 4 wings were fried to almost perfection, with the skin golden crisp, and the meat well marinated. Totally irresistible. The reason why you see only 3 pieces is because Marc_ky stole one of it before I could take a picture..this fella ah!

#2 For the life of me I can’t remember the name of this salad that Marc_ky ordered, but he claims that the mushrooms were intensely flavorful and left an awesome aftertaste.

I guess if you wanna order this at the Manor, you’ll have to show the waiter this photo. I really don’t know the name. Fail.

#3  Seafood Pesto

My main dish was rather disappointing, as all I could taste was bland cream sauce. It’s supposed to consist of prawns, mussels, squids and eggplant, but the squid pieces were as big as a ‘kacang putih’ ; I had to dig around to find it under a large pile of noodles.

And the prawns were inconsistently sized. Might as well call this dish ‘Scrap Seafood Pesto’.

I also ‘recorded’ @BangsarBabe’s comments on my pasta via facial expression. LOL.

1. 2. 3.

Haha.

#4 My dessert : Warm Chocolate Cake.

I completely loved this bit of pastry, as it melted in my mouth like it was made from pure chocolate without flour, yet it wasn’t. Sabrina, Kogi, Marcky and me finished this up really fast, with only light brown stains left on the plate when we were done.

I was mostly satisfied when dinner was over, but the best was yet to come. I came very close to what I would describe as ‘The Longest Pair of Legs I’ve ever seen in My Life, or ever in the Near Future’.

Seriously. I’m convinced that she could have auditioned for a Giraffe or Ostrich role in the zoo. I would’ve looked like a friggin Hobbit next to her.

I also met Celine Yap there after a long long long time!

One of Celine’s model friends, Natacha. So very hawt that she sizzled in my arms.

Overall I had a great time in the Manor, but they definitely need more work in the mains dishes. They can’t expect people to order snacks and desserts all the time! Marcky’s continuous rendition of Shakira’s ‘Waka waka’ kept us entertained throughout the night.

In a nutshell, this picture pretty much sums up my experience that night.

Desire at the Manor is:

60,62,64 Jalan Doraisamy, Kuala Lumpur

The Manor – man·or. Defined as the main house on the estate by virtue of its privilege position.
Manor has now 3 rooms.
Desire, O Walk and The Terrace.
Open 6 nights a week, serving the best happy hours from 5pm – 9pm.

Click here for the facebook page.

Cheers!
EVo

When were you last part of an automobile convoy?

I was given a chance to experience the exhilaration of being in one last weekend, when Rebecca asked me to save my Saturday morning to join the fun.

You might think that Rebecca just satisfied my wet dreams of taking an F430 down the highway at breakneck speeds, but reality said that I should do something a little smaller for the time being:

‘A Day out in the All New Freed’

The all new Honda Freed is out!

Advertlets, being one of Honda’s media partner, organized a special blogger preview ‘A Day Out in the Honda Freed’ half day event, that included:

A test drive of 9 cars with 4 or 5 of us in a car from Souled Out Cafe to Putrajaya.

I know it’ doesn’t look very much like the group of red cars at the top of the post, but we were riding high and felt pretty much like it. Until we were overtaken by a convoy of BMWs on a test drive. Life is not fair at all.

Surf’s up for Leonard Chua of An Honest Mistake!

So this is what happened. The drive to and fro Souled Out (Hartamas) and Putrajaya is about 80km, so each of us got to feel 20km of the highway in the Freed.

Through our journey, I learnt the following Freed’s selling points:

(1)  Really smooth ride.

You can take it to 140 km/h on the highway and won’t hear the engine screaming for help.

Instead, there’s good stability in the passenger compartment, and and importantly, there’s minimal wind noise at these speeds. The gear shift is surprisingly smooth from ‘Neutral’ to ‘Drive’, where one will normally feel a light jerk in many other cars of this range.

(2) Automatic Dual Sliding Doors.

Just pull on the latch and the door slides out. Particularly useful for the older folk, or lazy folk like myself. Pretty surprising since this feature is present on higher range of MPVs like Toyota Alphard, and even the Alphard has only 1 Auto door, while the Freed has two. Lazy people, rejoice!

Maybe one day all cars will have Auto Front door, Auto Front passenger door, Auto Change-Tire, Auto Fill-Petrol, Auto-Everything. All we have to do is wire our brain signals to the car and we’ll reach Ipoh before we know it.

(3)  Lots of head room and open floor.

Photo courtesy of Eric Yong

I enjoyed having plenty of head room in the passenger compartment. (Rather) High cars like the Freed are not built for performance, so it doesn’t matter that ‘it’s so high..not aerodynamic etc..’. It’s just great that I don’t have to worry about hitting the ceiling each time I go over a hump. This doesn’t affect the middle row so much, but it does in the BACK seat of many other mini-MPVs, like the Avanza.

Note : the dude in the pic is Zen. He’s significantly taller than me, but it doesn’t take a tall guy to complain about car headspace. Short guys can bang ceiling too, okay?

The floor space of the Freed is flat across, which is great. This easily overlooked feature is perfect for ergonomics, especially if passengers need to move around the back seat. Some cars have a hump in the center, thanks to air-ducts / handbrake / petrol tank. Pain in the ass.

We is the Team 4!

L to R : @chualeo, Shamhardy, EVo, @botakai, @feeqsays

Extra feature in the front seat.. Made possible by Team 6..hehe.

My only real complain came when I was passenger at the back seat (3rd row). I was bouncing up and down even while we were on a straight stretch of road. I feel that Honda could have done better in the suspension department. Then again, I suppose this happens to cars of this range and price. Oh well.

In general, it was a real joy driving the Freed around, especially when we were escorted by a great deal many babes. <3

Esty, what is your right hand doing? @.@

(From L to R : Monique Low, <insert name>, Arystle, Esty, Hanie, Paul Tan, Harve Singh, Smashpop, Rames, Myjayz, Ellie.
Photo courtesy of Eric Yong

Honda very smartly ended the day in true blogger style…a photoshoot contest, using Polaroids! The best polaroids in Individual and Group categories win prizes!

A real. Polaroid. In my hand. I can’t remember if I ever played with any of these in my entire life. That’s how much digital photography has spoiled me. LOL.

And the prizes did not come in the form of vouchers, snacks or promotional items.. these guys won iPods and Garmin GPS wei. Shiok.

It’s kinda strange how the fun factor at event tends to takes your focus away from the actual product i.e. the car. It becomes an ‘item on my blog’ rather than ‘an item I would buy’. But after leaving the event and giving some thought, it does feel like a great car!

Having said that, when the day actually comes where I need to purchase a Mini-MPV, Honda Freed would quite definitely make it to the top of my list Check out the Honda site for more details.

Cheers!
EVo