Phase Ignition!

"Quod Scripsi, Scripsi."

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Another way of Describing Paul David

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

"Can you please grind that for a French Press?"

Its a tasty world. Made even more tastier thanks to Eyeris. Yes, ever since I read his "Expert Guide", I dragged wifey around looking for Bodum French Presses. Got one late last year for RM 49.90 from Isetan KLCC, looked exactly like the one eyeris has and started of with (Again inspired by Eyeris) Costa Rican Coffee from San Fran. 100 grams for RM10.90. I didn't like it so much cos of the rather strong acidity.(Now i can talk like a coffee expert!)


Another guy who loves coffee in the office, Khalis [that's such a cool name!] suggested that we should start buying beans by the bag load and share. Sounded like a plan...Another colleague joined in and soon we were buying 227 gram coffee bean bags from Coffee Bean (Sorry Eyeris, the San Fran is Bukit Bintang is NOT happening at all!). All in all, we calculated that a single cup of freshly brewed coffee will cost us around RM2.00. That in my opinion is WAY much worth it than crappy take away Nescafe (It tastes horrible!) from the mamak behind the office that costs RM1.50!

So I also got myself a nice insulated Thermos mug (Thanks to my Jusco points!) and we began our exploration into the world of Coffee. Unlike Eyeris, I like my coffee quite naked. Bit O' sugar and I'm good. Same goes for the other 2 in the office. We were aiming to try as many types of blends as possible. After a couple of months, we had gone thru all of these:









We started off with Coffee Bean's Holiday Blend. Not much of body, not too bad aroma but it was unsatisfying. Moved on to Coffee Bean's Viennese and StarBucks' Espresso and we were quite disappointed because it tasted so Nescafe-ish.








In between came a bag of Coffee Bean's Hazelnut infused coffee that smelled really good (the rest of the office was drooling!) and tasted not too bad [3 out of 5 in my books]. Then, we hit the paydirt. Sumatra from Coffee Bean. Wow! great body, fantastic aroma and smooth as HE-double-Hockey-Sticks... what could be better than this? we thought.

Well, Coffee Bean's Kenya AA.


Thats what. Hailed as one of the best in the World, we heartily agreed to its bold strong-ish flavour and aroma. It advertised "wine-like acidity" but our palates failed to pick up that. All in all it made really good drinking coffee and remains our joint favorite with Coffee Bean's Mocha Java. Mocha not as in Coffee with chocolate but a combination of Ethiopian Yirgacheffe (try saying that fast while yer drunk!) Beans and Java Estate Coffee. Its flavour is so ..bright and the smell just makes everyone in the office to just stop whatever their doing and look up. Saw a few dreamy eyes during those brewing sessions as well.

We also discovered that we really didn't like European and South American Coffees. We didn't like Dark roasts cos most of the coffee (oil, essence and all) had been charred off the bean. Now, if only I could find that Balinese Coffee that I had in a small coffee factory in Denpasar.

Speaking of which, I was speaking to a guy from Nestle Indonesia the other day and he claims that Starbucks actually sent their team to villages in Indonesia to find that perfect Sumatran/Javan Coffee. That still won't change our minds about buying from Starbucks cos their beans are expensive and I seem to have found the right Coffee Bean in KL Plaza that actually KNOW how to grind the beans for my French Press. All in all we're having a blast...If you have the inclination, pick up this (some say) art form and feed that inner caffeine addict!
Credits:
All Images by Khalis, All text by me.

Monday, March 19, 2007

The Great Desktop Challenge - Latest

Oh my, I've created a monster! Huge big Kudos goes out to Papa and Mikey for tagging plenty of other people with this challenge who in turn, tagged other people. I looked around, followed the links and found these few. Just a sample of links here, please do visit

Mikey's Tag
Little Miss May

Doctor? Chen

Little Miss May's Tag
kyh

_butt

Dr Chen's Tag
Papercrazy

Pink Cotton
LB
Will
Bernard Chan

Ok ok... I'm stopping here cos its spread like WILDFIRE on the blogsphere!... Interesting that the original instructions have changed along the way....here's the original:

"minimize everything (as in all windows) until you only see your desktop. Now look at yer keyboard and look for the key that says "Print Screen" (Prnt Scrn on some keyboards). Press that once. Open your fav graphics editor (if you can't afford Photoshop CS like me, then go get yourself some GIMP and proceed to paste and create a new jpeg)Post that up on your blog and drop me a line. Lets see the amazing plethora of desktops that you fellers have."

Here's the 'modified' version:

"Instruction :Minimize everything (as in all windows) until you only see your desktop. Now look at your keyboard and search for the “Print Screen” (or Prt Scr) button. Press that once. U can press twice too if your finger is itchy. Tarak masalah. Open your fav graphic editor. Paste and save tu gambar. Post that up on your blog & share your leng picture with the whole world. Dun forget to drop me a line after u hit the publish button."

Hmm...Internet version of the infamous "broken telephone"

Thanks everyone for taking part!

Thursday, March 01, 2007

Stalk Me.

Yeah. Relive every word from "Every Breath you Take" (not really cos you can't actually SEE me) ..what am I going on about? Why Twitter of course. What is it? err...another one of those Web 2.0 (Click for definition) websites that allows one person to "stalk"(Not in a scary way of course) their friends, family online.

The site has one large box with a question that never changes, "What are you doing now?" the answer of course will change during the course of the day. Whats the point of all this I hear you ask? Just something to while away the day while you go through the InnerWeb. For some people, thats rather um.. exciting. Sign up at the site and you could add your buddies who are already signed up to Twitter and they can ALL stalk you...


Once you sign up, add me.. :p