What's with me and McD

I had my first experience with McD’s black pepper sauced burgers during the CNY of so many years ago. It was in Singapore and the first time the burger was introduced. I came back to KL a few days later and went looking for the same burger here, having acquired a fondness for the spicy peppery taste of the gravy coating the beef/chicken patty. High and low I went searching but to no avail. That particular burger has not been introduced here in Malaysia yet!

Hey, aren’t franchised food outlets like McD supposed to feature the same food choices on their menu wherever they operate? If not worldwide, at least, countries in the same region. I mean, how far off are our food varieties from that of our neighbours, such as Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand?

It was almost 2 years later that we Malaysians finally get to taste McD’s special sauce burger that only appears on their menu during the Chinese New Year period. And whenever this burger surfaced, I would be one of the many queuing up to get a set or two. That’s right; we are talking about the Prosperity Burger here…known by a slightly different name down in Singapore.

Early this year, we were down in Singapore for a short break. And as usual, Orchard Road is on our list of must-go places. When we walked down Orchard Road, weaving in and out the super cool malls and shops, we made a stop for lunch at the McD located in the Robinson’s building. It is common to find this particular McD packed with people at all hours of its operations. They renovated the place and it now seemed a cozy place to hang out at.

But what attracted me this time was, there at the end of this outlet's ordering counter, a dessert kiosk. Yup, a McD dessert kiosk displaying cakes, muffins and spicy chicken wings. And, my fave, latte as well as ice blended drinks. Super cool…

Well, I know better than to come back to KL, all excited and looking for similar offerings at any of the McD outlet here soon after…

Whats with "dis"connection?

Technology…can’t live with them, yet can’t live without them!

Man’s relationship with technology and anything remotely related to technology is a unique love affair of sorts. And when I use the term “man”, I also referred to “woman”.

Over the past few weeks, we have been traveling a fair bit to the northern island state of Penang and then to Terengganu. In between, we’ve had some corporate training in town – some of the government agencies mad rush to cram as much off-site programs as possible into the month before being forced to hold their functions on-site. A directive that came within such a short notice to try and “combat” the evils of upgoing costs. I’ll get into that later.

But we’ve not complaining; hey, whatever that helps put bread on the table (no pun intended in the wake of us being reminded to reduce our intake of rice…again, another tale I will take up later).

In our travel, we take the Acer laptop provided for by our sponsors as this is the fair and right thing to do. While the hotel in Penang provides complimentary use of their wireless connection, for the one in Kuala Terengganu, we have had to pay a reasonable price. I don’t know if using many different outlets is the reason, but when we finally get back home, we just couldn’t get our laptop connected.

And to make matters worst, even the IBM laptop that we had left at home wouldn’t connect to the virtual world! Perhaps it felt hurt being left home alone…I can only imagine.

And so it was that we had to call in our usual maintenance support guys; unfortunately they were only able to come in the nite time since they work elsewhere full time. After a few hours of “tryings”, and checking and re-checking of all laptops, connections and router, only the Acer decided to get itself connected. Sigh, better than none at all I should say so.

Somehow in the few days we were "disconnected", things seemed to come to a halt. I didn’t even have the frame of mind to work on stuff that didn’t need internet connection. Not even to draft materials so I could just paste these on when the connections are back. I even started using the “disconnection” to disconnect myself from socializing with my coffee gal pals…duh!

Hmmm, now that we are somehow connected again, things are coming back to normal…well, not fully. The IBM is still in limbo…