Australian open 2nd men's semi final

One word. WOW. Blood(well maybe not),sweat, tears,drama, edge of the seat stuff. An exhibition of strength,stamina,concentration and pure emotion. I can tell you I stood up and applauded in front of the TV a few times. WOW. Got to hand it to the Spaniards. No holding back bull shit. Whatever vitamins Nadal is taking, I reckon everyone should get some. Note to the people in charge of women's tennis : when you run out of good looking chicks who can actually play, and who are still interested in playing, you guys are in trouble. Make the fatties play five sets. After all they get the same bloody prize money. Hopefully Roger will show some emotion in the final. The guy's a class act but shit he's booooring.

Lahore - food paradise part 2

Firstly an apology. Some of my Pakistani friends have taken exception to my earlier blog. They clarify that Lahore is the food paradise of Pakistan, not a food paradise per se. I stand corrected. I suppose the people in Karachi and Islamabad will also have their ideas about that, but getting caught up in parochial debates is not something I want to be involved in.

spring in Lahore

Spring came early this year. Winters seem to be getting shorter, and summers wetter. Pakistan, say hi to Global warming. Anyway I like winters here, they are not wet, and when the sun is out it's great. Spring is way better, flowers are out, time to buy some plastic chairs and drink wine in the garden. Ya right. It's whisky all the way as it would be silly to sneak wine in, lower alcohol content and all that. Pity.

adding gadgets

Hey. Just learnt how to add gadgets. Kewl.

another restaurant review - Stevie's Golden Wok

OK. It's the first day of chinese new year and I am alone in Lahore. So we had dinner at Golden Wok, DHA phase 3. GW is a Thai/Chinese place owned by Steve Wong, a Chinese Pakistani or is it Pakistani Chinese? In case you are confused, he's yellow. The chinese there is well, really for the locals. But the Thai there is actually not bad. Try the tom yam, green curry and red curries. The squid salad is also not too bad. And the good thing is you can bring your grog safely, the staff are quite bottle friendly. The other 2 Thai places are the one in PC and Lemon Grass in town. LG is no big deal but holds good memories for me. It was the first place I had a drink in lahore. I was 2 weeks in lahore and a mate of mine came to visit me. We finished one and a half litres of Chivas 18 year old that night. When you have been dry for 2 weeks .... Apparently when he went back to the hotel he had to ask the staff to bring him to the room cos he could not remember which room he was in (and this was after numerous tries with the key).

women tennis players are fat

OK. another rant. Was watching the Aussie Open on TV and I just realised most women tennis players are fat. And I realised why. Women's tennis do not really need a high level of fitness. I mean look at the chick that beat Ivanovic, I was telling myself if it goes to 3 sets she's gone cos she's carrying around at least an excess of 5 kg. Boy was I wrong. And again she lasted 3 sets against Jelena the next day. I reckon what with the equipment and the new power game, you don't need the fitness anymore. Just pummel your opponents. And 3 sets? C'mon. Don't get me wrong, I prefer watching women's tennis to men's, but let's see these overpaid fatties suffer the five setter, with the cramps and the dehydration and the buckets of sweat. That's drama. And the thing that really gets me is the medical breaks the players are allowed. What crap. If your're injured, stiff, you lose.

more reviews - Dynasty restaurant at Avari

Since we are on restaurants, it would be negligent not to mention what most expats consider the best chinese restaurant in Lahore. Bonnie the exec chef (filipino chinese) has been in Lahore for 20 years! That's impressive. Anyway, I would recommend(and most of these are not on the menu, so you have to talk to Bonnie) the seafood soup, the spinach soup (I still have not figured out how he removes the "earthy taste", believe me we have tried everything from soaking overnight to blanching to putting in shit loads of ginger), the lobster, the beef steak, chinese mushroom, soy sauce chicken. No I'm sorry there is NO shark fin soup nor abalone in Pakistan (repeat : Pakistanis are not very seafoody).

restaurant review - marco polo at pearl continental

Went for a farewell dinner for Chris, Margaret and Jessica who are being posted to Kuwait. Should be a nice change, paying 1 dinar to USD 3/=. Whee. Anyway I've been to Marco Polo for dinner before but never tried the buffet. Truth be told, it was not too bad. The salad bar was pretty good, only thing missing was probably iceberg lettuce. The spread was not extensive but enough. Can't eat that much anyway, at least not since the teenage years. The continental was reasonable and the Pak was, well, I am not Pakistani, so really my taste may not be indicative, but I found it pretty good. Pasta corner was limited to tomato based sauce and cream (as usual). I asked for olive oil and to be fair to the staff they actually made an attempt to get what I wanted. Anyway it was a pretty good night out thanks to the company.

metro opens in DHA

Metro the hypermart opened in DHA on 15 January ! No need to go all the way to the other side of town to buy proper seafood anymore. The only irritating bit is you need to provide your company National Tax Number, as they have they have this stupid business model where you must have a minimum of 2000 rupee purchase. wtf? Anyway now seafood is available all year round. yay!

back from bangkok

Just got back after 3 nights in Bangkok. I think this was the first time I have gone to Bangkok without playing golf. Aaaargh. Busy buying trees and looking at nurseries. Had a mad driver on Monday who was doing 160km/hr on the way south of Bangkok in an OLD corolla. It was so old it did not have a safety belt at the back. So yours truly just shut his eyes and slept and pretended not to know. Still did a lot of drinking eating and major foot massaging though. And here's another rant, why no refloxology in Lahore? Nothing sexual and I seriously doubt there's any mention anywhere that it's not halal. O yes managed to put on 1 kg in 3 days, Good effort.

poker sessions in Lahore

Had visitors up from KL the past few days. That usually means overeating, drinking, late nights and generally boys night out. Visitors normally do not stay more than 2 days as by the second day, it's "what's there to do?" Too bad guys, it's Lahore. Suck it up. Anyway now and then we also organise poker sessions besides the above mentioned activities, and with funny money rupee, the amounts bet sound pretty impressive. Thousands. Problem for the KL guys is that if they win they have nowhere else to spend it :).

Things that make life bearable in Lahore

There are basically 4 things that make life bearable in Lahore. (1) Golf. There are now 3 courses in Lahore ie Gymkhana, Garrison and Royal Palm. Gymkhana is dead flat but has pretty good greens and big huge trees. The rough is pretty long as I think they may not have the machinery to cut, which makes hitting into the trees/rough "jail". Garrison is also dead flat and pretty much hit and giggle. The club is pretty casual and is normally a very relaxed outing. Royal Palm is short and very tight. The rough is pretty brutal as machinery I think is a problem, and greens are small but do not bite. It's fun if you keep the tee shots on the fairway. I have not played in Palm for the past 9 months ever since the elections as they stopped serving grog (used to be the only place that served grog). (2) Cable TV - 90 channels, lots of sports channels including the South African ones, but too much cricket on tv. Movie channels are great as with other things in Pakistan, no intellectual property worries. I personally do not have a problem watching pirated movies as I won't lose any sleep if Tom Cruise makes a million or so less. (3) Internet - it's unstable as hell, and the load shedding really pisses you off especially if you are downloading stuff (music,movies, porn let's face it). Also the government does not block any sites. They tried blocking Youtube once but ended up screwing up all the ISP's. (4) Grog which we bring in ourselves

lahore - food paradise

OK. Another rant coming up. It really pisses me off when locals call Lahore a food paradise. WHAT??? Most of the local food (which I actually like, being Malaysian, which automatically makes you a foodie) do tend to taste the same after a while, and there are only two other ways of cooking in Lahore, deep fried or bbq'd. What food paradise? Can't get Korean, Vietnamese, middle eastern, south east asian, and there is practically no choice for Japanese or Chinese. And don't get me started on western. No french, italian etc. Just the standard fare. Everything is swimming in sauce, cream etc. Can't even get an aglio olio. No fresh seafood, not that they would know how to cook it (see comments on cooking methods above). You get the idea. When one is "katak bawah tempurung" ie Malay for frog under coconut shell, one should not make such grandoise sweeping claims.

Back again(!)

Wow, time flies. been away from Lahore for 2 weeks . Heaven, ate like a pig, drank lots, played golf, even went to Langkawi. O yes, spent new year at the club(Tropicana), good do, with a life band, disco, fireworks, games for the kids etc. Will probably do it again next year. Anyways , back to silly immigration procedures again. This time had 2 guys jumping the queue. And locals being too polite, let them . But not this rude expatriate uh uh no way. Told them off, asked them "what are you doing, there's a queue, come on". To be fair, with the local customary politeness they apologised and went back. :)). Apparently there was a bomb in Lahore on Christmas day, 2 died but no coverage. Too small maybe. It's sad when "only" 2 died gets zero coverage. Some Langkawi Christmas eve photos. Wonder when if ever Pakistan can have activities like these. Others are the cable car station and the view from top