So sad ... a tragedy has happened to me today. I have written 3 paragraphs of what I have done on Sunday but then right on when I switch space of my Redmi Note 3, suddenly the blogger apps was already closed and I couldn't find anything on the draft section. Huhuhu, so now I have to rewrite.

Please wait while I recall of what I have written ...

As usual on Sundays, I started my day with getting lazy and then go to the gym and then out for lunch. As the result, I had lunch very late, normally after 3 pm. One of the thing that I like about having lunch after the gym session was that normally your body will tell you what to eat. This, I rarely have on my regular days. This time around, I wanted to have satay, seems like protein is something that I need.

Before I start to write about the satay, let's talk about the gym session. What I call gym session is basically only treadmil running, a little bit of core exercise and weight-lifting. Not the serious type of weight-lifting where you have to lie down and so on. But more on the lighter side.

This is the weights that I normally use. Yes, you guess right, it's the top left one, 1.25 kg each hehehe. Come on, I don't intend to bodybuild, just to give some muscles for my arm since my washing machine has a leaked pipe, so I have to pour the water everytime using piles.

So, about the treadmill run, it seems like on Saturday I don't have enough food intake. As I wrote earlier, my METS are measured at 5.5 in the machine, and even when I calculate at the website, it shows 8 for approximately 45 minutes, you all agree that I should replace it with proper food. And what I have that day? Just one cup noodle and 1 box of lasagna. Yeah, the laziness got the best of me and thats what I had the whole day. Given that, when I want to run, my body told me not to do as much as yesterday. So, I listened to it.

I set the incline at 1 and then speed all the way up tp 7.5, and gradually comes down to 6.0. And guess what happen? By the time I reach 7.3 when slowing down, I decided to just brisk walking. And as the result, my METS are measured at only 4.5.

Again, when I submit my parameters to this website, http://www.exrx.net/Calculators/WalkRunMETs.html, I have 7.1 METS. For your reference, as the speed I put 6.14, grade 1, bodyweight 50 kg and 45 minutes duration. Lastly, just to complement my exercise, I normally do 30 seconds plank, plus 20 seconds side plank each side.

So, having decided that I would go for satay, I head on to Pasar Seni. Actually, there is another satay place which I would recommend but it's quite far and I have no mood to go to a distance place. Arrived at Pasar Seni, I made an order at one of the kiosk. The one who sell is an Indonesian lady but I'm sure the one who owns the place is Chinese hehhehe. She offered me if I want to buy 6 sticks or 12 sticks. I opted for 12 sticks because I thought maybe I can finish it off but when it came, pheww, it's quite big lol.

And on top of that, I also ordered 2 tiny plate of Dim Sum. Honestly, I feel embarassed because I sat in the center and with this big plate of mine, people would think that I am greedy ... So, my advise to you guys, better to take the smaller portion and buy more should you feel you want more. Half way through the satay, I feel like want to give up, really. But I decided, let's take it slow, and yes I made it.

This is how it looks like the food court in Pasar Seni.

This is the place which sells the satay.

As for today, not much of an update except that I have to face upset clients whose reports are pending due to some mispriority. Not by me, but I was forced to keep it aside. This is a lesson learnt by itself actually. I was contemplating whether to say out loud that it is not my intention to delay their commercial report but then again, I should have known that it will make them upset. In the end, I just apologize because there were so many meetings which I can't skip so it delays the report. For sure, they won't be satisfied but hey, what else can I do ...

Running of New Record

Today I made my new record.

It's been months since after any gym session I felt my heart beats faster. FYI, I am 33 yrs now, 160 cm, and 50 kg. Given all those parameters, my heart beat calculation shall be at 130 for fat burn and 160 for aerobic, and this is the first time I hit them again.

So, what did I do? I have 3 types of running rythm which I normally follow.

The first one is I put on my iPod, warming up for 5 minutes, i.e. walk at speed of 5, and then as the song changed, increase the speed by 1. So, it will be 6, 7, 8 and then stops at 8 and go back to 7, 6 and so on.
For 30 minutes, it is not as tough as I think, so you will still be able to continue until 60 minutes. I wasn't sure of the METS for this rythm, but as far as I feel, it is the easiest.

The second one is I put the incline at 1, and then after the 5 minutes warming up, I will set the run mode in my iPod to 30 minutes run, and I will increase the speed by 0.5 every 5 minutes, so it will be 6, 6.5, 7, 7.5, 8 and 8.5. Sometimes, if I dont have enough energy intake, I won't be able to finish at 8.5, it will stop at 8. This model, I would have 4.xx METS which meets my requirement, but then again, the heartbeat won't even reach 160 bps.

The third one is I put the incline at 0, then add the speed by 0.1 every 1 minute. Sometimes, I can go up to 8.3, sometimes 8, but then, the METS measured is 5.5, which is cool. And as the cooling down, I would just run at 5.5 speed and set the incline to either 1 or 2.

For your reference, today, I run for 27 minutes, start the speed at 6.0 and as the minute increases, add 0.1, and my maximum speed was 8.5, so for the last 2 minutes, I made it 8.5 and 8.4.

Time	Speed
0:01	6.0
0:02	6.1
0:03	6.2
0:04	6.3
0:05	6.4
0:06	6.5
0:07	6.6
0:08	6.7
0:09	6.8
0:10	6.9
0:11	7.0
0:12	7.1
0:13	7.2
0:14	7.3
0:15	7.4
0:16	7.5
0:17	7.6
0:18	7.7
0:19	7.8
0:20	7.9
0:21	8.0
0:22	8.1
0:23	8.2
0:24	8.3
0:25	8.4
0:26	8.5
0:27	8.5
0:28	8.4
Average	7.29

If I keyed in this info to this website, http://www.exrx.net/Calculators/WalkRunMETs.html, I get below results:

As the above METS are already considered vigorous, please see this link for reference https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/mets-activity-table/, if I can maintain min. 3 times a week, hopefully I can meet the requirement of having a good and healthy heart.

Vietnamese Du Viet

All in a sudden, today I have the craving of Vietnamese food, although the one that is familiar to me is only Vietnamese Meatball Soup by Secret Recipe.

So after I finished my gym session and waiting for the laundry, I quickly google Vietnamese restaurant which is available in Nu Sentral or KLCC. Why these 2 malls? Simply because they are very accessible with LRT. My google search found one restaurant in KLCC by the name of Du Viet. They have different branches such as Damansara Uptown, Bangsar and few others.

In KLCC, they are located at the 4th floor, at the very corner next to the Spice of India and Marie France Bodyline.

One criteria that must be met for a restaurant for me to dine in in Kuala Lumpur is if the place is halal or not. If you just google Du Viet halal, there are some results that says so. And when I arrived at the location, I saw several Muslim guests, so yeah I think this is a safe place to eat. Just FYI, Vietnam is not really that well known of its Muslim eateries so it's better to check.

Walking in, not so many people inside, maybe because it's already 4 pm. I made my order of Grilled Lemongrass Beef/Lamb Vermicelli and Homemade Lemongrass Ginger Tea (wow, I didn't realize it was Ginger Tea until I wrote this in ....)

Maybe because it wasn't so packed, my food was served in only like 10 minutes time ... and it was nice. The good thing about Vietnamese food is its sour sauce, like vinegar which you pour and mix it with the vermicelli. As someone who stays in KL for more than a year, you will find more of a fatty food, such as those mixed with coconut milk or deep fried or heavy seasoning. This vinegarese sauce will give you different taste for the food and for example in my case, the mixture looks like Korean bi bim bap but without the super chili sauce.
As I was waiting for the food, I noticed that the seating arrangement is different from normal restaurant setup. Normally, the chairs will face the table, but in this restaurant (and I dont know if it is common in Vietnam), the chairs face a little bit outside as you can see below.

The food has 3 sticks of meats, one is chicken, one is lamb and another one is beef. As the carbo source, there were vermicelli, which is rice noodle, and then the vegetable source would be lettuce, bean sprout and carrots, so it's a complete meal. And the taste for me is nice, because the meats are all tender, you can actually slide down the meat from the stick using the chopstick. It could be the sign of not overcooking. At first, I thought the vinegarese sauce will not be enough, so I dip each and every lettuce to the sauce before eating it. Once all the lettuce are gone, then I just pour the remaining sauce into the bowl.

What I ordered for drink is the homemade lemongrass ginger tea ... at least that's what it said in the receipt. It has something like cendol and low fat yoghurt or ice cream on top. The taste of the yoghurt/ice cream I feel like the float in A&W rootbeer. Somehow, it doesn't feel too heavy for me, maybe because it's already 4pm and I haven't had my lunch.

The price I paid for these 2 items are RM 24.90 for the food and RM 9.90 for the drink. With 10% service charge, RM 3.50, total damage is RM 38.30, a bit high for my normal lunch expense hehehe, but nevertheless, it's a good meal so no regrets 

Ingredient Analysis of Watson Bird Nest Cream

Few days ago, I bought Bird's Nest Silk Facial Cream from Watson, link is here : http://www.watsons.com.my/Unpublished/Skincare/Facial-Care/Facial-Moisturiser/Bird%27s-Nest-Silk-Facial-Cream-50g/p/BP_88997

It felt great in my skin, i.e. it makes my skin becomes moist, and it got me wondering if there is any harmful chemicals, so I start my search on its ingredients.

This comes in a jar, like this

What makes me feeling suspicious too is the jar doesnt have any ingredient written on it, or it may have but it is in Chinese, and I couldnt find the information in Watson website too. Hence, I have to make a second visit to Watson store just to find the ingredients and the license too. FYI, all the ingredients in English is written in its outer box.

Before I went there, I actually did some test to make sure that it doesnt have mercury. I took a little of the cream, and spread it over a paper then iron the paper. Some YouTube video says that if it contains mercury, the paper will turn black. Luckily, after I iron it with medium heat, it didnt turn black. Just to make sure, I even made the comparison to Bodyshop cream and it looks the same. 

The top one is from this cream and the lower one is from Bodyshop

On top of that, I also notice that the cream's fragrance is not strong and the color is not shiny white.

Moving on to the license number, I am a bit relieved that it has its license number although in Chinese and it doesnt tell me anything, but at least, one assurance from Government.

Now, it contains a lot of ingredients, 57 in totals.

Natural ingredients, there are 10 of them as below. Unfortunately, I can't copy and paste as table here, so you have to bear with me with picture format.

What I like best is it has quite many natural ingredients. I dont really know that snail's slime can be used as skincare ... lol. And not only that, sericin which is extracted from silkworms as well. And it turns out that shea butter has a cool name, which is Butyrospermum Parkii .... lol.

Another ingredient which I like best too, was Disodium EDTA which has the characteristics of removing metal such as mercury from your blood.

Now coming to the other ingredients, it has 30 other chemical ingredients mainly as emollient, conditioning and emulsifier which is considered non harmful.

And lastly, 15 other ingredients which may be harmful for us.

I am very intimidated with Methylparaben and Quartz. It says that it may lead to DNA damage and quartz can be human carcinogen, i.e. can cause cancer. As for the rest, we may be able to handle it by routinely wash our face before bed time. Luckily as a muslim, you have to pray 5 times a day in which you have to wash your face, so hopefully the chemicals doesnt really stick in my face and become less harmful.

Nonetheless, given that they dont disclose how much % the chemicals is, I'd rather not to buy again and will try to find other skincare which has less chemicals but less expensive too.

Hibernate Option for Mac

We all know that one of the reason for people to purchase the super expensive Macbook is the battery life.
LaptopMag.com which is one the Tom's Hardware affiliates, one reliable source, at least for me, says that Mac product both Air and Pro is within the list. Check out the full article here, http://www.laptopmag.com/articles/all-day-strong-longest-lasting-notebooks.

Now, with me here is Macbook Pro, mid 2012 model which battery has just been replaced, so it ought to work like new. It surprises me that when I leave it to sleep mode, I turn it back on, it was reduced by about 25%. When I put it on sleep, I believe it's about 88% and when I turn it back on, it has became 65%.

So, I'm off to find out how to reduce the battery power during sleep mode.

My first source was Apple Stack Exchange. For your reference, stackexchange.com has been my wonderful reference. It has vast collection like I never imagine.

From this site, I knew that the Energy Saver Preferences can also be set by using Terminal command, pmset. From the manpage of pmset, there are 3 types of sleepmode:

Energy Saver

• Type 0. This is used by default on iMac series. The system will use memory and not write to the disk.
• Type 3. This is used by default on Macbook. In this type, it will use RAM as the storage.
• Type 25. In this type, the memory will be written to the disk.

You can read more from the manpage of pmset, just type man pmset in Terminal to access this. From the explanation, I want to have type 25. So what I do is, open Terminal and then type the following:

$sudo pmset hibernatemode 25
and hit enter.

Now, your Macbook should have been set as hibernate. It means, everytime you go to Sleep mode, you go into Hibernate. I have proven myself, after I turn this on, I leave the Macbook to sleep for about 18 hours, my battery was reduced by 3% into 62%.

Putrajaya Baloon Fest - 20150314

All in a sudden, and luckily boss was not around, a friend of mine invited me for a photo hunt. Balloon fest at Putrajaya. We left very early in the morning. I woke up around 3.30 and getting ready and left from my house at 4.30 to the nearest station. Got off the cab at 6.00 am and took morning pray at this mosque. Still pretty dark, isn't it.

We took a walk to the opposite bridge, Seri Wawasan bridge and set our gear. There weren't so many photo hunters (I resist from using photographer because I am not one myself). If you see in below pic, the big circle white thing is the balloon and the start point for the balloon to go up.

The opposite side, you can see Masjid Putra and the housing complex in front of it.

So again, this is just the same take off zone for those balloons seen from different angle.

The first one to go on air is actually welcoming balloon, one which says "Putrajaya Balloon Fest" but unfortunately, when it hovered above landmark Masjid, we couldn't see the writing.

And this green one is really cute. Again, the wind was not on our side, it would be beautiful if only it faced us when it flew over the Masjid.

Last but not least, the sky was really blue, it reminded me of Stanley, Hong Kong.

And, actually there are 5 of us, but we couldn't manage to take picture together, so only 3 of us here in the picture.

Surprising fact about Prozac

Puppies and polar bears are on Prozac

While no one knows how many pets are on Prozac, Americans spend an estimated $15 million a year on behavioral medication for their cats and dogs.

In 2007, Eli Lilly, the maker of Prozac, launched Reconcile, a chewable form of its drug, for canine separation anxiety.

Now even zoo animals are on antidepressants, for everything from aggression to obsessive-compulsive disorder.