I have always been fascinated by different kinds of pop drinks.  When I saw this clip about soda pop obsession at Chow, I was thinking that only in US can find independent soda pop bottlers.  I was surprise when I came across this Melaka made soda pop from Long Chan.  There were 5 flavors, and all are not bad.  It does not have that much gas (carbonation) in it and was rather sweet.  My wife told me that this company have been around since she was small, and for this independent soda pop company to survive so long is amazing.  However, this drink cannot be found at restaurants, nor can it be found at hypermarket.  To get this drink, you will have to go to the local coffee shop (ah pek style and not Old Town style) or the local roti canai shop here in Melaka. 

The new Aeon Melaka Mall house the first Papa Johns Pizza outlet in this state.  With so many pizza shops in Malaysia, and having Pizza Hut, Dominoes and Shakey’s concurring almost every city in the country, I wonder how does Papa John’s fare in this crowded market.  My first impression was that this is another Pizza Hut like restaurant.  The restaurant feel and menu are also similar.  However, after tasting the fresh baked pizza, it is far from similar, infact, it rank 1 among  it’s competitors. 

Value for Money – Average

The prices of Pizza, sides and drinks are comparable with the other Pizza outlets in Malaysia.  During my visit, there were two promotion going on, first is Citibank Card 50% off for 9” pizza and Jusco Card RM5 for second 9” pizza.  With these promo, a party of 5 only spent RM80 for 4 9” pizza. 

Taste – Excellent

The pizza was great.  The dough was not oil soak like Pizza Hut, nor it powdery like Dominoes.  It taste fresh, and with the free fresh tomato paste, garlic butter & marinated chilli, eating the crust of the pizza was not as painful as the other pizza outlets.  I could taste the fresh abundance toppings, putting Papa John’s Pizza #1 among the competitors in Malaysia. 

Overall – Great

In comparison with Pizza Hut, Dominoes and Shakey’s Pizza, no doubt Papa John’s rank #1 in taste.  In term of value, it still trail Dominoes which has the royalty card that gives buy 1 free 1 large pizza.  To-date, nothing can beat this value. 

We were at Jusco supermarket shopping for Lamy abc that was on sale when I came across this new range of Unicorn Colors Notebook.  It first caught my attention with the range of attractive colors mini notebook.  Ranging from Bright Pink to Refreshing Green, all imaginable attractive colors are available.  I spotted the Black Large notebook that looked like a Moleskine.  Picked it up and the hard cover felt like a mole.

Currently I could only find this notebook at Jusco, despite my numerous attempt to contact the company Unicorn for more details, I dont seam to find this notebook being sold elsewhere.  The notebook came with an Expandable Inner Pocket like a typical style moleskine and it has an Elastic band holding the entire book tight.  The book has 96 plan 80gm paper and it responded quite well with my Lamy Safari.  There were no smear through at the reverse side, nor were they any bleed through to the bottom sheet. The notebook was priced at RM19.90, much cheaper than some of the competitions.

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Here are a few tilt shift photos that I’ve made from my recent trip up to Komtar Tower.  The view from the 60th floor was breath taking and provided a totally different perspective of Penang.  The day was also very cooperative with very little haze.  We could see as far as Butterworth BORR, Tg. Bungah, Penang Hill and Bayan Lepas.  Georgetown is still mostly covered by pre-war buildings.  High rise buildings are mostly found at the seafront like Gurney and the new Jelutong Expressway.  There is a sense of calmness viewing the city from the 60th floor, its the feeling that you get viewing a landscape or city from a mountain or a high location.  One can get lost in time dwelling at such locations. 

The Komtar Tower viewing platform was previously the Tower Restaurant.  Only in recent years, when the restaurant closes, this place was open up for public.  Sad to say, the place was poorly maintain with a few chairs and tables close to the windows, and the rest of the floor was empty.  This is far from KL tower nor those tower view abroad.  The good thing was that we were the only visitor there, we got the entire floor to our selves, unlike we have to fight for view in KL Tower or in Japan.  I believe the RM15 entrance fee may have contributed to the lack of traffic. 

Once arrive at the 60th floor, we were greeted by a friendly lady which sold us the tickets and gave us a bottle of water and two postcards each.  I guess this is the management’s lame way of making up for RM15 entrance fee.  The place looked liken an abandon empty building and it display the management’s lack of commitment to truly turn this into a tourist destination.  There is a vast potential for such a place, look at KL Tower for one, constant flow of tourist from abroad and locals as well.  When I was in Tokyo, their viewing tower was located at their City Council building as well and was also packed with local and foreign tourist.  If the management lack the will to make this tower a tourist destination with complete facility, maybe the building management should look into tendering this out to other companies that has interest, if not, at least run it as a state own non profit org. 

The place certainly lacks a few fundamental items that are a must have in such viewing facility.

1. A map of what you are looking at, with names of the famous buildings (located at each window plane)
2. A free view finder to get a closer look at the city
3. A few souvenir shops to remember Penang by. 
4. A restaurant for tourist to chill and get lost in time. 

Nevertheless, the view from up the tower was breath taking and provided plenty of opportunity for tilt shift photography or post processing tilt shift. 

When Google first comes out with Labs for Gmail, I was excited as it brings much more functionality to the other Google services.  Unfortunately, when it first came out, it was only limited to the public Gmail, and not Google Apps of which my company is on.  Finally, today, I’ve notice that the Google Labs has been enabled for Google Apps.  I now can change my theme and install all the much needed functions into the Gmail window to make the Google Apps much more appealing.  Here are the few features which i am currently using and like (in no particular order):

Offline – This feature enables your browser to download your mail box and makes it available offline.  Before this feature was available, I can only access my mailbox while I am online and I am forced to use third party mail client such as Outlook,  Windows Live Mail, Thunderbird, etc.  I’ve tried them all and end up using the gmail web interface for performance and I have also got used to the way the mails are being group together.  

Tasks – This is the one feature that I have been waiting for.  Before this, i have to use “Remember The Milk” through Firefox with addon.  The thing with Firefox is that it is slower than Chrome, and it has been bugging me for quite some time.  Now the labs are enabled on Google Apps, I have start to use back Chrome as my primary browser.

Message Translation – Now, this is one feature that I don’t really need it, but for the occasions that I receive mails from our China CM or Japanese customers, this pay prove to be handy.  It has yet to prove its worth, for now, I am enabling it to try it out.

Advance IMAP Controls – This is another feature that I seldom use, this is because I seldom access mail with Outlook.  The one particular feature that I like with this advance Imap control is the ability to choose which label to be shown through Imap.  This will help to reduce the load speed.  I usually only use Outlook to download mails to local drive to be archived in PST format.

Forgotten Attachment Detector – This is one important feature to have.  I have many occasions forgot to attach documents only to resend the same mail with attachment immediately.  This feature will help me to avoid such embarrassment in the future. 

Custom Label Colors – Immediately when I started to use Labels, I was craving for this feature.  The colors provided were fairly limited and was hard to find enough contrast of likeable colors to fill the mail box.  With this feature, I can customize my own colors, and enable me to fill my mail box with my own gordy colors instead of those created by someone else. 

Send & Archive – This is another productivity tool where it helps to reduce one step after I response to the mail, archive it.  I usually have to use the keyboard shot-cut to archive, now this helps me to save one step. 

Undo Send – Not that often, I have to recall mails due to no attachments, and due to some error of information.  This helps, if I notice that I should not send out the mail just yet within seconds of sending it.  I am trying out this feature to see if it is effective in saving me face..

Inserting images – This is one feature that elevates one primary frustration with gmail, that is the ability to attach pictures into the mail to illustrate important points.  Now I can explain better through mail.

Google Calendar Gadget – This helps to put my day in a single window and without having to open the calendar in a different tab.  This feature brings Google Apps – Gmail to be close to what Outlook offers, thought it could not match it, but atleast it put more functionality into gmail. 

Now I feel more complete with Gmail like never before and I can start to be more effective and manage my work more effectively.  Goodbye third party apps.