That Lunch

With the new highway called LATAR, the journey from my parents’ place in Gombak to Kuala Selangor had been cut from 2 hours before to half that. Yesterday - as I was free, I decided to take them for lunch there. Luckily one of the driver was free and I had the chance to just chill out on the journey.

This crab looked new. Or maybe it had a new coat of paint.

The sun was high and it was really hot then ...

We got there before the rush for lunch

The menu could be best described as "illustrative"

We left rather late as I had some things to do at the hospital that morning. We finally arrived at the restaurant at around 1.30. The crowd was still building up at the time. But the cook there was really efficient, and despite the crowd, we got our food quite fast as we were already hungry when we arrived.

When it was hot, this just took the cake!

You just can't get any fresher than this

Some spicing up needed ....

The food was finally here ....

We ordered a couple kilograms of crabs, some prawns and fish as well as vegetables. And true to our word, we finished them all. The crab was fresh but the highlight must have been the garoupa. It was exceptional!

The aftermath

It was too warm to walk around. Anita shelved the idea of walking around to buy salted fish. It only took me 10 minutes before going to sleep at the back of the car …..

KL Orchid Garden

One of the neat thing with the new E-M1 was the bright and responsive electronic viewfinder. Coupled with the Pro standard zoom which I bought with it, manual focusing was a joy with the full-time zoom capability. 

It was possible to get some really nice close-ups, and I felt that manual focussing trumped the autofocus in this situation, especially doing some still life macro works. And KL Orchid Garden provided me with ample targets to train my lens. 

The hot weather and lack of rain however had changed the garden. They were clearly struggling to provide any nice spectacles. Even though orchids did not need much water, the lack of moisture in the air must've played havoc with them. 

As a result, I spent most of my afternoon visit there snapping at other things but flowers. There were still plenty to snap at, though those colourful orchids would've been grand. 

They must be really desperate that even the entrance fees were scrapped. We used to have to pay some token amount to get in during weekends. It was free last Sunday. And the place were empty as well. I used to remember that it used to be full of newlywed having their wedding photographs taken there. 

How times had changed. Hopefully when the rain returns, the situation would improve. I wonder how the hot weather had affected the butterfly park .... maybe I should give that a go one of these days ....