Monday, April 24, 2017

Cyberjaya Food Review : Monjo Coffee at Shaftsbury Square

4:01 PM PropFessor

Today's review is Monjo Coffee located at the 5th floor of Shaftsbury Square. This place shares the entrance connecting to Shaftsbury Residences. This place is owned by the Shaftsbury Square developer Ikhasas under their retail arm.

The decor of the place is good, the lighting creates a very cosy and relaxing environment. The tiles colors shine when the light hits it. This place is designed to look like a hybrid of an American diner and a Cafe. The American diner side is reflected in the long leather seating areas while the other part of the shop is cafe tables and chairs.

Signature breakfast set consists of grilled tomatoes, camarelized mushrooms with bayam vegetables, hashbrown, sausage, beef bacon,2 sunny side eggs and a croissant. It's not the best big breakfast I have before but it's passable. I prefered the tomatoes to be more grilled as it lacked grill marks and caramelization. The caramelized mushrooms with bayam vegetables were good, sausage, hash brown and beef bacon were pretty standard. The sunny side eggs were great with just the right amount of greese and pepper.

Their coffee comes in 3 sizes, small, regular and large. I opted for small but the cup that came didn't look too small and it had enough caffeine to lift me until 5PM. Personally the coffee was not too bad also.

Their internet connection speed seems to be a Unifi 10Mbps only (I ran it on speedtest.net). I notice it got slower after just 3 customers come in with laptops. I suspect maybe one of the customer was doing a massive torrent file download.

Price wise this place is fair if you bring your stuff to work there. It's a small price to pay to work in such a cosy environment. There are plugpoints around for plugging laptop power.

This place does not serve pork and alcohol, so it's quite safe for our muslim friends to visit. In fact, many of the customers were local malays and people of middle eastern origin.

Do note also the place opens at 8:30AM instead of the 8:00AM as published on Google Maps.

Cyberjaya help - Grass cutting service

1:37 PM PropFessor

A well trimmed lawn is a sign of good property maintenance. In the past, grass cutting man will be riding his motorcycle around waiting for people to hire his service. Nowadays with more and more people living in condominiums, we no longer see grass cutting man plying the roads anymore.

Grass cutting services in Cyberjaya can be obtained by calling Mr Vinod from Huna Enterprise at a reasonable price of RM 15 per visit. His company is contracted to cut grass for some of the nearby projects near Putrajaya lake.

What I like about this guy's service is after cutting the grass they also help to sweep and cleanup the area. I believe this guy also does landscaping services also.

Vinod's number : 0123380201

Cyberjaya help - Place to buy cooking gas tank

1:21 PM PropFessor

When I first came to Cyberjaya to work and stay, I was wondering how to order gas tanks. Unlike most western countries where gas pipeline is directly connected to the house, in Malaysia cooking gas is purchased in tanks.

Someone in the Cyberjaya forum mentioned that cooking gas tanks can be bought at Cyberia Smarthomes shops. Cyberia Smarthomes are just located besides Multimimedia University. There'a corner mini market where the gas tanks can be bought. The shop do not do delivery, they can help load it into your car but not delivery to your house except for Cyberia Smarthomes units. This place is just a place when you desperately need to have cooking gas tanks replaced immediately.

I managed to purchase a cooking gas tank here and the shop guys were so kind to load it into the car boot for me. One thing to note also is that they only sell the standard 14KG gas tank and depleted gas tanks can be exchanged instead of buying a new gas tank.

Anyway, if you're not comfortable bring the gas tank and not in a hurry, you can call Petronas hot line and they can send their representatives to replace your gas tank. The hotline is 133-888-427.

Updates on 3-7-2017

There's a mini market called NJ Fresh Mart at Menara Paragon that also sells gas. Menara Paragon is located just next to Multimedia University (MMU).

Updates on 3-7-2017

|I finally found phone numbers to call that will deliver gas to Cyberjaya area.

019-257 2943

016 267 1434

017-6833300

Updates on 3-12-2018

Apparently there's an app (smartphone) that can call for Gas tank replacement.

http://gas2u.com.my/

Thursday, April 20, 2017

Cyberjaya Food Review : Restaurant Lok Yoon at Prima 11

11:11 PM PropFessor

I used to think that Cyberjaya does not have any chinese restaurants until someone told me about Lok Yoon restaurant at Prima 11. Prima 11 is located at Jalan Teknokrat, further down from Cyber Square. The landmark for this location is the huge Burger King sign board.

The area where Lok Yoon restaurant is located houses a good mixture of restaurants. There's a cafe joint called "It's a grind", fast food restaurant Burger King, a mamak restaurant, beer garden Beer Factory Express. Actually Lok Yun restaurant is also part of the Beer Factory Express restaurant, this "restobar" serves as both a beer garden and chinese restaurant. Beer Factory Express serves drought beer, champagne, brandy, whiskey, VSOP and other kinds of alcoholic drinks. The place is popular with the night crowd.

The restaurant serves typical "tai chow" noodles like hokkien mee, wat tan hor etc. You can also order stir fried dishes there. I ordered wat tan hor, fried kuey teow and a celery drink. I ordered the celery drink as i wanted to know how it tasted. The wat tan hor was a bit too watery to my liking but it's considered my comfort food so I'll give it a pass as there's probably no other place in Cyberjaya that serves this dish. Same goes with the fried kuey teow which not the best but the prawns were very fresh.

This place is smoker friendly as they have a large open air smoking area. I came here at night and the place was too dimly lit to take photos and hence only the exterior photos are shown.

I heard that this place is to be avoided during lunch hours as it is very busy due to the number of offices and people craving for chinese food.

Wednesday, April 19, 2017

Cyberjaya Food Review : India Gate at Shaftsbury Square

10:57 PM PropFessor

This Indian restaurant called India Gate just opened a few months ago. The decor was quite attractive and looked like some palace kitchen so I decided to hop in to test out this place after work. I arrived at 9:30 PM and was promptly greeted by the waiter. I asked him to recommend a dish suitable for 1 person and he just mentioned all dishes also were good. For some unknown reasons beyond me he kept recommending the vegetarian dishes.

The restaurant serves the usual Indian stuff like chicken masala, aloo goobi, mango lassi, masala tea etc. I opted for their mutton fried rice and mango lassi. The fried rice was basically long grain rice fried with biryani spices which was something quite new to me.

Mango Lassi

Mutton fried rice

Food was ok, didn't come out piping hot as i would have liked. The long grain rice has the perfect moisture. The mango lassi however hit the perfect sweet spot, not too sweet and not overly bland. One complain I also had was the wait time was also quite long despite only having 3 customers. I got my mango lassi within 10 mins but the main dish after waiting 45 mins.

Price wise this place is considered fair. My mango lassi costs RM 10 while the Mutton Biryani fried rice cost RM 14. This place opens until late night. I saw people coming in to order naan bread and masala tea for supper.

This place isn't hard to miss as it's located at the ground floor of Shaftsbury Square and their brights lightnings will giveaway the place. Next visit I will probably go give their individual dishes a try.

Sunday, April 16, 2017

Cyberjaya Food Review : Kiraku Japanese Restaurant at Shaftsbury Square

10:50 PM PropFessor

Today's review is Kiraku Japanese restaurant. In Japanese "kiraku" means comfortable. This restaurant is located at level 3 of Shaftsbury Square Commercial area.

The decor of the restaurant seem inviting with the appropriate lighting and japanese lanterns. I arrived at the restaurant at 8PM at night there were a handful of people.

Price wise, do expect it to be pricey a bit the restaurant is focusing on fine dining. It's a place to bring customers and celebrate events, definitely not your everyday lunch and dinner place. There's even a wall of fame showing the customers events from the data center companies around (eg HP, IBM, Dell)

The menu seems to be focus on ala carte. However they have a menu for set meal for the budget conscious. As i was alone today, I ordered the set meal. The appetizer served was pickled cucumber topped with sesame seeds. The entire set costs RM 18 before tax, after adding in service charges will amount to RM 22+. I've definitely tasted better but the food was not too bad either. The set I ordered came with 2 slices of fruits, miso soup, mabo tofu and saba fish dipped in garlic butter sauce.

Kiraku Japanese Restaurant at Shaftsbury Square

Appetizer - Pickled cucumer topped with sesame seeds - forgot to take pictures and almost finished it

Main Dish - set menu - garlic butter fish, mabo tofu, salad, soup, chawan mushi fruit - Value for money

Mabo tofu with prawns

This place does not serve pork but it cannot put the halal certificate as they do serve Japanese rice wine (alcoholic drink). However, the management has ensured diners that all the ingredients used are halal. During my visit there, half the patrons were Muslims. Anyway just to sidestep a bit, if one is willing to drive, Miyagi Japanese restaurant at Bandar Baru Bangi value for money place.

Many do not know that Kiraku Japanese restaurant belongs to Shaftsbury Square developer Ikhasas. Ikhasas has got a retail arm and currently they have 3 restaurants under their name, Kiraku, Volcano Shabu Shabu and Monjo Cafe. All 3 restaurants are located in Shaftsbury Square commercial area itself.

For reservations, do call 03-83186003 to book.
FB Page :
https://www.facebook.com/KirakuJapaneseRestaurant/

Wednesday, April 12, 2017

Cyberjaya Area - NeoCyber

12:36 PM PropFessor

Today I was feeling more adventurous and decided to venture further out to explore more of Cyberjaya. I read some positive review on middle east restaurant called Sana restaurant at NeoCyber. NeoCyber is an area further up from D'pulze shopping mall which is developed by the MK Group.

I could not find the particular restaurant in question as it was probably late at night already (around 11PM). However, I was amazed by the amount of activities going on at NeoCyber. Just like the saying birds of the same feather flock together, this place was teeming with people of mostly middle eastern origin. All of the shops there were also in the business of serving the middle eastern community. The whole place looked like it was out of some middle east country (eg Turkey, Syria, Lebanon,Jordan, Yemen, Iran).

This is a common sight, every eatery seem to have a grill spit serving Shawarma. The meat is cut fresh from the spit and then put in a wrap with all sorts of vegetables.

Suria wholesaler selling middle east items like dates, honey and Barbican (aka Halal beer), Shisha charcoal and middle east retail products etc. It's HQ is in Jalan Tunku Abdul Rahman and they've got branches around area where there are high concentration of Middle Eastern people.

Non Alcohol Beer - Barbican

Even the barbar is from middle east and can do middle east hair and beard style.

Roswel mini market which sells a combination of local goods and middle east products and produce.

Walking along the street you will see many people out having their supper and smoking shisha pipes.

Shisha pipe left by previous tenant

There were a few cafes around that had some arabic theme where the guests can sit in a mini tent like structure inside the restuarant.

I ended up testing a restaurant call Al Jamek Lulu. I was just intrigued by the Lulu word as it was the name of a famous middle eastern wholesaler. I ordered their RM10 Shawarma special which is a pita roll wrapped with cheese and beef. The shawarma had hints of tumeric and cumin spices and was delicious.

Will blog more about this place as there are too many restaurants to visit here. This place is definitely a place that needs more exploration.

Tuesday, April 11, 2017

Cyberjaya Broadband - Time Broadband

8:35 PM PropFessor

Currently in terms of price per Mbps, Time Fibre Home seems to be the cheapest around. Their lowest package for 100Mbps only cost RM 149 (before adding in GST).

Time Fibre service is mostly available in high rise buildings as high density will help the company breakeven their services faster.

The whole process of applying for it was a breeze, everything done online. Just with a few clicks, you can register and setup your appointment with the installer. The equipment given by Time broadband is 1 Huawei fibre modem, Dlink AC1200 Wifi router and 1 motorola cordless phone. The Dlink AC1200 Wifi router is a dualband AC router, in tech terms it means that it has higher bandwidths due to dual band and also gigabit Ethernet connection.

I felt there were 2 issues which was lacking. One was the actual bandwidth was not as advertised. Based on speedtest.net I only got 30Mbps instead of 100Mbps. Anyway, I am not able to tell the difference anyway as I'm only a casual web surfer. I am very sure the speed is that slow that as I performed multiple rounds of testing.

The second issue I had was the punctuality of the installer. I arranged to install it at 10AM but instead was informed that it was delayed until 2PM. The installer told me the demand for the service was very big so they could not complete the installations on time.

Overall I still quite satisfied with the service due to the ease of applying for it. The coverage at the moment around Cyberjaya is pretty pathetic based on the number of service apartments around Cyberjaya. The current coverage includes Shaftsbury Residences, The Place, Garden Plaza and Symphony Hills.

Application for broadband can be applied on the link.

http://www.time.com.my/personal/broadband/fibre-broadband

Monday, April 10, 2017

MaGIC Cyberjaya the startup incubator

9:17 AM PropFessor

Those in the international startup scene would be familiar with Y Combinator. An early funder of tech startups in US. They basically train start ups that have met their criterion to scale big.

In Malaysia, the closest thing we have to Y Combinator is MAGIC not so commonly known as Malaysian Global Innovation & Creativity Centre. It is a government entity that is mandated to build up the local startup scene, hopefully to build the next AirBnb, Uber. MAGIC is located at Persiaran Apec, just opposite Dell offices.

MAGIC has got a startup accelerator program to help qualified startups be investment ready within 8 months (based on what the site says).

MAGIC conducts training bootcamps frequently to upgrade IT skills of IT people. They have a few lecture halls for this activty. They teach from basics from Wordpress blogging up to complex stuff like Big Data analytics. Recently I also saw them conducting drone flying lessons.

What I like about this place is it is very inviting, with open spaces like sofa and benches to chill out and mingle around. This allows people to break out from training to take a breather.

MAGIC has a few in house incubators. One of which I mange to visit was a 3D printing company. The managing director was only 21 years only. The company was basically doing prototype 3D printing for companies like medical firms, manufacturing firms etc.

Monday, April 3, 2017

Cyberjaya Food Review : Mee Tarik Warisan Asli at Glomac Cyberjaya

4:56 PM PropFessor

Lanzhou is the largest city in China's Gansu province.

Lanzhou was previously a pit spot silk road route, so it has a large population of muslims due to merchants from the Arabian mainland visiting China. Lanzhou is an interior city and therefore their cuisine lacks seafood ingredients, and beef is the main ingredient. The city is famous for their noodles comes from Lanzhou which is commonly known as Lanzhou La Men. La Men means hand pulled noodles, basically the noodles are hand crafted, freshly prepared from dough and then put boiled. Lye water (kansui) is added into the noodles to make it more springy. lye water is derived from an alkaline salt found abundantly in the Gansu's mountains.

This time's food hunt was suppose to go to another chinese restaurant called Hinz kitchen at Glomac Cyberjaya. To my dismay the place was does not open on Saturdays. I saw a small crowd going to another restaurant a few blocks away which had a big signboard. Upon closer inspection I found the shop is called restaurant Mee Tarik Warisan Asli. I realized this restaurant specializes in cousine from Lanzhou.

Their signature dish is the LanZhou beef noodles in spicy beef broth. It didn't take long for the dish to come and I wasn't dissappoint by it. The noodles portion was good and texture was springy and not soggy. The beef was well tenderized. This dish cost only RM 10 which is quite reasonable for the portions given. I only wished there were more vegetables inside.

The kitchen is a semi open kitchen, the open part customers can see the chef making the hand pulled noodles from the dough. The chefs spoke in China mandarin and were most likely China muslims. Like any muslims, the chefs wore skullcaps while the woman chef wore the muslim hijab.

I saw the neighboring table order a dish called toothpick mutton which also looked quite delicious. It's basically slices of skewered marinated mutton place on toothpicks to easy picking. I intend to order that in my next visit.

I had no complains about the food part only the place was a bit hot and stuffy under the afternoon heat, I wish they would have at least some sort of air conditioner area for guests.

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