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Starbucks Via

Featured Food

Instant Starbucks coffee?

Oxymoron?

Perhaps.

The main draw of Starbucks has been the “Third place”. A place to hang-out, to meet friends, business associates, to ponder the meaning of life and the universe, that sort of thing. To turn that experience into a instant cup of coffee you make at home just doesn’t seem like it would work. Introducing Starbucks Via!

To me, it doesn’t.

Let’s get back to basics. The coffee at Starbucks is average. Worse on some days and better on some. The beans aren’t the freshest and the barista’s skill plays the other part. Some days, I actually insist the barista remake my latte or cappuccino. Instant Via tastes quite poor actually. I actually find it’s made from over-roasted beans and it tastes overly bitter, flat and lifeless. You pay RM12 per cup because it’s the whole experience. The ambiance, the place, etc. I can’t see myself paying RM2.50 for this tiny satchet that doesn’t really taste much better than Nescafe Gold! Two strikes.

If you’ve taken the red pill in the world of coffee then you would know the truth out there. Stale beans make lousy coffee. It’s unfair to compare Via to my week-old roasted Five Senses of which the difference is like night and day. I compared to Nescafe Gold and Alta Rica as well as house brands such as First Choice and Jusco selects.

The results? Not good. They all taste rather similar. I would have expected the Via to stand out a bit. After all, there’s a taste promise that goes with the Via. In Italian, Via can have many meanings, but for me, Starbucks Via means way, and it’s way out the door. Doesn’t make my coffee grade one bit.

Just got unifi-ed

Don't Panik Featured Life

When Telekom Malaysia (TM) announced their Fiber to the home broadband initiative, I was rather excited as broadband speeds in Malaysia have stagnated over the past couple of years. Initially when I jumped on to the DSL bandwagon in 2001 with a paltry (by today’s standard) speed of 384kbps down and 128kbps up. It was a big improvement over any 33.6 or even 56kbps modems of the day. Fast forward 10 years and internet speeds have doubled or tripled many times in neighboring countries and all we’re stuck with is 2mbps DSL. 4mbps is available but few areas could even qualify with the poor quality of cabling or exchange equipment. My home couldn’t even get past 1.8mbps due to the distance from the exchange.

It took TM about a year plus to reach my backwater housing area. The good thing is many others have sacrificed their effort and time to enable TM to iron out the kinks in the system and to improve the roll-out, delivery and implementation service. After all, there are thousands and hundreds of thousands of homes to install.

The good is that they no longer need eight guys to install like for my parents home, a year back. The bad is that they still are not coordinated with their contact center and appointment scheduling system. It still takes an entire day but most of it will be spent waiting and waiting or cleaning up. If you’re lucky, everything goes well after install otherwise, you’ll end up waiting for new modems, BTUs, and more technicians.

For me, the install was a breeze. Minus the five hours waiting for the installers to show up. When the appointment time said 9:30am to 2:30pm, I assumed the install will complete within that window rather than start at 2:45pm! Anyway, my install was through the ceiling so all was needed was a hole drilled through the outside wall to get into the ceiling, pull the fiber and drop it into my central cable drop. My home, fortunately for the TM installers, had a central cable drop where all ethernet, phone, cable TV, etc are laid down so drilling through the wall took the longest time. The Brits build houses to last in the 60s.

Fortunately for the installers, I also provided the ceiling light and ladder otherwise they would have come to grief with such a miserable ladder of theirs. Also to their benefit, my entire house is wired with CAT5e (long story why it’s not CAT6) so again, the rest of the setup was a breeze. Plug the Fiber BTU here, LAN to WAN port, IP TV out to Port 2 (next to my TV), Phone out to Phone Distribution panel and viola, IP TV works, we got internet and the rooms have phone lines! Hallelujah!

Since I had a Cisco VPN Router & SPI firewall going, I wanted to junk the crappy DLINK DIR615 that came with the package. The router has caused grief to many users due to it running custom firmware, lack of security (all wide open settings), poor wireless and network performance, and more. The problem with using your own router is that the incoming network has three VLANs and if you didn’t care about the IP-TV, you can go ahead. I paid for all services so I damn well want the access.

Solution was simply replace the DIR615 with a VLAN bridge. I used a MikroTik RB250 for this purpose. If anyone wants a pre-configured RB250, drop me an email. I have the RouterBoard Rb750GS as well but for the moment, I wanted to continue using my Cisco router.

Here’s the TM Fiber Broadband Termination unit (BTU)

The crappy D-Link DIR615 which was quickly replaced…

My Cisco VPN and IPS/IDS Firewall

The Huawei IP TV Set-top box (STB). Still a bit laggy when watching internet streaming content

The awesome MikroTik RB250 VLAN Bridge.

I really need to fix my cabling mess! For now, Yellow is WAN link, white is Internal network, Blue is POE, green is for Voice and now Red for IPTV.

 So how does it perform? The good is that it works pretty much as it is advertised. No complaints until the service starts going down or becomes unreliable but overall, my satisfaction is high. Minus the setup, installation part of course. Your mileage may vary and depending on your home and where you want certain components, i.e. IPTV, Wireless, phone, etc, the process might cost you a fair bit and be more trouble than in my case.

Petaling Street Photo Walk

Featured Photography

On a gray, overcast day, 15 participants were eagerly waiting at the basement of PJEFC Heritage Center. They were all ready to participate in our first ever PhotoWalk trip. Eddy, our friendly bus driver was already there waiting by the roadside.

It was good to spend time with some good friends over photography and good food!

For more photos and settings, go over to the EKML Visuals Blog…



10 years after 9-11

Featured Life

“I feel this way about it. World trade means world peace and consequently the World Trade Center buildings in New York … had a bigger purpose than just to provide room for tenants. The World Trade Center is a living symbol of man’s dedication to world peace … beyond the compelling need to make this a monument to world peace, the World Trade Center should, because of its importance, become a representation of man’s belief in humanity, his need for individual dignity, his beliefs in the cooperation of men, and through cooperation, his ability to find greatness.”
~ Minoru Yamasaki

September 11 touched more people than most people realize. Even me, sitting twelve timezones away from New York City, literally halfway around the world was affected in some way. First of all, I’ve been to New York City twice and one year ago, I stood on the top of one of the towers, admiring the view that is now gone. My brother studied in New York State, two of my classmates from college worked in the big apple. And on that fateful day, I have three cousins working in New York City. Beyond the tragedy lies the immense courage, outpouring of resolve, and the strength of character to carry the day, without which I think this would have been a real tragedy indeed. Some say this was New York’s darkest moment, but it’s also New York’s finest I think.




“Tragedy” by Maggie Magee Molino © 2001-2002 (WebAperture Member)

Amid the smoking rubble a cloaked figure wandered slowly through the gray powdery mist as though He were floating.
Beams of light followed Him and created a veil of sorrow. (Can you see Him?)

Silent tears streaked the dust filled faces of those who survived, and in the distance,
the sounds of bagpipes filled the thick and acrid air with a shrill mournful tune. (Can you hear it?)

Husbands, fathers, wives, mothers, sons, and daughters, friends and colleagues, those who just a few short hours before had kissed their loved ones good-bye saying, “I’ll be home” or “See you later” were burned and buried under tons of twisted steel. (Can you see them?)

As sun began to set, the billowing smoke glowed with an eerie light, and a stillness fell over the land –
There were so few survivors. (Will you weep for them?)

The cloaked figure lifted His arms to the sky and sobbed in a voice so heartbroken that the sound still echoes through the entire universe. (Can you hear Him?)
~~His name is GOD

Shot completely on Kodak Supra 400 and Kodak EliteChrome 200. Scanned on a Nikon Coolscan LS-30.

TTDI Ramadan Bazaar

Featured Food

The muslim fasting month of Ramadan in Malaysia brings out an interesting activity usually called the Ramadan Bazaar in many cities in Malaysia.

One of the biggest feature of this bazaar is the wide array and choice of food. In some cases, the food is rather poor but in others, the food’s rather nice. Of course you can’t compare with home cooked food but some of the stalls are pretty good. The past of couple years has seen us visiting several bazaars around town. This was our first time to the bazaar in Taman Tun and I must say it was the best bazaar yet for us (food-wise). We went on a Saturday evening which we had the good fortune of some nice weather. Browsing stalls with charcoal grills, boiling woks, pots and all sorts of heat producing equipment in the hot tropical sun at five o’clock is no fun. We had overcast skies, cool weather thanks to the rain that stopped by four and a good strong breeze. Best time to go is about five as the stalls would already have been setup and you avoid the last minute crowd at six in the evening. We spent over fifty-plus ringgit and bagged ourselves ayam percik, roti jala, satay, murtabak and more.


















Coffee + Photography

Featured Photography 1 Comment

As a photographer and coffee fanatic, it was a surprise to find the blog by Adbeus that features coffee from various little coffee shops in Montreal. I just love all the photos that feature the same overhead view and different table tops. Here’s a little attempt I did while I was in Singapore for business. My only regret was that I did not bring my DSLR along.