A belated wish of a happy new year to all[1] readers of this humble blog of mine. Come May this year, this blog will be 10 years old. Crazy.

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Today, I had a couple of personal bests.

I had done 7 km last Sunday, but today I maintained a faster pace despite the rolling hills (see the green graph). The varied running methods of Fartlek, interval and threshold training in the RunKeeper app have paid off. And to date, with all this running and calorie counting malarkey, I lost 5 kg thus far. Nice, huh. Exactly the reason I am driven to go on with this project.

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All items necessary for the MAMICASTER project have been obtained.

I drove to Manchester to drop MAMICASTER and Stitch[2] at Steve’s workshop. Unfortunately, Steve doesn’t do guitar artwork and I had to Google and find out myself. Steve did kindly recommend a chap based in Cheltenham but his guitar art is freehand, and what I need requires templates and an airbrush. There doesn’t seem to be anyone local when I looked on Google but I may just ask the guys at the local guitar shop if there is anyone local that can do a decent paint job. I found a place in Bournemouth, e-mailed for a quote (which starts at £200 for guitars) and hoping for a reply soon. The testimonials from previous clients look encouraging.

If this happens, MAMICASTER requires dismantling[3] and the body needs to be sent by post/courier. I don’t mind paying £200 but hope it won’t be too much more than that. Once the paint job is done, only then the full MAMICASTER mod will be done, including set up and filing some of the fret ends. I so cannot wait!

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Since I was in Manchester, I took the opportunity to catch up with family at a recently opened Malaysian kopitiam-styled eaterie in North Manchester called Gossip.

It was a decent sized place, and had a modern kopitiam feel to it, with the red walls, wooden chairs and white ceramic pots on the table. As it was my cheat day, I splurged big time. Heh.

Had karipap for starters, the nasi lemak ayam goreng as the main, accompanied by a glass of teh C ais, and washed it all down with ABC[4]. The food was great – I enjoyed my nasi lemak, taste was fine and the portion was good. If I had to really nitpick, I thought the teh C ais was a little weak and needed more kau to it.

As I was having my ABC, we got to meet the proprietors, YM Raja Petra and Puan Marina, and we had a chat with Puan Marina about the place and the food they served. It was nice to see they were looking for honest feedback. I had to admit to her that the kopitiam was a little bit far (it was no problem for us as we drove), especially if you were a student and needed to take public transport (Gossip is on a bus route that goes direct from the city centre). Nik had the mee yoke/udang and I had a taste – I think I’d definitely return with ayah in tow as he likes it since the days of the Palong Restaurant at Ampang Park.

2 Broadway
Moston
Manchester M40 3LN

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[1]All three (or is it four) of you.
[2]Stitch’s nut broke!
[3]Steve is doing just that at the mo’, on top of fitting the new locking Gotohs!
[4]I could only finish half. Perut dah kecik lah kan. Uhuk uhuk.