just minishorts.

This is the first in a series of several that aims to dissect my take on the newly launched Samsung Galaxy S.

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I'm going to start off by saying here in bold. I AM NO TECHIE.. I am merely your average nearly-30 year old new mother who works full time, who happens to, like everybody else, own a mobile phone. And on the phone, I do the usual few things:

1. Talk to people
2. SMS a lot
3. Take photos, and sometimes, videos
4. Go online occasionally
5. Play with the games, sometimes.

Did I miss out on anything? Yup, I think that about sums up how I use a mobile phone. Nevertheless, the mobile phone is my most important, stand-by-me gadget, and I never go anywhere without it. Ever.  CAN-DIE-IF-I-LEFT-THE-PHONE-AT-HOME. Kerja perlu, call hubby perlu, tengok gambar anak perlu. Yup, liddat.

So, based on the above, this is exactly how I'm going to treat the Samsung Galaxy S while it's with me. I'm going to see like how well it functions against my basic requirements of a phone (vis-a-vis the five items listed above).

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Oh yah I have another personal preference for mobile phones. * MUST LOOK NICE WHEN I PUT IN THE BAG * If people ask me what phone I'm using, that also can, but these days the 'I have a cool looking phone' thing is not so much a priority anymore. However, like everybody on the #Maxis10 review programme, I have to agree.

The Samsung Galaxy S, or henceforth christened 'the GS'

… is sangat cantik dipandang. Nice to see.

With the locked screen…

Idle screen showcasing the apps I've put on the first page…

Plasticky back cover, but quite shiny.

I did a simple video explaining  first feel of the GS and here it is. I've been having a cough since last Friday so my voice is sorta muffled but otherwise the video approximately sums up the bulk of what I want to say about the GS at first impression. The video was taken with a basic point-and-shoot digital camera, which will necessarily give me an opportunity to later compare this 'basic quality' sort of a vid against the videos imported directly from the GS.

In a next post I'll move on to finer details, speaking of how the GS fares against my basic-everyday-needs-in-a-handphone requirements.

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Those of you active on Twitterjaya would know of the Maxis Reviewer's Programme, an ongoing social media campaign that invites interested bloggers to write in with their interest to review a phone on the Maxis's offering list. The programme kicked off over a month ago with the HTC Desire, where 10 lucky bloggers were given a brand new piece of the phone to use, test and write reviews about for two weeks. Later, they were all allowed to keep the phone.

Oh wow. *AKU NAK JUGAK.*

Therefore, of course, inevitably, as expected, when Maxis revealed that they were going to do another round of Maxis 10 and this time, the phone for the review was the Samsung Galaxy S, (the one they claimed to be an iPhone killer), I was interested. Two other reasons fueled this interest, actually. The first, my current phone (Nokia Music Xpress 5800) it has a knack of dying on me when I need it most. And then the second, Eric's got the iPhone 3Gs which launched him off on a recent Apple craze (buying himself the MacBook Pro and the iPod Shuffle within a single week), and I'm kinda interested in getting him to divert his attention elsewhere, dilute Apple's current monopoly on my family's gadget-investments for a while…

Alas, this time around, the participation required 'more work' from people with vested interests. Submit an audition video (OMG!). I took the easy way out actually, and Eric said I kinda exploited my kid for this (see me smile weakly and meekly here) .. but well, Paul is such a willing star in all of my videos… and he's just too awesomely cute in this video… HERE I AM SHARING IT.

With my squeaky voice and Paul's waving and kicking, this mother-and-son duo made it into the selected 10 reviewers list! That was how I manage to grab hold of this…

… which I get to play with for two whole weeks!

It's been a long long time since I last went so commercial and did reviews, and it would be fun to test these rusty brains of mine long infected with baby's brain since marriage and the pregnancy.

And so, here we go!

The other thing I recently discovered about being a mother, is this incredible ability to check out bargains, deals and online contests specially designed for Internet-savvy moms. 

So, I’ve gathered a chain of mommy blogs that I check out every other day, recipes at Wholesome Baby Food are a constant reference (even though Paul isn’t on solids yet but we have to start studying, you see), and of course, that very important baby club membership. I’m on Baby Gaga, and Baby Center sends me a mail updating me on ‘Your Baby This Week’ every single week.

So when Anmum asked me to do this advertorial for their latest online contest, I said yes because I would have written about it anyway. Besides, I actually do drink Anmum Lacta every day – I've tried other brands of mommy's milk available on the market, but the taste just doesn't cut it for me (too sweet, too rich, too puke inducing… neh). They give out free samples too, if you sign up on their site and say you want some, so I guess that's a great reason to join the club.

The Anmum Club site is something like that awfully popular Baby Center, and is building up with content on a daily basis. Also the club has been running some pretty cool online campaings for the Internet savvy mommy. Just recently they had the Mother's Day thing with Anmum® Celebrates Mum, which I missed out, but thank goodness, they’re running another similar one for Father’s Day, called the Anmum® Salutes Dads campaign. 

1. First you need to go to their website here, sign up as an Anmum Club member just like I did, and get to the contest page (click on Anmum Salutes Dad on the menu tabs).

2. Then, you need to choose the person you want to nominate to win the prize. Make sure your nominee is a father-figure type of person, so your father or your hubby would be ideal, or your partner, your grandfather, uncle, nephew etc will probably fit the bill. I'll be nominating my lovey-dovey Eric of course.

3. After that you need to browse the newly launched ‘For Dad’ section on the website so that you can find and answer three different questions. The questions are really simple because they're counting on a slogan-writing contest to choose the winners.

4. That's the difficult part, the slogan writing thing. You need to complete this line 'He makes a wonderful dad because ….' in 15 words. Ok lemme try this out here, after  nominating my hubby Eric Yeow.

He makes a wonderful dad because he works hard, plays even harder, and brings home the bacon for baby and me.

Okay, please, promise you will not COPY AND PASTE MY SLOGAN ENTRY. I've posted it here already so Anmum knows it's COPYRIGHTED to minishorts,  thank you very much.

5. But you are free to tell your mommy friends like I did (don't get selfish yah). They say the more people you tell, the universe will know just how generous you are, and hence you'll get a bigger chance at winning the contest. That's me and my Law of Attraction theory at work there.

Anmum will be posting the winners on their Facebook page, so you may wanna like the Anmum Club page first. Then you can check the site daily to find out whether you've won anything, plus get to know other cool online mommies on facebook.

This time around, the prizes are still a cool bunch – weekly winners will get to enjoy shopping vouchers from Nike and Adidas and MPH, a wireless walkman, a mini hi-fi set, grooming sets for metrosexual gentlemen plus a digital photo frame (this goes for at least RM150 a pop I believe).

Of course what we’re really keen on would be the grand prizes reserved specially for the BEST OF THE BEST slogans. At the end of the contest, the best 3 slogans from the weekly winners for the entire campaign will win one of one of these grand prizes: either that brand new Sony Cinematic Gaming Experience (that's a Home Theatre System with a PS3 for your BluRay stuff), or a cool 32″ Samsung LED TV; or fight with me for that Nikon D5000.

The contest started on 20 June but will run till the 17th of July, so it's still not too late to get your brains cracking and dream of a great slogan to beat me to that camera and as all contests go, there're Terms & Conditions to look out for.

By now many the blogosphere regulars would have had a through-the-bloggers'-eyes preview of the new M2U interface (Maybank2U site), or if not, here it is:

Obviously, this sleeker look is a huge graduated from the predecessor, currently still the welcome site for those who key in http://www.maybank2u.com/ or http://www.maybank2u.com.my/. The older site, shown below, has been a personal 'monthly must visit at least three times' site – I use M2U for most of my banking needs, and haven't physically visited a bank since two years ago. And with all honesty, the new version, while being sleeker, takes a lot of getting used to. After all, we're moving on to the sleek, clean version, from a very chaotic this:

Since most people have spoken on the new interface, I'll skip to what could have been missed by Erna, Suan, KY, davidlian (among many other bloggers) and get a little more personal on my opinions. To make it easier, I'll do a list of what I like, and what I really didn't like about the new interface.

Likes

• The new design deserves several thumbs-ups. It's sleeker, and CLEANER, definitely, so much easier on the eyes. Just see the older version which I've posted, and compare it to the new one.
• The speed – it seems to be faster, but then again that's probably because there are lesser people viewing it right now? On the first day when we all logged in at the same time, my m2u screen got stuck for a while, resulting in me not being able to do any banking at all other than viewing what it looked like.
• No ads. For now, I suppose its because they haven't added their advertisers on board yet, so everything looks neat and compact. I wonder how will the neat and sleek site turn out once it goes live with ads and promotions added in … some how having the MAS blue on that yellow-black-white thing doesn't quite cut it for me.
• I really like the colours mmkay… someone on some blog said that the yellow and black looks 'gay' , but I'd like to think it means 'gay' in the happy and busy way. I suppose the yellow and black relates to the maybank tiger mascot identity, but for some reason, the new M2U reminds me of a busy bee, which is great. After all Maybank, like any other gohmen related agency, suffers from the terrible identity and image crisis thanks to the nonchalant procrastinating inefficiency of our clever kerajaan Malaysia.  And speaking of bees, I'll get to what I didn't like about the new site.

Dislikes

• I have to concur with Suan, that agent M mascot thingy totally doesn't cut it, and to me that dislike level is kind of elevated to a 'wtf'?. Introducing M, the so M2U agent, who's supposed to everything as the following poster tells you. So, yah, lemme say that again. WTF is an M-agent?

• Now I'm the sort of person who really can't stand mascots, and for one, I'd like to imagine that people who use internet banking would be considerably familiar with the regular HELP section. I don't know about you, but most of my friends deactivate that paperclip mascot thingy that comes with word (bloody annoying thing, that one) so the Ironman look-alike M Agent, IMHO is a total waste of time. Like errr, why the hell do I wanna know where a fake person lives, and why the heck should I even bother having M as an MSN Live online buddy?
• Ok even if they wanted a mascot anyway, why the heck was M created to look like an Ironman lookalike with a cast-away body (wasn't one of the armours Ironman designed and casted away a gold and black coloured version? )  Whatever happened to something more Maybank, like the Tiger, for instance – oi, use lah some animal that's Maybank related… Even using a Bee would match the yellow and black colours, but heck they had to come up with Ironman.
• On to more serious matters, I thought it interesting that Maybank2U can still, only be accessed by keying in the full http://www.maybank2u.com or http://www.maybank2u.com.my URLs. Key in http://www.m2u.com or http://www.m2u.com.my gets you nothing — the domain isn't even owned by anyone yet. Now I find this kind of odd considering that we've been refering to Maybank2U as M2U, on the goodie bags 'M2U' is printed on sparkling fonts, and even M is noted as belonging to the M2U society. Maybe Maybank should do something about it, imagine accessing the online portal through just 'm2u.com' rather than the more tedious 'maybank2u.com'?

Anyway existing M2U users can expect to get invites to test this new version on their screens rather soon. When you do , haha, try adding that M Agent to your MSN Messenger, and tell me if the dude's friendly, yah? For now, I can't wait to be able to access the new version through the simple domains, but we'll just have to wait till the big launch, yah?
 
But in the meantime, have a look at my conversation with Mr 'Friendly' M, the M2U Agent.

About a month ago I agreed to sample the humongous buffet spread that is the Weekend Special Buffet at Coca Restaurant.

The extensive menu that is the Weekend Special Buffet. Click to go to my flickr to see it in large size.

For the initiated, the Coca chain of restaurants is a made-in-Thailand now available in several shopping centres, hugely associated with steamboat, but actually has a whole lot of other goodies chain of Thai-styled steamboat restaurant. We went to the one (that's currently under renovation) at Bangsar Shopping Centre (near my office-kan), a day before Valentine's Day.

On our arrival, the restaurant marketing manager came up to us and congratulated us on our engagement – fuiyoh the whole world knows we're engaged hah, can't cancel the wedding anymore, can we? , and then we were informed that instead of the Valentine's Day set they were going to have us try out their signature menu.

So this was the one. RM78++ for adults on weekends only, a (super super) wide spread of dishes that ranged from the steamboat eat all you can (really really eat all you can) to the cooked dishes.

Now this was where Eric and I were a little surprised, truth be told. All along I had assumed that Coca had only their steamboat (the last time I ate at the same restaurant was about 8 years ago before meeting Eric, and I recalled little about Coca serving cooked Thai dishes only. So Eric decided immediately, 'OK, errr… we will skip the steamboat set, my fiancee has tried that one before anyway, but I'm more interested to see what you can cook up.'

The restaurant decided to recommend several dishes (in total we had about 10 mains and anothre 3 desserts. I'm going to show you some of the more noteworthy ones so that you'll remember to order these if you choose to go there…

Thai-styled Shark's Fin soup. I must say I was very impressed to see them serving real fin — sorry to the animal activists here. The taste was rather unusual for those prefering the Chinese-styled drenched in XO liquor type, and it was also very different from the ones they serve in Bangkok's Chinatown. Coca-styled – I'll call this boleh-lah.

Scallops (Typhoon styled). According to the menu you can order the scallops cooked in any of these ways: Tamarind, Golden Fragant, Typhoon Style, Coca Special Sauce, Stir Fried with Basil Leaves. We took the different sounding one. Now if you're ever going to try this (and do order the scallops – they're HUGE), don't order Typhoon style. Get the Stir Fried with Basil Leaves. The broccoli tasted great, but the scallops did not manage to absorb the sauce.

Breaded Soft Shell Crab – so sinful. But so yummy. MUST MUST MUST TRY (if you love soft shell crab – Eric thought it was too rich for him so I finished both pieces. ^_^

Always order a Thai salad at a Thai restaurant. We took my favourite – the Mango Salad. Chunky peanuts and whole cashewnuts were a good sign and this dish delivered. You can order as many salads as you want, so hehe, order a few lah if you go…

Eric saw the words 'Fried Morning Glory' and we had a little argument over what they meant. "I'm telling you they really take the flowers and fry lah."

"No, they're Kangkung… in Thailand they call it morning glory nia…" I said.

"OK we order and see who wins."

NEVER FIGHT WITH A WOMAN IN A RESTAURANT. She always wins.

This was very very close to the way they fry it in Bangkok. I like!

The creme de la creme. The steam fillet of cod on a bed of oh-so-sumptious Steamed in Thai Style sauce (up in Kelantan we would call this the Khengsom Steam). It's a pity the buffet only allows a one-time-order only for Cod and Crabs. Otherwise we would have ordered this over, and over, and over again. THIS ONE DISH ALONE is worth the entire trip to Coca (even if you don't take the Weekend Buffet, ORDER THE COD! The manager told us that they fly in an entire cod on a weekly basis so you can be guaranteed of freshness. And the sauce is very very spicy yah (so children and people who can't take chillies, you've been warned).

The desserts were so so and the Biasa type you can find in all Thai Restaurants. Go for the Thai styled Cendol, cause the cempedak bits in them makes the taste very different from the Malaysian styled one…

Of course there are some not-so-sedap ones on the list. The stranger dishes which you might wanna miss if you go…:

Stuffed prawns, baked crabs (the fillings were the same, and tasted like fish paste! The black pepper giant prawns (a little wtf lah, the sauce tasted right out of a bottle!) and the pandan chicken (a little too oily). Wait. On second thought, the pandan chicken was ok…

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OK. The Verdict: for RM78++ and the choices you get (the extensive list of cooked dishes, AND the steamboat set), it really is value for money. Its a pity that the normal human being can't take in too much (or rather, Eric and I aren't big eaters) so even though we only order the cooked dishes, we were stuffed by the end of it. Cooking time is rather slow (we had to wait around 25 minutes for the first dish to arrive), but the quality of the food is good. I'd prefer to take the steamboat though, after all, IT IS COCA, and you HAVE to order the steamboat when you're there – so if you ever order this buffet set, don't skip the steamboat. I would recommend ordering the following sets if I were you…

Steamboat buffet – take this one…
Cod Fish – Order the steamed in thai sauce set
Soft Shell Crabs – Order two plates if you love soft shell crabs and you don't really care about cholesterol
Morning Glory – Very nice
Mango Salad – I would order a whole plate for myself, if you love Phad Thai then do the same!

If I were you I'd also call the restaurant to reserve a table AND order the dishes of my liking first. That'll give them some time to cook!

Coca Restaurant outlets are at:

Open Hours :
[Weekdays] 11am – 10.30pm
[Weekends] 11am – 11pm