Just a couple of months ago, we attended the launch of @the5tory and we had a little taste of what Just Heavenly Cafe has to offer, and it’s more than just heavenly cakes. In fact, the menu here is rather extensive so I guess that’s why Nigel invited us back for a proper foodie get together so we could eat til our hearts’ content.

And feast we did, though not without a little game of ice-breaker in the form of writing a short story which turned out to be a psychology test. Ah…. Nigel, always one to make the party interesting. Anyway, there are many dishes to get through, so I best not digress.

We started off with this gorgeous looking Char Siew Chicken Salad (RM21). Oh yeah, Just Heavenly is pork free, but fortunately, this chicken char siew was done quite well, with a bit of fatty stuff to make it nice and juicy, good contrast with the grassy green bits.

Something a little more common, the Caesar Salad (RM23), which comes with either beef bacon or smoked salmon and a cling wrap poached egg perched on top, nice touch. Good thing is this is dressed very lightly so you don’t accidentally consume too much calories in the process.

Can’t say I’ve ever tried Salmon Spring Rolls before. This is a little Japanese inspired perhaps? Priced at RM17 for a good portion. Interesting bite over a chatter.

The Fish Fingers come from the Special menu, and these definitely did not come from a box (ahh… the stuff that got me through uni). The flesh is lovely flaky with super crispy crust. I’d gladly have more of these.

This is one of the nicest pumpkin soup (RM17) I’ve had lately, full of the natural sweetness of the pumpkin, thick, creamy, and that garlic toast is something else! So good.

We then moved on to the main, with this glorious BLT Burger (RM30), made with Prime Aussie Beef, chunky mushroom sauce, lettuce and tomato on toasted sesame seed served with chunky chips and salad with feta cheese. A good classic tasting burger which will definitely fill you up.

The Lamb Burghini (love the name) is Greek inspired. I love Greek Food, but unfortunately, I don’t eat lamb so I had to skip this.

The Curryeggy (RM26) looks the most interesting. Egg, Flaky Puff Pastry, Chicken Filling, Curry Sauce. A very hearty combo, best to be shared. Love the crispy curry leaves for that aromatic bite.

The One That Got Away is another item on Special. Made just like the proper Fish & Chips in Australia/UK. I think they used Cod for this but my memory is failing me so this is a wild guess.

And it’s not the end yet! We were fed few more dishes in the form of pasta.

First the Crab Aglio Olio (RM32). The angel hair is a touch soft for my liking, but the flavours were spot on.

Here the Carbonara is served with Penne for a change. Comes with plenty of mushrooms and beef bacon, this is quite creamy and cheesy. Definitely the ultimate guilty pleasure.

I saved the best for last. The Linguine Pesto (RM30) is delicious! I’m also slightly biased because Linguine is my favourite shape of pasta. But the pesto here is delightfully aromatic, and I like how they top it with plenty of greens.

Finally, with what little stomach space we had, it was time for desserts.

A high tea set! I’m fully stuffed at this point so didn’t try everything.

The Play it again Sam, which we also had last time. A tribute to the late Samantha Schubert, Malaysian Actor and Model, this cake is a delicious triple decker melange of Bananas, Strawberries, and Chocolate all topped with fresh cream.

The Rainbow Cheesecake is fun to look at, with no compromise on taste. Thanks to Kevin I rarely get to savour cheesecakes and I definitely appreciated this.

Phew! That was a lot of food! I’m hungry again looking at these pictures and I think I need to return for some of those Linguine Pesto (and the Curryeggy) Thank you, Nigel, for the fantastic hospitality once again!

Just Heavenly Cafe
3rd Floor
Bangsar Shopping Centre
Jalan Maarof
59000 Kuala Lumpur
10am-10pm daily

Jaya One branch
10am-8pm
Genting Skyavenue
10am to 10pm

Imagine seeing the World with only a little or completely without your beloved eyesight!
Dark, daunting and depressive thoughts?
But can we try to see a sightless world from a different perspective?

Imagine seeing without colours, would it cause less racial discrimination?
Or not looking at physical deformities, would it help us to hear a person’s inner beauty?
Will we learn not to judge a book by looking at its cover in a World that often believe and judge in what they see?

Welcome to Arts Beyond Sight, an experiential journey of seeing the creative beauty of Arts without your sight! Visitors will be guided by professionally trained visually impaired Guide thru a 30 minutes of Touching, Smelling, Hearing and Tasting the beauty of Arts seen from a non visual perspective!

Arts Beyond Sight is an effort by Save Ones Sight Missions Berhad (SOSM) a non profit Organisation, Dialogue in the Dark Malaysia (Social Enterprise) and DID MY Innovations Sdn Bhd (Social Enterprise). For more information please email our Founder Mr Stevens Chan at stevens@did.my

Introduction of this year’s solo artist :
Poesy Liang 梁小詩 is an artist, mastering 3 classical Chinese mediums since 6yo. She was discovered as Levi’s 501 girl at the age of 14. As a teenager, Poesy feels at home in a film set – she has worked closely with top commercial filmmakers, leading agencies & prestigious brands – a familiar face in the broadcasting world from high school through architectural school till her late 20s.

She was paralysed twice. In her quest to heal, Poesy experimented with her social media to raise compassion, kindness and empathy, which won her numerous humanitarian awards & recognition. After many reinventions, Poesy re-emerged an interdisciplinary artist who is busy in 3 continents. Due to many requests to turn her life into a movie, she has opted to tell her story through a very short “Poesy Anime” which is still in production.

This exhibition is Poesy’s self-portrait in the dark which borrows some materials from “Poesy Anime” never shown to the public and showcases other unpublished creative skills. All your senses will be activated except for your sight.
This exhibition is suitable for children from 12 years old up.

梁小诗，是位艺术家，自六岁开始掌握书法，水墨画，雕刻等的古典中华艺术。 她在十四岁时被选为”Levi’s 501 Girl”星马区的广告模特儿。虽然年纪还小，她在拍片过程中却是如鱼得水般的自在。陆陆续续的接了不少的广告，和当时当红的商业影片者，知名國際品牌的代理商合作无间，这样的生活从中学一直延续到她二十多岁上了建筑学院时。
她的人生中经历了两次瘫痪。在療癒探索的过程中，她在社交媒体上发起了“恻隐，仁爱，同理”的醒覺活动，取得多项“人道认同”的相关奖项。
測底改造後小詩成為 跨学科艺术家 重新出现， 活躍於亚美欧三大洲之間。
她的经历吸引了不少影片制作者的注意，有者要求把她的劇本拍成电影。而她选择用一部动漫短片 Poesy Anime 来发表她的故事， 目前还在制作中。
這個展覽是小詩在黑暗中的自画像採用Poesy Anime還沒面世的材料和一些尚未發表的创作。
除了視覺之外，所有感官將會被啟動。
這個超視覺藝術展覽適合12歲以上的觀眾。

Here’s a video from the press conference:

Poesy’s Speech:

I’d like everyone to relax, don’t look at your phone, close your eyes. Relax, it’s okay. Close them. Let your eyes take a minute break. Now, listen to the sound of my voice. Can you tell anything from how I sound? Listen to the sounds around you. Can you tell who is sitting or standing? Slouching, eating or yawning? Listen to the sounds outside. What do you hear? Is there a lot of traffic? Trucks? Bikes? For some people, this is their entire life. And for what you might experience as an inconvenience, some might consider a super power. The ability to hear sounds and surroundings in a way like no other. Today, I’ll be talking about the blind and visually impaired. While I’m a person with sight, I’ve come to admire and become close with people in the blind community getting to know them through their stories. From judgement to struggles to joys.
First, I’d like to thank YB for officiating my exhibition. Thank you to the members of the media for taking the time to be here. Today is an uncommon day for me because it is not often that I find myself seated next to a politician in a press conference. I’m an artist, and often more focused on expression than governance. So, it’s great that we are here today, united for the arts & humanity and I am here for a cause that is close to my heart which is to raise empathy for the blind & visually impaired.
It is an honor to be the solo artist for Art Beyond Sight this year. Mr Stevens Chan of Dialogue in the Dark was first connected to me by the Singapore International Foundation. I’d like to thank them both for this opportunity.

For those who hasn’t met me yet, I will offer a brief introduction of why I am here.
I am a founder of a social experiment started on Facebook 11 years ago. It was a movement based on random acts of kindness, I wrote the policy with 4 simple rules – No fundraising, No Commerce, No Religion & No Politics. My movement spread to more than 20 countries, in Malaysia alone I throw an average of 1200 volunteer events per year for the first 6 years. The activities were run without a production budget and were designed for volunteers who were willing to do random acts of kindness and to serve the marginalised community. It was my first of many portfolios of a new kind of art performance. A senior curator who is also the Commissioner of the Arts for the City of Dallas coined my work as the art of life and it gained me many invitations to different countries, to create more movements & to grace the stage of global humanitarian summits at the United Nations in New York. As an artist, you can say that kindness is my art, despite my preceding reputation of a wicked human mind.

I have always been curious to work with the blind. My first project with the blind was exactly 7 years ago in San Francisco. That summer I persuaded a quartet of big named jazz singers & musicians to perform a free concert for 100 blind audience inside a borrowed canteen. The immense reward from that humble project brought me clarity, it was the kind of clarity about life that you will experience when you gain new perspective not with your eyes but with your consciousness. That perspective came to me when I tried to empathise what it was to be blind. Ever since then, I have held a strong belief that the blind can often see a life situation far more clearly than someone who has eyesight. More often that not, our eyesight causes confusion because it makes us judgmental human beings. The eyes receive images, which communicate messages that may or may not be intended. We may be influenced by what we see, and then our perceptions and attitudes are impacted. But, take that sight away, and the distraction of stereotype changes completely. Our intuition becomes sharper.
When Mr. Stevens Chan approached me about doing this exhibition, I saw the opportunity of gifting this extraordinary dimension to the Malaysian public. While normally, I charge a fee for my public speaking engagements and exhibitions, for this it was different. I was compelled to join the cause.
Today is uncommon also because the exhibition we are launching is my self-portrait in the dark. If you were observant, I use a mobility scooter to get around, my story has been told many times in the media but not the way I am about to share with you today. A few years ago in HK, a prominent collector of Chinese contemporary art from Switzerland gave me an important piece of career advise, he told me to share my life story. What he said to me was no different to what the agents, book publishers and film makers said to me over the decades, but speaking to someone who understood & supported artists inspired me to write my own rules. I did not want a 100-minute movie nor a boring old book. So 4 years ago, I started to draw a short animation film titled Poesy Anime slated for global release on social media. This short movie was only going to be 5 minutes long, I wanted it to be short since our general attention span these days are also short. Today you will be hearing the soundtrack of this film before anyone else. This script has gone round the globe and it took 14 writers 2 years to shorten my life story into 5 minutes. To shape the narration, we had a scriptwriter who consults for Disney, a film school professor from a Texas university, while others were media producers & journalists who had interviewed me in great lengths. Needless to say, I had to personally sit through many hours of counseling.
I self-fund this production by selling my art work, painting on the sidewalks in Europe & travelling between 3 continents each year – just painting my way. The final copy of this soundtrack was recorded in London last year with a special music director who was also the last music director of the late great songstress Teresa Teng. To date, I have spent close to USD$22,000 on this production with most of the top professionals offering their services pro bono and now I am offering this exhibition to you for free. It is my birthday and we can consider it my gift to my home country Malaysia.
When you enter that pitch black room later, know that you are sharpening your senses by temporarily taking away your sight. You are not pretending to be disabled, but instead think about expanding your abilities in that darkness. Rest your eyes and let your consciousness take over. I hope you will gain insights from your experience and tell all your friends about it on social media, traditional media and please come back again with friends and their teenage children, the exhibition is suitable for children 12 years upwards. And it will be open from 11 to 7 everyday until Hari Merdeka. Don’t waste this opportunity.
Before I end, I would like to thank the blind guides who will be walking you through the dark room experience. They will only be earning a small allowance each day for an entire month to present this experience to you. To contribute to their dedicated service, please donate to Dialogue in the Dark. You will see the main character of Poesy Anime printed on the tshirts for sale, those are also to help raise funds for the cause. I’d like to leave you with a favorite quote of mine, “If you ever find yourself in complete darkness, you are better off being led to the end of the tunnel by someone blind.” So go forth and have a unique experience that now can only belong to you.

If you are planning to pay a visit to *Arts Beyond Sight feat. Poesy小詩* soon, this is last week’s attendance statistics so you may choose a good day for yourself. (Currently still no queues on their busiest day.) Media day ~> 16 Day 1 ~> 13 Day 2 ~> 28 Day 3 ~> 20 Day 4 ~> 23 Day 5~> 62 Day 6 ~> 47

Here are the Facebook event links : https://web.facebook.com/events/671962409675861/ https://web.facebook.com/events/1415587341889377/

Poesy’s Social Media
Instagram @poesyliang
Twitter @poesyliang, @HelpingAngels @poezjewellers
Facebook
www.facebook.com/poesyliang
www.facebook.com/poesyart
www.facebook.com/poesyprize
www.facebook.com/BaldEmpathyMovement
www.facebook.com/poesyworld
www.facebook.com/poesymusic
www.facebook.com/poezjewellers

Recycling is a relatively new concept in Malaysia. During my years of living in Australia, a couple things that were done very well were waste segregation and water conservation. That’s why it was a bit of a cultural shock when I moved to KL. A few years ago it was literally unheard of to bring reusable bags to shopping trips and in fact, the cashiers would gladly use as many plastic bags as possible to sort your groceries, some even practise the act of double bagging, which was totally appalling to me. Similarly, all trash would go into the same bin, plastic, paper, food waste, whatever. And water? Everyone just uses water like no tomorrow and God forbid if there’s water disruption where the public goes into a frantic attempt to keep large amount of water, only to be discarded once the disruption is over.

I’m no angel of course and there are things I do which contribute to carbon footprints, which is unavoidable sometimes. But I would like to do as much as possible to save our planet: Climate change is real guys. If you want your children to live a long life, better start doing something today! Anyway, back to the plastic bags. On 1 January 2017, my current home state of Selangor imposed a ban on the use of polystyrene containers and while extending the “No Plastic Bag Day” on Saturdays to seven days a week.

Essentially, polystyrene containers were banned while a 20 sen charge per plastic bag was levied on consumers at supermarkets and retail stores throughout the state. While 20 sen per plastic bag may not seem a lot and many consumers won’t really mind paying, the actual intention behind the charge was to educate consumers on the importance of reducing the usage of plastic bags.
Now, five (5) months into the ban, it’s become a habit for us to bring along our reusable bags for our groceries trips and it’s also pleasant to note that many shoppers are doing the same. Although it’s a shame that we had to actually impose a charge on the plastic bags for this to happen, at least there’s progress.

The BBC ran a report recently stating that scientists say about eight million tonnes of plastic waste find their way into the world’s oceans each year. This amount of debris is, they say, like covering an area 34 times the size of New York’s Manhattan Island to ankle depth.

The feature also highlighted the possible threat to the food chain, by the plastics broken down into tiny fragments in our oceans. Tests by the Plymouth Marine Laboratory have shown that when minuscule particles of plastic are in the water, the creatures at the bottom of the food chain do ingest them.

Ref: http://www.bbc.com/news/av/science-environment-34415464/plastic-in-oceans-threatens-food-chain

So you throw a plastic bag indiscriminately, the fish eat the plastic bag, you eat the fish and you probably end up getting stomach or gastro intestinal cancer. Karma is unavoidable…

OK but what about the total ban on polystyrene containers?

The use of polystyrene takeaway products was widely touted as detrimental to the environment when disposed due to its non-biodegradable nature. In fact, the authorities attributed the indiscriminate disposal of polystyrene lunch boxes into the waterways as the cause of flash floods in the Klang Valley during torrential downpours due to the presence of polystyrene lunch boxes floating around impeding the flow of the flood waters into the drains.

Polystyrene boxes though are light material and floats on water hence it’s also highly likely there are plenty of other forms of heavier garbage that were also the cause of drains being blocked.

Polystyrene lunchboxes represent the most versatile, economical, user-friendly and effective product in the takeaway of food. It can insulate heat, wherein when the food is hot, the user holding the lunchbox will not feel any heat at all.

So, what is the alternative when polystyrene lunchboxes are banned? Hawkers now use solid plastic lunchboxes that contribute up to 3 times more to the waste problem as plastic lunchboxes are 15-16 grams in weight as compared to polystyrene lunchboxes which are 4-5 grams in weight.

A country’s “solid waste” and “waste management” is measured in metric tons and thanks to the use of solid plastic lunchboxes, we are now contributing 3 times more in terms of waste which is actually more detrimental to the environment.

Plastic lunchboxes also use 3 times more plastic resin than polystyrene lunchboxes, meaning more raw materials are used to produce them starting with the petrochemical plants that contribute heavily to pollution. For manufacturers to produce the plastic lunchboxes, the machines consume 4 times more electricity than manufacturing the polystyrene lunchboxes!

So wait a minute – the alternative product to polystyrene is actually worse for the environment! And to compound matters, polystyrene lunchboxes are not biodegradable if not disposed of properly!

Biodegradability and/or compostability ensures that the end-product can be broken down and degraded back to its molecular state. Plastics actually have the ability to be biodegradable and compostable as well with modern manufacturing techniques and additives.

However, for the plastics to biodegrade back to its original base, the item must be properly disposed of and end up in a compost or landfill. Biodegradable, compostable or environmentally-friendly plastics of any kind that is indiscriminately disposed will NOT biodegrade and will continue to remain as their original state.

That goes to say that if you keep a solid plastic container in your kitchen cabinet, it will stay as a solid plastic container in your kitchen cabinet for years and not biodegrade.

So, what then is the solution for this problem?

As much as it would pain our authorities to admit, but our neighbours down South have the solution.

“The Government will not impose a ban on them in consideration of other factors, such as the cost of alternatives and inconvenience to hawkers and consumers, Senior Minister of State for the Environment and Water Resources Amy Khor said on Monday (9 May 2016).”

“Dr Khor said that while polystyrene foam packaging may be of concern in some countries where waste is landfilled, it is incinerated safely in Singapore at waste-to-energy incineration plants, which are fitted with pollution control equipment.”

Ref: http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/environment/no-ban-on-using-styrofoam-packaging-but-hawkers-discouraged-from-using-it-amy

In fact, there have been studies done to show that in many instances, the alternative is actually not more environmentally friendly.

Ref: http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/paper-cups-not-an-environmentally-friendly-option-here-either-ex-7540186

Of course, the best alternative is to bring your own tiffin carrier, mug or tumbler. However, sometimes you just don’t have one with you.

How do we solve this problem?
The people living in this country need a paradigm shift. We need to learn how to be more conscious about the environment and not litter indiscriminately. This is a culture that needs to be inculcated at an early stage and indeed at all levels – government, corporate and civil society.

More enforcement needs to be taken against the main causes of polystyrene pollution, be it more enforcement officers at construction sites, commercial and F&B outlets, and even residential areas. The change won’t happen overnight however like the 20 sen charge for plastic bags, consumers will slowly realise the importance of looking after the environment and the effect might trickle into other aspects of life – making Malaysian a country of people with a conscience.

Our local authorities should look at installing electricity-generating incinerators like Norway which transforms its trash and waste into energy – doing away with the need for fossil fuels to power the power plants thus solving the issue of insufficient landfills and rising energy costs.

China lifted its ban on polystyrene back in 2013 after a 14-year long ban. Perhaps it’s time our authorities reassess whether or not this ban is actually helping the environment or not, and if it’s not, stop the ineffective ban and consider other solutions instead.

At the end of the day, it’s up to us to reduce, reuse and recycle. We only have one planet to live on so it’s time to change our mindset.