Everyone knows about the famous Kim Gary restaurants.

I just went for dinner at a branch in The Curve today. While the prices are a little expensive, you’ll always find Kim Gary Restaurants totally full; Apart from its nice and unique dishes, I think it’s also thanks to the uprising ‘yum cha‘ culture among youths in Malaysia.

I think there are 2 main types of ‘yum cha‘ places. The normal kopitiams – Where you sit by the road and drink teh tarik; and the ‘high class’ franchise restaurants – Brands like Kim Gary, Old Town Kopitiam, Wong Kok Char Chan Teng (Wong Kok Hong Kong Restaurant) etc.

Wierdly enough, apparently many of the second type restaurant owners are (or are pretending to be) from Hong Kong!

Just go around the city, and you’ll find ‘Hong Kong styled’ restaurants popping up everywhere! I don’t see a lot of ‘Singapore-styled restaurants’ or ‘Indonesia-styled restaurants’, why Hong Kong?

I also noticed that the so-called ‘high-class’ kopitiams are all adopting the same method for ordering food. Typically, you choose from the menu, mark your order on a piece of paper listed with the names of all the dishes, and a waiter comes to confirm everything and process your order.

I really wonder where are they copying it from! From my experience, they don’t do that in Hong Kong! Hmm…

Anyway, Kim Gary’s menu confirms that ARE Kim Gary branches in Hong Kong, so the boss is obviously not some fat local Ah Beng, whew! Here’s a photo of the menu page:

According to the information in the menu, A few Kim Gary restaurant branches in Hong Kong are called ‘Gary Cafe’, ‘Gary Restaurant’, and ‘Kam Gary Restaurant’. There is also a cute branch name called ‘Apple Restaurant‘, I wonder why…?

• Note: the following story is fictional. (In Case Kim Gary sues me! =)

Maybe the evolution went like this: At first the boss, named Gary, opened his own ‘Gary cafe’. Later, he thought that the word ‘cafe’ was not attractive enough, so he changed the name to ‘Gary Restaurant’.

A couple of years later, he found out that there were too many guys named ‘Gary’ in Hong Kong, so he added his surname into the restaurant’s name, and it became ‘Kam Gary Restaurant’. The Cantonese translation of “金” is “Kam”, after all.

Then, business was booming and Kam Gary Restaurant was expanding globally! Some investors told the boss that perhaps they should change it to ‘Kim Gary Restaurant’ since it would sound more like an international brand… And so ‘Kim Gary Restaurant’ it became.

— end of fictional story —

If the story was true, what do you think the next evolution would be?

I had no idea until I went back to Ipoh last month and saw this banner when I was driving:

I really thought that Kim Gary has finally opened a branch in Ipoh but something was wrong!

No! It’s SIM Gary!

I couldn’t believe it so I drove around looking for it, and I found the shop in a nearby area:

OMG… It seems that they even imitated the Chinese word design of Kim Gary… Copycats!

How far will you go to prevent people from sticking advertisements on your wall?

Stroll down any street and you’ll probably find a few common ‘stick no bills‘ signs on the walls or pillars alongside the street.

I guess the shopowners are just too tired of people sticking ads for sexual treatment pills, MLMs, and even Along (loan shark) services, on their private walls!

In my opinion, ads about Along services clearly dominate over ads about other services, Alongs nowadays are so professional that they provide all sorts of ‘offers’ like low interest rates, receive cheque instantly, and so on…! Their ‘marketing agents‘ made sure that you will always see their ads anytime, anywhere!

So, let’s say you own a mamak stall, and you want to stop people from wallpaper-ing your store’s walls with Along services and ubat jantan promotions; and they are definitely not going to stop just because you put up a ‘stick no bills‘ sign, what are you going to do?

Here’s a shopowner who did a very effective job in making sure that his walls are free of ads. Instead of just a ‘stick no bills‘ sign, he added a warning below:

It says: “Warning, do not stick any advertisements, wrongdoers will be prosecuted or beaten.’

Now that’s an extremely effective sign! You stick ads, you will be beaten up! It’s even scarier that being prosecuted!

Everyone hates busus when they are full.

A full bus means that you’ll have to stand for the whole journey, and it sucks.

Imagine you’re a working adult without a private vehicle, you’ve been working for a whole day, waited for the bus for half an hour (standing!), and finally when the bus came, you thought that you can finally sit down and rest a bit, but then you realized that it’s full and you had to stand all your way home! Really sucks, right?

Anyway, I went to 1 Utama and I happened to see this bus, I can imagine that it will be the ‘nightmare bus’ for most people, especially busy people.

*The words on the bus are NOT Photoshoped in, they were really there on the bus!

A bus that is SENTIASA PENUH!!! Dude!

If I were the working adult that I described just now and I see this bus coming, I think I would really cry!

For those who do not understand Malay, the bus company is considerate enough to have an English translation on the other side of the bus, so that everyone can understand!

Driver: Eh, don’t bother to come up lah, this bus always full 1, ok!

Perhaps they did that to prevent the disappointment that you might feel when you realize that the bus is full after you board it, by warning you of it the instant you see the bus approaching!

Just kidding lah! I guess it’s only that RapidKL is very confident towards their services! Good for them!

Damn, I really need a car!