Not too long ago, I had dinner at Neroteca, one of my favourite restaurants. It’s just off Cangkat Bukit Bintang. Unlike it’s fine dining restaurant Nerovivo, Neroteca is a little more casual… in a bistro kind of way and I like the quaint feel of it. If there’s one thing I really like that I don’t find in KL too often is small quaint restaurants with great food. You can find so many of those in London or even in Melbourne sometimes… you know, off some alley or something you find this little restaurant with just a few tables with with gorgeous food.
The reason I was at Neroteca that night though was because of Leon. Let me give you some history on my friend Leon. Leon is an old friend of mine from Penang… but he now lives in KL half the time. He graduated from Purdue University with an engineering degree. After that he came back to Penang and easily found a job at an engineering firm. He worked there for a few years until he finally realized that his passion was in the stock market.
So he quit his job one day, taking with him whatever savings he earned from his engineering job and just focused on investing it. So while all of us are working, Leon wakes up any time he wants in the morning, goes to the gym or live his life however he wants. Then whenever he finds the time to, he sits down and studies the stock market to see which stock he should invest in. Once he makes the decision to invest he leaves it for a while and just watch the stock price over months or years. In the mean time, he’s the biggest party animal I know… in Penang he would be out partying like 2-3 times a week and man did he live the life.
Now he’s come down to KL too and he’s been partying just as often. So anyway just recently Leon asked me and another friend of mine Gin for dinner. Gin is the other guy in this picture.
The reason was because a company he had invested in about a year ago just got bought out. So as a result he made money and he wanted to buy his friends dinner! How nice of him!
I imagine that to be the kind of life Leon has. Like he invests in all this, some make decent returns, some may even lose but sometimes he makes one killing and that’s all the money he needs to enjoy his life for another year or so.
Still when your friend asks to buy you dinner, you don’t exactly want to take that for granted so we ordered decent stuff. We didn’t pop a few bottles of French wine open. All I had was just a Pesto Penne Pasta… simple.. but fantastic!
Neroteca just has the best pasta I know of in KL… and it’s not particularly expensive or anything. I think it’s about RM28 or something.. which is more or less the same as a lot of other places. Only that this pasta has very very high quality ingredients. You can feel it.
And for dessert, the waitress recommended their famous Tiramisu.
Tried it out, it was okay… but I still kinda prefer the Alexis one.
The dinner and the company that night was just lovely! Thanks Leon for the dinner. Hope you make more money in the stock market in the future.
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space