Sweetest surprise

Two groups with one original member missing.

Westlife first. This is Something right.



And did you know that Us against the world was "global anthem" dedicated to their fans? (if the comment on this video is to be believed) But if you want to see the video, this one is better, 'cos the other one has a sound lag. And just for info, the four children at the start are photos of Shane, Kian, Mark and Nicky, in that order ;) (Nicky was the only one I recognised...)

Then Michael Learns to Rock, with Sweetest surprise.



And while I'm at it, here's Hot and cold by Katy Perry. The video's pretty funny, hehe.

Stuff I found at work

As you might already know, I started my internship two weeks ago. (and I just got my first salary today, yippee! lol) I basically spend the whole day in front of a computer doing research. And in my searches, I arrived on a site called Patent Storm where we can find all sorts of patents. On the left of the page, there was a box entitled "bizarre patents" and there was a link to a patent called "behaviour modification wristwatch". Being curious, I decided to have a quick look. And on that page there was another box, with another link...this time to a "banana protective device"! This is even better than the first one!

And besides that, someone also came up with a "method of swinging on a swing"... These patents really sound kinda silly and useless...I wonder whether any of them are/will be actually used! I wouldn't mind a banana protective device myself...it would allow me to bring a banana out with me as a snack! :P

And I also found this piece of trivia:
When G.G. Hubbard learned of his future son-in-law's invention, he called it "only a toy." His daughter was engaged to a young man named Alexander Graham Bell.

Heh.

By the way, I just have to rant a bit to someone about this site. It's the Tecnord company (it seems to be Italian) On the main page of the site we see this:


The words and flags are links to another page, so I was like "Great, let's go! Which should I choose, English or French?" BUT!! ALL the links go to the same page. In ITALIAN. -_- (at least, I think it's Italian :P) Thankfully one of the catalogs was in English...

In trains and train stations...

You find the cutest things sometimes :P

This was taken on the train on my way back from Toulouse. The dog was walking all around...it was travelling with a whole group of people who had seats close to each other, which was probably why they let him loose... It was so cute!

looking around

aww...puppy dog eyes...literally!

After prancing around in the beginning, it settled down.
(and left me wondering how I was going to leave my seat to go to the toilet :P )

It was cuter in real life though... :|

Then in Tours, I saw this in the Relay shop window.


Voilà, that's it for today's dose of cuteness! lol

Of swiss rolls and Snek Ku

I found swiss roll and tiger roll (just the striped kind, but the thing is that it was actually called "tiger roll"!) in France; can you believe it?! You might not think anything of it...and neither would I have, some time ago...but when I saw them I was like "hey, I haven't seen that anywhere before!" Can someone tell me whether they've seen swiss rolls in supermarkets before? (I saw these in Champion, in the "specialities" section where they don't always have the same things)

Yep, there's even a tiger on the package!
And the one behind is blueberry-flavoured. (WW, lau nuah or not? ;) )

And another thing I saw, this time in the Asian supermarket in Guillotière, is Snek Ku!


At the back of the packet there are names of the 9 different snacks in the mix. I just realised that I used to eat some of those crackers without knowing what flavour they were supposed to be or what they were called. (after all, who cares as long as they are delicious? lol) For example, did you know that the small orange cubes (at the bottom of the packet, lower-right of the green pea) are called dragon balls? (I found that really funny...made me think of the Dragon Ball character lol)

When I went to Toulouse the other day As had bought some Snek Ku as well (though I believe they were a single snack and not a mix), and everyone was raving over how we never thought we'd see that in France...and who knew I would find it as well!

Seeing red

You're in luck, this time I have absolutely no pictures of scenery, but of loads of people! This is for those who complain that I don't post enough photos of people. I also have a couple of photos of people eating, but I think I shall keep them under wraps for now; they might come in useful for future blackmailing purposes! lol

I went to Angoulême (my French "hometown") last weekend for a Chinese New Year gathering organised by the juniors. Since I had spent two years there, there wasn't any need to go out and discover the town...so I contented myself taking photos with the people I met!

with Yilie, my junior in Rouen

with the Toulouse guys again

with my batchmate and Yilie's coloc Sia Ven
(coloc = housemate)

with another Rouen junior Zhi Yao

Moi Yang wanted to join us

supposed to be a photo with Moi Yang and Jeff, the only two Chinese juniors in Angoulême, but again, someone wanted to join in (someone give me his name!!)

with Shobana, my junior in Bordeaux

with Alvin, my super-senior (grand-senior more like it :P ) and photographer wannabe (who's also in Bordeaux)

with the girls from Toulouse
from left: Lavanya, Iz'zati, me and Asmahanna

with Alan, who loves and refuses to leave La Rochelle :P
(he's holding that napkin that way to block something in the background...I think it was someone)

supposed to be with the Bordeaux guys, Zayd and Alvin...but there's one junior kacau-ing in the background :P
(kacau = disturb)

with everyone who passed by and wanted to join in
(the only yet-to-be-introduced person in this photo is Azizi, another grand-senior)

with Gavin, who couldn't join in earlier because he was taking the photo

That night I stayed with the girls, and got to know the juniors whom I had never really spoken to before.

with Mimi, a La Rochelle junior (who happens to be from the 9th batch, the first batch doing only one year of preparation instead of two like us)

with my batchmates who also stayed the night: As, Mai and Iz'zati

sending them off at the bus stop
(I had completely forgotten how buses came along only once an hour on Sundays, six times starting from noon! Oh, how I've been spoilt by the luxuries of Lyon!)

My train was later than theirs, so I took more photos with the juniors.

with Afifa from Tours

with Anati, in whose place I slept

with Anis, Anati's housemate (which means I stayed at her place too!)

And here are the profs I managed to meet up with!

my French language teachers, Corinne and Geneviève
(Corinne was kind enough to go and pick me up at the train station!)

with Pesso, one of my Maths teachers
(this photo was taken outside after taking a group photo, and I didn't have my camera with me so Sia Ven took a photo for me using hers. I haven't got hers yet, so I'm putting this one from Angoulême's resident photographer ;P )

with Louet, my computer studies teacher
(a remark: the last two names are surnames)

and of course, a group photo

As for the post title, the theme of this gathering was "red", for Chinese New Year ;)

Note: by "grand-senior" I meant the first batch of JPA students.

Proof that Mix.fm is overdoing its community service

You're late for an important meeting. You leave something behind. Your partner picks a fight with you at home. What? A parking ticket?! Could this day get any worse?
So why don't you give yourself a headstart and consciously think of something positive? Like "I am going to smile today".

I said "Uncle, please la..." But what I should have said was (stern tone) "Uncle, it is illegal not to use the meter!" We know that most of our cabbies use the meter, but those who don't are giving the others a bad name.

Sound familiar?

For those who don't know, I listen to Mix.fm online. Not all the time, of course, but once in a while I'll put it on and keep listening to it each time I go online. It's been on for about a week now, and while the songs are still great and not repetitive enough to make me want to switch it off, some of the "community service" commercials are getting on my nerves.

I am tired of Jojo Struys' voice. Don't get me wrong, she has a nice voice, loud and clear, perfect for the commercial she's doing (or the message she's communicating) BUT after listening to it for so many times that you know exactly what she's going to say next and what tone she's going to use, it is totally annoying! (that's the first snippet by the way) Besides, she does another one about calming down, but I think I heard that one less (it doesn't stick as well in my mind...but maybe it's also because it's less aggressive)

Then there is the one about taxis (the second snippet) That is also SO annoying, especially the "dialogue with the Uncle" part. It's especially the tone that gets to me...first the pleading "please la..." tone, and then suddenly aggressively, "IT IS ILLEGAL!" Argh!!!

I promise you, I wrote those two snippets down from my mind, and I did not take any notes when I heard the commercials! You can compare it to what you hear...I haven't got the whole text down, of course, only the parts that kept grating at my senses, threatening to turn them into dust...but I bet I've got it about 90% correct.

[Speaking about "I bet", here's a little parenthèse ("bracket" in French, come to think of it the English word is "digression") about the expression "I bet"; during one of my French classes in Angoulême (hey, it was long ago! :P ) the teacher asked us what the expression je parie (I bet) was used to convey. Another friend (Fazli, I believe) and I both said that it expressed certitude...but the teacher said it expressed incertitude! I was like "what?! If you're not sure you're not gonna bet!" Okay, but so what, it's just a language thing. Who cares what it's theoretically supposed to convey as long as everyone understands what you mean?]

So there, I think Mix.fm should really tone down on its "community service"...'cos I still want to listen to it! Right now it's playing Stop by the Spice Girls...come on, what other radio plays that? ;)

Moi, la méchante

Je viens d'entendre qu'au moins deux personnes me trouvent sympa parce que j'ai aidé à la semaine asiatique. Ça veut dire que pendant deux ans j'étais pas sympa. Merci les gars.

If you're wondering why I'm not translating this, it's because it's not worth translating. You're better off not knowing. Trust me.

Je suis tracassée.

Or at least, I was. (je suis tracassée = I am bothered)

I was doing this optical illusion test, and there was this picture:


The question was whether A or B had a larger surface. Knowing that it was an optical illusion test, I looked carefully...checking out each coloured shape. And I came to the conclusion that each small shape was exactly the same in both A and B, so the total surface must be the same. But I could not explain the little blank square in B. I was going to post here, with an au secours! (help me!) message, but then as I stared at it a little longer, I finally managed to figure it out. (stop reading here if you still want to figure it out by yourself)

Darn these people who make optical illusions. The two triangles have ever-so-slightly different proportions. As a result, the first large triangle (A) is concave whereas the second is convex.

Duh. I am so glad to have gotten to the bottom of this mystery quickly.

A book or a squirrel?

I remember reading an Enid Blyton story where a little boy was asked what he wanted. The person (or magical creature) who asked him suggested "a book that never ends", amongst other things. The boy asked for a pet instead (a low-maintenance one, which turned out to be a squirrel, which is probably why I have a slight fascination/preference for squirrels as pets, and why I adopted one as my fluff-Friend)

But now I think that a book that never ends isn't such a bad idea. As long as it's a good book.

The thing is, I'm reading Further Under the Duvet by Marian Keyes. And it is great. It's nothing especially good, nothing riveting, nothing suspenseful or thrilling (and I'm the kind who likes mysteries and thrillers). But it is wonderfully written (she writes for magazines), each short "story" is like a newspaper column (I'm thinking of Mary Schneider's in The Star) and some of them are really funny, while others are, at the very least, entertaining. This is the kind of book that makes me want to read it when I have nothing to do, yet is easily put down when I do have something more important to do.

And I am torn right now, because I do not have much to do, I want to just sit down and read that book, but if I finish it I might have to start a new, less entertaining one. So I spend my time reading a chapter, then stopping and looking for something else to do, admitting defeat (but not before checking each and every one of my e-mails and going on Facebook to see whether there is any alternative) and reading another chapter. And then the cycle starts again.

This between-chapter break is being used to type out this post, as you can see.

Oh well, on to the next chapter.

(It's funny how some snippets of the stories by Enid Blyton come back to me sometimes...it must come from the many many times I have read her books!)

Edit: And I should add that it is indeed great to slide further under the duvet with this book. I'm not kidding, I did that last night. So hey, I spent my Valentine's night with my first love. (a book lah, in case any of you starts wondering) Oh, the bliss :) (exaggerating of course, but only a little!)

A hundred, tops

This is exactly what a blog is for :P I just noticed something from fooling about on Facebook.

You see, last night Joe posted up this status:

And people started commenting...until the list of comments became quite long. (I joined in somewhere in the middle)

Last night we didn't manage it to a hundred comments, but today we did...

(I couldn't take a screenshot of all the comments since they didn't fit into the screen!)

But you will notice that on this screenshot, that the "100th" comment was actually the 99th...I didn't notice it till I posted my own comment and noticed that Kok Liang's comment had disappeared.


So that would mean that the number of comments are limited to a hundred. Duh...that means we can't break the record any more.

Or...that no one can ever break our record. ;)

Stopping time

In a way, I wish that this day would go on forever. Or these days. Days when I have nothing to worry about. Days when I know what I'm going to do soon, but have no need to prepare anything for it. Days when I can just sit down and read, with no need to keep looking at the time to make sure I'm not going to be late for something.

But of course, the trickle of time will not be stopped...and this idyllic bliss has only three more days to last. (the pessimist in me tells me that I am exaggerating with my words)

May the next three days go well.

Greek love story

Hehe, I just realised that today is the best day to post this. I already had it drafted but wanted to finish posting about my visiting Greece first.

It all started with Shobana saying "I'm waiting for my Antonio to fall from the sky." I wasn't there when she said it, so when she was relating it to me she told me that her Antonio had a brother called Frederic Andros for me. Then, hearing us talk about our Antonio and Frederic (or Andros, he goes by both names), Alex suddenly said that he missed his Sofia... Turned out that Sofia was Antonio and Andros' sister! And guess what, according to Sia Ven, their grandfather's a Japanese, called Ajinomoto! So they're mixed-blood!

Okay, you got it, it was our story (what else are bored single people to do on vacation? :P) But hey, the Greek gods were on our side...because while at the airport waiting for our flight back to France, we suddenly saw them.

Antonio and Frederic Andros with Ajinomoto Jr

Sofia with Mrs Ajinomoto Jr

And yes, the five of them were travelling together.

Greece, the land of myth and mystery...anything is possible. lol


Oh gosh, modern technology is so dangerous. You never know who's taking your photo. (and I am so ashamed of myself for being on the predators' side... :s ) I should like to extend an apology to those in the photos...should you ever some across this post.

Making the most of my break

I went to play in a table-tennis competition today, my last for this school year, since I'm starting my internship next week. It was a team event, in which I had already participated for the last two years, and which I described before. This year I only played against two other teams, the first one being one of the better ones from INSA and the second one from another uni. I pretty much got thrashed by the other girls...in the first match all three of us lost badly, so it wasn't that bad, but in the second one the guys were pretty close in skill, and my teammates passed the game to me after their two singles with us leading 44-31 (if I remember correctly) But I managed only 10 points against the other girl while she breezed past me to get to 66 -_- (so in fact she beat me 35-10 :/ ) But then if we were playing a normal game I'd probably have lost 11-2 or 11-3, so it was to be expected... (I was playing with the ranked players okay!)

But it was a slight consolation that I managed one nice smash with the ball barely higher than the net ^_^ (yep, only one...none of the other attempts worked! lol) In fact, the other girl was good, but not too good (which was why I had the chance to smash at all) but still too good for me! (hehe, getting a headache yet?)

Back home I made myself a pasta dish for dinner (there was a water cut this morning so I made sandwiches for lunch...and I was hungry for a warm meal!) It was a recipe I had on my calendar, but I adapted it to suit the ingredients I have (as usual :P ) It turned out pretty good!


If you're interested, the recipe called for mussels which were to be cooked with white wine, but I had neither, so I used prawns. I fried garlic in the olive oil, then added the prawns, and when the prawns were cooked, I took them out (and threw away the garlic, because that's what the recipe said...but maybe I could have just chopped it up and left it in as well) Then I fried the diced tomatoes (there was supposed to be chopped onions with it, but I didn't have any left), added in button mushrooms (sliced) because I had some left, and added parsley, salt and pepper to taste (the recipe only asks for salt to be added in cooking the pasta, but since I always cook pasta without salt, I had to put the salt elsewhere) Then I mixed the prawns in and poured the sauce over the pasta.

Well, simple enough...let me know if you have any other simple ideas to add to it (I can't be bothered with complicated ones :P )

By the way I'm kinda in a good mood, which is probably why I'm blogging :) I'm not quite sure why...call it the after-effects of the great performance I went to see last night, with Pei Xin and Mah (yay, this time I didn't have to go alone :P ) I wrote about the same performance last year...I didn't mention it in that post (probably because I was still feeling sore about it) but I was supposed to go on Thursday (they do the same performance three nights in a row, from Wednesday to Friday) with some other friends, but I didn't get a ticket in advance, and by the time I reached there there were no places left. So (for some inexplicable reason) I decided to forgo badminton on Friday night and go there instead...even though my initial reason for wanting to go on Thursday was because I wanted to play badminton on Friday! Call me crazy...

So this year I've learnt my lesson and went to get the tickets in advance. lol And it turned out that there were even more people I knew...I think the whole ex-ASINSA band went crazy over dancing :P

Of 5566...

...a group I had known for some time, but I only knew one of their songs (hao jiu bu jian) and had never seen the video before.

Then in Toulouse I wanted to let Dayah hear this song, but I didn't have it on my phone, so I searched on Youtube. And now I'd like to share this nice video! :D



I also found another one of their songs, Crying in the rain, which is less nice but I like the lyrics. :)



And here is a video Dayah introduced me to, it's Bukan Superstar, by an Indonesian group called Project Pop. It's a parody of really famous stars.

Enjoying Malaysian food in Toulouse

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I went to Toulouse after my exams. On Saturday when I arrived, Hidayah made kuih cara. When she told me the name I didn't know it at all...but then she described it and I realised that it was the kuih that I liked and had bought several times before, but never knew the name :P It's the (usually) green and pandan-flavoured oval-shaped kuih, sold in twos (if you've seen it before you should know what it is now). Dayah said that there was a version with meat inside (the one she made was with sugar) but I didn't know that one...

Dayah's kuih cara
I found that it was a little like kaya balls...I love kaya balls!

This is what she used to make it:

(er, can the French tell me whether they recognize this moule? ;P )

That night we met up with some other Malaysians for dinner in an Indian restaurant. I took several photos (of every dish) but I think I was overdoing it...after all it was nothing exceptional, you've seen it all before! So I shall only grace you with a photo of their still-smoking hot-plate tandoori.

The chicken was tiny and thin...so even though we had half a chicken (two drumsticks + thighs) each, it wasn't too much! The others said that the chicken was bigger when they came before though...

batchmate-batchmateku yang cantik ;)
(translation: my beautiful batchmates)
hehe, I just noticed that they were holding their knife and fork the exact same way

and the others

On Sunday Dayah and I made curry puffs :D

the dough

the filling (unfortunately there were no potatoes left)

the thing that makes life easier ;)

Stretch the dough, wrap the filling, and you get this!

before frying

after frying
(no, they did not multiply in the hot oil ;) )

Yummy!

Later we went to As' place to eat (bringing along the curry puffs). I was really surprised to see the enormous feast she had prepared, I wasn't expecting such a big meal!

That roti jala was the thinnest I've ever seen!
(roti=bread, jala=net, it's a net-like "bread")
The spaghetti was for mee rebus; you can see the other ingredients around.

the crumble baking in the oven

And oh yeah, I hadn't seen Taufik for soooo long, since our INTEC days (five and a half years ago!), I had to take a photo with him! It's actually surprising how we've managed to keep in touch...

ping pong is magic, some of my best friends I would never have met otherwise ^_^

And the next day I played femme au foyer (housewife) while Dayah and Iz'zati (my hosts) went to class :P They came back for lunch and then I left to take the 2:25pm train back to Lyon. It was a direct train that took about four and a half hours...NOT great I tell you! Luckily the train wasn't very full...and the person next to me got off at Nîmes, about an hour before we reached Lyon, so I had a little more space to move about after that...

So it was a great relaxing weekend. Perfect right after exams :D