Continuing on my thoughts...

Remember when I wrote about censorship overdone? Some time after that I noticed another mangled song. It is Fun.'s We are Young. The lyrics start with
Give me a second I,
I need to get my story straight
My friends are in the bathroom getting higher than the Empire State

And what did our radio stations do? They blanked out "higher" (or was it just "high"?) I take the same line of argument as I did the last time...not letting people hear a word will not help in any way. Not looking at something does not mean it will no longer be there. It's like what they say about turkeys sticking their heads in the sand to escape their enemies. (which I have heard is a myth...the turkeys are actually foraging for food)

A second "thought" I want to continue on is the hokkien mee one!

There are actually four separate stalls selling hokkien mee in Relau. Three for breakfast, and one for dinner. (did I miss any? lol) The other day I wrote about the one selling it for dinner...and today's one is one of the breakfast ones. The stall is just on the roadside. I didn't like it much in the beginning...I felt that it was just "okay". But then I thought that maybe the reason I didn't like it much was that it wasn't spicy enough... so I asked for extra chilli...and oh yeah, it was good! :D

And very red. See it for yourself:

(Again, I destroyed the egg :P )

Anyway, this is with the extra chilli...without it the dish is practically not spicy at all, which is why WW loves it so much. :P

Baby...

Lately I've been seeing people compare old and new lyrics on Facebook. More precisely, the "new" lyrics are the lyrics from Justin Bieber's Baby. Yeah, that famous chorus that goes
Baby, baby, baby oh
Like baby, baby, baby no
Like baby, baby, baby oh
I thought you'd always be mine

They compare these lyrics with some beautiful words from older songs, which actually say something. 

While I agree that those other lyrics usually sound a lot better, I think we can't really blame Bieber, either... I mean, these days people don't listen any more, do they? That is why he needs to keep repeating himself.

Imagine Bieber hanging out with his girlfriend. (Is it still Selena Gomez? Well, if it isn't, let's imagine it when it was.)

Bieber: Baby...
Selena: Hmm...? (manicuring her fingernails)
B: Baby... (Did she hear me?)
S: Hmm...? (checking her fingernails)
B: Baby... (looks at Selena) oh... (so that's why she's distracted)

Oh, this post is for a joke, yeah? Though the reason lyrics get lousy can only be because good lyrics aren't that important for the market any more...

If you are looking for mission spiciness...

Today I want to present you a super-duper spicy, super-duper yummy hokkien mee in Relau. (yup, "spicy" comes before "yummy" here :P )

I usually buy it home for dinner. Here are the noodles, right out of the packet, with the soup poured on the side. (so as not to disturb the chilli paste)

Look at all that chilli! :D (Well, for me it is :D but for WW it would be :s )

And the soup, which is all clear and probably not spicy at all, becomes this after mixing:

(Okay, so I destroyed the egg :P )

Okay, it's a bit hard to see the soup amidst all those noodles. But let me tell you that it is very, VERY spicy! I go "ah ah ah" while eating it...but it is so yummy that it is worth it. :P I'm not even sure whether the reason I like it so much is because of the chilli or because of the soup...


But you know, even with such spicy noodles, once I heard a couple of Indians ordering it, and they asked for extra chilli. :O I will definitely NOT do that...spicy is good but let's not go too far. I'll just trust the seller to give me the optimum amount of chilli. :P

I even made a half-half picture to compare the colour before and after mixing the chilli in.

What do you think? Personally I think the difference is hard to see because of all the noodles...I guess you have to look at the edges of the bowl or something...

A friendly shoe

When I was in Kuantan, I saw this in a shoe shop.

Side view:

My father saw me looking at it and said, you should buy it! You can put one beside your bed in Penang, and one beside your bed here.

........

Actually, I thought he was going to say to put the second one in the living room... hahaha.

Flowers, fish, sunrise and food

If you still remember, I wrote about going to Cameron Highlands a while back. Here are the rest of the photos!

A nice house we saw near a strawberry farm, while walking back to the cars.

a temple

There were lots of huge fish in the ponds there! (the finger is for size comparison :P )

another pond

the temple

a break from moving around...and the guys took the opportunity to check their cameras (as an amateur I'm not sure what has to be checked :P )

Then we went to a huge strawberry-and-cactus (and other plants too) farm. I'll just post a few photos of the plants here...

The second morning, we attempted to catch the sunrise again, this time from our balcony.

the moon before the sun came out (thanks to clear skies...)

the 4 cameras on tripods

the sunrise (well, sorta)

a panoramic view

then the sun came out...

reflection on the...glass wall? (what do you call that? :P )

Later we went shopping for things to bring home.

showing off the strawberry jam they bought (at least I think it was strawberry jam...)

There were a lot of strawberry earmuffs being sold...but we didn't buy any. Wooi Kiang helped me and Nichole to take a photo, though :P

just ignore the little boy playing behind us :P

Then we went somewhere where Samson could buy a horned beetle

everyone taking photos of the beetle...what a star! :P

On the way back to Penang, we stopped in Ipoh for some bean sprout chicken.

lunchtime!

We also bought some kaya puffs in a famous biscuit shop...they say that there is always a really long queue to buy this! And yeah, it's really yummy...

there were five in a box but I didn't think of taking a photo earlier :P

And Nichole got a photo of the queue...this is considered short, they say...

Well, this post took some time coming up...but it's done now! Haha...I don't think anyone was holding their breath for this, though :P

Fact from fiction

I write, sometimes. Why? Because some things you can't speak about. But when you write, you can take your time. And take your liberties. By the time the finished product comes out, it is no longer possible for the reader to separate the fact from the fiction.

Gambling

It is not something I would gamble on... I won't lose anything, but he might...and I can't gamble with his fate, either.

Or can I?

No, I don't think I can.

Where do babies come from?

My friend shared this joke:

Léa, 5 ans, revient de l'école. Elle a eu sa première leçon sur les bébés.
Sa mère, très intéressée, lui demande :
- « Comment cette leçon s’est-elle passée ? »
Elle répond :
- « J’étais morte de honte ! Paul dit qu’on peut acheter des bébés à l'orphelinat. Marie explique qu’on peut acheter des bébés à l'hôpital. Pierre dit qu’on peut aller acheter des bébés à l’étranger »
Sa mère répond en riant :
- « Mais pourquoi étais-tu morte de honte ? »
Parce que je n’ai pas osé leur dire que mon papa et ma maman sont tellement pauvres qu’ils ont dû me faire eux-mêmes »

Translation:

Five-year-old Léa comes back from school. She had just had her first lesson on babies.
Her interested mother asks her, "How was the lesson?"
She replies. "I thought I would die of shame! Paul said that we could buy babies from the orphanage. Marie explained that we could buy babies from the hospital. Pierre said that we could go and buy babies from other countries."
Her mother replied, laughing, "But why would you die of shame?"
"Because I didn't dare to tell them that my father and mother are so poor that they had to make me themselves."

How disappointing, Mr. Patterson

I just finished reading The Lake House by James Patterson. It is one of those books that I really enjoyed while reading it, and couldn't wait to finish...and then I get put off by the ending.

Why? (spoilers ahead) Firstly, they were using the hateful omniscient first person narrative, while also writing the story from at least three other characters' point of view (but in the third person). -_- And towards the end, they decided to have the narrator "go to heaven" (which she actually dreamt) to make you think she died.

That is still forgiveable...unless if she really died, because I would really cry foul about a ghost writing a story. But there are very bad loose ends hanging at the end...for example, the bad guy had created three clones of himself, and one of them was killed in the "action" scene. The clone told the character who killed him, "I'm just a clone". And another character saw two of the bad guys at the same time (one original and one clone, I suppose...or both clones?) And the point just wasn't brought up again after they left the place. They just went to live peacefully in the Lake House, and was so surprised when the bad guy came back one day. Whaaaaattt?!?!

That ending spoiled the book for me. :(

Oh, and the bad guy died (this time he said that he was the original, not a clone). But what happens to the other two clones? No idea...

Another thing: The synopsis mentioned a Kit Harrison. There is a Kit in the book...but his real name is Thomas Brennan. So where does the name Harrison come from? There is absolutely no mention of it in the book. Even the synopsis of When the Wind Blows (its prequel) mentions Kit Harrison, so I searched a little and found this. Turns out that in the first book, Thomas Brennan used this name. But why keep the name on the second book when it is no longer used? -_-

There is another point that I missed while reading the book (I was too keen on knowing what happens next :P ), but when I read a review of the book (at the first link at the top of the post), it came back to me. The review said, "the children all "run" away to live in the woods and eat grubs just to get away from regular human society. Next thing you know, they're back at home without any sort of explanation." It's true, when I think back on it...


Another reviewer said that the story is similar to When the Wind Blows. I wouldn't know, because I haven't read it. And when looking back at my old post (the one linked above, second link in the post), I noticed that a commenter had mentioned this book. 


At the end of the book, there was an excerpt from Sam's Letters to Jennifer. It looks good, and makes me want to read more... but wasn't that the case with The Lake House too?


Maybe I should just stop reading James Patterson...

Ironically...

I happened to notice this on a box of Milo Sejuk the other day.

"Do not refrigerate"?? So Milo Sejuk cannot be sejuk. Hmm... not until you want to drink it, anyway. I wonder what would happen if I did refrigerate it... :P

("sejuk" means "cold" in Malay)