¡Tengo un nivel medio!

I found a vocabulary test through Vocabat. (Links to the tests are at the bottom of the post)

I first tried out the Spanish test, and ended up with 17%.

The result said "Este es el nivel de una persona no nativa con un nivel medio." This means that I have an intermediate level for a non-native Spanish speaker. Not bad, I would say...but I didn't exactly know those words...it went more like this: "Oh, I think I've seen this word before, it looks similar to this word in French/English, it should mean the same thing!" followed by pressing "J" for yes. (no, I don't call that cheating :P )

I next tried out the English test. Vocabat had mentioned that there was an English test, but I couldn't find it at first. Then I read through the result more carefully and found this line: "Si quieres participar en nuestro estudio en Inglés pincha aqui". (If you would like to participate in our study in English please click here. Or something to that effect.)

As I filled in my details for the English test, I realized that I might have been better off taking this one first. Because when I was filling in the Spanish form, I had to read each question slowly, trying to figure out what it meant! (but the silver lining is that I found out I could understand, albeit foggily :) )

Then on to the words. Unsurprisingly, I scored a lot better than in the Spanish test.

80%, and it says "You are at the top level!" So...what if I get higher than that? :P

I'm glad that I didn't get tricked by any of the fake words, be it in English or in Spanish. Yay! But I did get tricked in the opposite way... as in, I answered that "rememberable" was a non-word because I was afraid that it was a trap. :s The same goes for a few other words that sounded okay, but weren't widely used.

I wish they had a French test too. That would be interesting to take and compare against my English and my Spanish.

If you would like to try out the test, here are the links:
English: http://vocabulary.ugent.be/

Spanish: http://vocabulario.bcbl.eu/


Note: The title translates to "I have a medium level!" I decided not to take too many risks and keep it simple, reusing the words in the test result. And the inverted exclamation mark is used in Spanish; every exclamation (or question) starts with an inverted exclamation (or question) mark, and ends with a "normal" one. ¿Entendido? Understood?

A box tent can save your pizza

Some time ago, I said I was a logophile.

Today I received an e-mail from MentalFloss (which I have written about before) asking, "Fancy yourself a logophile ... and didn't have to look up "logophile"?" Thanks to Andrea, I didn't need to look it up! :)

The topic of the day was "enjoyable names for relatively common things". And from that e-mail, I found out what a "box tent" was.

The plastic table-like item found in pizza boxes is called a box tent and was patented in 1983. Most people in the biz now call it a pizza saver.

Sure, I had seen this thing in pizza boxes before, and the first time I saw it, I thought it was a great idea. But I had no idea it was patented!

Some other interesting words:

The string of typographical symbols comic strips use to indicate profanity ("$%@!") is called a grawlix.

It is likely that I will forget this word soon.

An agraffe is the wire cage that keeps the cork in a bottle of champagne.

The same with this one.

A single slice of bacon is called a rasher.

Now, a rasher of bacon is something I have heard of before. :) Did they come from an Enid Blyton book?

And now the last one I want to share:

The web between your thumb and forefinger is called the purlicue (and is pronounced just like "curlicue"). Acupuncturists say pinching it will make headaches go away.

I doubt I will remember what a purlicue is, but I sure hope I remember to pinch it when I have a headache. Do remind me if I've forgotten and am complaining about a headache!

And in case you don't know (I didn't), a curlicue is

a decorative curl or twist in calligraphy or in the design of an object.

Now that I see the definition, I think I've looked up this word before. :P

So there you go. Did you learn a few new words today?

How Running Man put my blog into a coma

Because Running Man is strong, really strong.

I don't think I've mentioned Running Man here before. It is a Korean variety show where the members go through different challenges each week, sometimes together with a few guests. Not sure when was the first time I watched it, but after WW introduced me to a few "better" episodes, I decided to watch it from the beginning, so that I could "get" all the inside jokes.

If you look at the archives on the sidebar you will see that I blogged only seven times in 2013. I had noticed that earlier this year, but I figured that I just didn't have much to write about, or that I was just feeling lazy. But the other day I was just telling someone that I had caught up on the Running Man episodes at the end of last year (or beginning of this year, I'm not really sure), and it suddenly hit me - this could be the actual reason for my lack of blog posts!

You see, I don't force myself to write here. I try to find interesting things to write about, or more accurately, I try to find interesting ways to write mundane stuff ('cause my life is mundane... :P ). But I never tell myself, "Hey, you have to sit down and write something to post, it's way overdue!" No, I don't... because then the post quality would go down. (as if the post quality were very good to begin with...but at least it isn't trash - not by my standards anyway - and I intend to keep it that way ;) ) But despite not forcing myself to write, I do find that I do get ideas to write now. And I do feel the motivation to write, as in "Hey, I want to tell this story!" Which brings me back to the reason why that didn't happen in 2013.

I believe that I started watching Running Man (from the first episode) towards the end of 2012. Because it was at the end of that year that Lai Shin came to visit me, and I remember showing her the second episode. And it took me a little more than a year (up to the end of 2013) to view three and a half years' worth of episodes (sounds impressive but not really, since it is a weekly show and I could watch it any day of the week).

So before I caught up to the current episodes, I filled up almost all my free time with Running Man. Each time I had about one and a half to two hours to spare, I would start watching the next episode. Some days I would spend the whole day watching several episodes back to back; it was easy since I could pause the video any time I wanted, go and do something (such as defrost food, marinate food, cook food, eat food...yup, that's the weekend routine :P ) then come back and continue watching between tasks. I guess that was more appealing than typing on my blog (sorry, blog, I love you but I think I love Running Man more).

Another side effect of this Running Man addiction is that I stopped reading so much. I had a subscription at the local library (we pay the subscription and it's valid for a year), but my book-borrowing slowed down to a trickle a few months before my subscription ended (which was sometime in April-June 2013). This was partly because I had bought a number of books from the Big Bad Wolf book sale, and I was alternating reading those and reading the ones from the library. But now that I think of it, Running Man was also a factor. If I hadn't been watching all those episodes, I would probably have read a lot more.

And as a result, I have not visited the library since my previous subscription ended. And this is a huge irony because in June 2013 I started working in the same building where the library is situated. One of the reasons I was happy about moving there was that I could visit the library really easily during lunch break. Guess what? It didn't happen. Not once! And we're moving to another office in July. Darn it!

So, back to Running Man. Since the beginning of this year, I am up-to-date and only have an episode a week to watch. Sometimes it is a pity, and I miss those days when I could have a new episode to watch any time I wanted.

As a consolation, at least my blog is revived now.

Shall we bring this to Charmander?

As part of the office-moving process to Innoplex (currently we are in Cyberplex), we have been asked to suggest names for the meeting rooms in the new building.

Unsurprisingly, this one-track mind of mine has come up with a - perfect? - solution: Use Pokemon names. Seeing how many different Pokemon there are, there is no shortage of names to use.

(With me in the picture, both WW and a colleague came up with the exactly same idea when I brought up the subject.)

So here you go, the idea all fleshed out:

Proposal for meeting room names in Innoplex

This is a proposal to use Pokemon names for the meeting rooms. As the number of meeting rooms is less than 150, the names of first generation Pokemon will suffice.

There are seven (7) floors in all, we therefore propose using a sub-theme for each floor, namely Pokemon types. Below we will assign a theme to each floor, followed by a few examples of names.

1st (ground) floor: Ground/Rock type - Sandshrew Room, Diglett Room, Onix Room, ...

2nd floor: Water type - Squirtle Room, Staryu Room, Lapras Room, ...

3rd floor: Electric type - Pikachu Room, Magnemite Room, Voltorb room, ...

4th floor: Grass type - Bulbasaur Room, Oddish Room, Bellsprout Room, ...

5th floor: Fire type - Charmander Room, Vulpix Room, Magmar Room, ...

6th floor: Flying type - Pidgey Room, Spearow Room, Zubat Room, ...

7th floor: Legendary/Fossil type - Articuno Room, Zapdos Room, Kabuto Room, ...

I have thought this over, you see...my place will be on the third floor, so naturally Pikachu room should be on the third floor. :P

Well, one can dream... So now excuse me while I go to Pikachu.

Who's more scared here?

I saw a couple of puppies in the parking area today. When I first walked up to them, they took a step towards me (put their paws on the divider, actually). I got scared and backed a few steps away...then took out my phone to snap a photo. As I inched nearer again to take the photo, they in turn got scared... and ended up hiding their faces like this:

Aiyak...

Then I went out to buy my breakfast, and when I came back, I tried again:

Cute ^_^

Curds and whey

I've heard of curds and whey for a very long time. I believe I first heard it in a nursery rhyme, Little Miss Muffet (which I had forgotten the name of but found it on Wikipedia):

Little Miss Muffet
Sat on a tuffet,
Eating her curds and whey;
Along came a spider,
Who sat down beside her
And frightened Miss Muffet away.

But I didn't really know what were curds and whey, until recently when I searched on the Internet. Not sure what triggered the search, but it was some time ago, before I came across this recipe of chicken in milk (by Jamie Oliver).

I didn't follow the recipe completely though; basically I kept the milk and lemon zest because they were the hallmarks of the recipe, then I used thyme instead of sage (I don't have sage in my kitchen and I didn't want to go and buy more herbs that I would seldom use). I put in the garlic but not the cinnamon. And the biggest change is probably not using an oven. I decided to use smaller pieces of chicken instead of a whole one, and used a pot on a stove. Easier to baste...I didn't feel like braving 190°C to baste my chicken!

After the first stage (seasoning the chicken with salt and black pepper, then browning them in olive oil) the chicken already looked really good (though probably not fully cooked on the inside yet). On a lazy day I might just do this (but cook it fully) and then eat it just like that :P

Then I poured the extra oil away (olive oil plus chicken fat, I believe) and started the "baking" stage.

Initially I wanted to keep the pot fully covered so that it would be more like baking, but then it bubbled over and then I left the cover open a bit. Maybe that's why they have a lot of liquid left in the pot (see the picture on the website) but mine has a lot less.

Halfway through cooking, it looked like this:

And this is probably the first time I actually saw curds and whey... the lemon zest had split the milk like he said. You can't see it from the photo because of the solid curds, but the liquid is practically clear, totally unlike milk.

This is what it looked like at the end, after an hour of simmering:

Very tasty. I would prefer to have more sauce, but it's still tasty, that's what counts! And by the way,  the kitchen smelled great when I was cooking this.

The Penang War Museum

We had our office team outing yesterday, and one of the activities was a visit to the Penang War Museum.

the imposing entrance

The entrance to Malaya (so said the receptionist)

The receptionist gave us a short briefing before leaving us to go in and explore on our own. "Explore" may not be the right word, though, since we were actually supposed to follow the arrows on the ground. But there was no guide to show us around, no one we could ask for information once we went in, probably due to lack of funds and/or visitors. We were the first car there, and we didn't see any other visitors when we were there, though when we left there were a few other cars. Not sure whether they belonged to more visitors or to employees of the museum.

Now it's called a museum, but it is not a museum like we usually expect. Before coming here, I was under the impression that it was a building (somewhat like the Sungai Lembing museum in Kuantan) housing war relics. But it is actually more of a historical landmark. And that's where I should get back to the short briefing I was talking about earlier (darn digressions :P ).

The receptionist said that the area is actually a British fortress built in the 1930s (had to go and pluck that year out of the brochure). It was taken over by the Japanese and then later abandoned after the Japanese were defeated (please forgive any mistakes, but that's what I remember from the briefing (nope, I wouldn't make a good soldier)). It was later discovered in 2002 (I remember thinking, so recently?) and restored to become the War Museum.

So basically, in the museum there are buildings built (and used) by the British, such as barracks, gun-firing ranges, ammunition holds, and so on. (oh, and they were already racist back then, there were barracks for the British, then separate ones for the Malays, and separate ones again for the Indians. Oh wait, that's the "divide and conquer" strategy) They also built some effigies on some of the roofs, I guess for the spooky night tour. (by the way, the word "effigy" was mentioned on one of the information boards, and the guys asked me what it was. How do you explain "effigy"? I eventually came up with "patung", but that took me some time and also, what if the person asking didn't understand Malay? In the end, they decided to ask their smartphone. Duh, why didn't you do that in the first place?)

Okay, back to photos.

Just inside the entrance, there was a small hut, and on the wall behind it a picture of a Japanese general sitting in the same hut.

The road in.

This is for visitors to put on and take photos.

Some of the guys tried it out:

F (the cameraman): Oh, a soldier!
SK (the soldier): How dare you take photos of me! *bang bang*
SJ (the bystander): We'd better get out of here quick...

There was a stone slab showing the date when the road we were walking on (the same one seen from the entrance) was completed.

Dynamite... not sure whether it was real or fake.

Replica of a cannon (that is CE saying, "loaded and good to go!" :P )

They had these small huts built beside the path. Seeing how small they are, I'm pretty sure they are replicas. :P

To give you an idea of their size:

the size of a doghouse?

There were three tunnels, the receptionist had told us. Two that we could enter, and one that we couldn't, because it went vertically into the ground. This is the first tunnel.

looking back towards the entrance (that was the main photographer in our group; every time I asked him whether he wanted me to take a photo of him, he took a photo of me instead. So I took the photo anyway.)

At a certain position inside this tunnel, to the left and right was each an opening to another tunnel, an unlighted one. Going in on the left, you would go through the tunnel and come out on the right. (the museum people labeled one of them "in" and the other one "out" to avoid collisions from two people going in from different ends) I didn't go in because I didn't feel like going into a narrow pitch-black tunnel, but some of the braver souls did. But halfway through, they switched on their phone lights. :P

These photos were at the exit. The tunnel is actually reall dark, but with the flash I guess it looks really bright instead. I wanted to take a photo when they entered too, but at that time all we could see were their behinds, so...

At the end of that first tunnel (the lighted one) was a room (I can't remember but I think it was an ammunition store, you will see why later)

mortar shells belonging to the Japanese imperial army

an ammunition hoist

 

Then there was an escape route to the top. As you can see, it was lighted, but you had to crawl up to that ladder at the end, then climb 9 metres up. I was still okay with the crawl (since the tunnel was lighted, and it looked big enough not to be a tight squeeze) but the prospect of climbing up 9 metres was not very appealing. So I gave it a pass. Three of the others went through it, though, and got out at the top, the location of which they showed us later. I would have gone to take a look at the exit, except that it started raining (raindrops) and we had to hurry along.

Back outside, there was a miniature of the abandoned senior British army residence (I'm guessing they missed out the word "officer" or something? Surely armies don't have a residence?)

Then there's the vertical tunnel, which goes about four storeys underground.

It was built to be an explosive dump, so that in case of any accident, the explosion would bury the entire dump but not affect the other structures. There's a metal pulley to bring up heavy loads, and metal stairs for human access.

Beside the explosive dump, there were stairs going down to the gun-firing bay.

the gun-firing bay, to fire at enemies approaching from the sea

These were next to the gun-firing bay, so I guess they were places to store ammunition? There were already lots of cubbyholes labeled to store ammunition (look at the far wall in the previous photo, there are three holes there), so I'm not that sure about it.

This is in the middle of that circular thingy that you can see from the far-off shot above. The notice says that they used underground cables to supply electricity.

At another area, there was an anti-aircraft pit, to protect from air raids.

There was an observation deck:

the way to the observation deck

viewed from the side (a little higher up)

if not mistaken, the sign said "relic with tree". And on top of it is the thing I mentioned, for the night tour (remember, it's just my guess)

Then the execution pit.

they even had a human skull there, not sure whether it's real or fake

the guillotine, but I didn't see the actual guillotine. Just the spooky creature on the roof.

Then the Japanese torture tools.

Living quarters (British barracks, if I'm not mistaken)

They drew our attention to the lavatory (using buckets), so I'm drawing your attention to it now.

There are a few more disturbing images of human figures in some of the other barracks and even sex slave quarters, but I shall skip those and move on to this, which seems to be the lockup for prisoners.

a short article on Japanese torture methods, in case you'd like to read it (sorry for the blurry image, I didn't bother to switch to macro)

office of the intelligence officer

Now the last tunnel. This tunnel is bomb-proof and can recycle its own air supply. How, I do not know.

There was an oil drum outside the tunnel, with a sign saying "Hit the drum twice with your hand to switch on lights in the tunnel." But the lights were already on, and nothing happened when we hit the drum. We were joking about how there was someone working there who would turn the light switch if they heard the drum.

There is the same kind of pitch-black tunnel inside, and this is what the entrance looks like (it's the same as the previous one, I just didn't take a photo before). Seems that they rent out torchlights for RM2. This was near the exit, so I guess they expected the visitors to go to the exit, then turn around to come back here.

And right before the exit, there was a thank you from Generals Arthur Percival and Tomoyuki Yamashita.

Then we "exited" into the gift shop, where none of us bought anything. :P The souvenirs were mostly for foreign tourists anyway, nothing much to do with the war museum.


By the way, the War Museum advertises itself as one of the spookiest places in Malaysia. It also has paintball and there is another longer tunnel that we have to pay extra to visit (it was on the price list).