Cities of the world

The latest quiz. Not much to say about this one. There were quite a number of cities I had never heard of. Still, a mixture of eliminations and guesses got me through with quite a good score.

Sick

I'm sick of people thinking that badminton is the cure-all for everything. People telling me that it's okay to eat anything and everything just because I play badminton. People telling me that I can do a marathon just because I play badminton. Wake up! If badminton were such a miracle, everyone would be playing it. And there would be no more sick people in the world.

I sure wish it were the cure-all you guys say it to be. But unfortunately, it isn't. The proof is my lousy health. Yeah, I've got more health problems than you can see on the surface. But you don't care. All you care about is getting me to do things that YOU have an interest in. Not caring whether I have an interest in it or not.

D Mana Lagi? Di Sungai Tiram

Two weeks ago, I discovered a delicious char kuey teow quite by accident. Here is how it happened.

I planned to go to Giant to buy some groceries after work. There is a food court and a nasi kandar shop in the same building (not to mention fast food like KFC and Pizza Hut), so I planned to have dinner there before buying my stuff. But on the way there, I happened to pass a row of Malay food stalls at Sungai Tiram, and on a whim, I decided to pay these stalls a visit and try some food there.

(I actually really like the Malay-style curry mee (not every time, but the better ones are really nice), and I was actually hoping to find it there. Unfortunately there was no stall selling curry mee, so instead I settled for char kuey teow.)

I was a bit disappointed by the char kuey teow when it arrived, because the portion was rather small for four ringgit. And it looked more like a fusion of char kuey teow and char hor fun (it came swimming in gravy, you see). However, from my first bite I was pleasantly surprised by the taste. Delicious! The first time, the dish came with two prawns and two tiny kerang. But today (my second visit) there were two (slightly larger) prawns and four fat kerang! Why? Has it been a good season for kerang or was he just happy that I was a repeat customer? (Wikipedia just told me that kerang are cockles in English. Oh....so that's what cockles are. Seriously, I never made the connection. I just knew that cockles were a kind of shellfish.)

Here's a blurry look at the dish (because the plate is rather tiny (it was an oval-shaped plate), the photo had to be more close-up and turned out burry :( ).

See what I meant about the gravy?

I really liked the signboard on the stall too. I took a photo of it on my first visit, but didn't take a photo of the char kuey teow, because like I said, it looked disappointing. So the photo above is of the larger prawn version (the other prawn is hidden under the noodles).

Sedap bagitau kawan-kawan, tak sedap bagitau kami

I did bagitau kawan-kawan (by posting on Facebook), but I don't think anyone took notice. There is a general dislike of Malay food amongst non-Malays in Penang. Which is unfortunate, since I like Malay food (about as much as other food - hey, as long as it's good...). I mean, they will eat the food, but they won't go looking for it. And that is probably why I haven't found my curry mee. (also because Penang is kinda a Malay-minority place)

Opposite these food stalls there is a Malay-majority mini-supermarket (it's a supermarket because it's got about everything, but it is really tiny for a supermarket...). So on both visits I just went over to the supermarket to buy some things after dinner. (and skipped the trip to Giant). The store (yep, that's a better description for it) is called Longwan, and it has got branches all over Kedah, it seems (the branches are printed on their plastic bags). Kinda like Tunas Manja in Kuantan, I guess. A local supermarket.

Western and local specials

I have posted some photos of food from the Innoplex cafeteria before (bombs and fake rojak).

Here are a couple more.

charcoal burger

The charcoal burger looked good, but didn't taste as good as it looked. To be fair, the buns were good, but unfortunately the bottom one was soaked with gravy so it no longer had that "crunch" to it. Oh, and the chicken was more skin/batter than meat. Again, unfortunate. It came with some coleslaw (hidden behing the burger in the photo) which was pretty good. The fries, on the other hand, were crispy but hard (if you get what I mean... the best fries are those crispy on the outside but soft and fluffy on the inside).

How much was it? RM7.50? RM8.50? Something like that. Not really worth it because of the lack of actual meat. But it was a huge portion... I regretted eating the bottom bun because it didn't taste good after having soaked all the gravy (it was more like charcoal mush). Instead I left the fries on my plate (just ate a few).

nasi rendang tok

This nasi rendang was today's special! Now this one was good. Really good, in fact. There are two pieces of chicken, making a whole leg, a beansprout side dish and two pieces of omelette with onion and long beans (or french beans, I can't tell).

I wasn't planning on taking meat today, but this one looked so tempting, I just had to try it. There was a plate on display, but it wasn't wrapped in cling wrap like the usual display plates, so at first I thought it was for us to take. But when I moved to take it, the nasi hujan panas guy said, "No, this one is for taking photos only. After taking photos, we throw it away." I wasn't sure whether he was joking...

There was too much rice so I left about a third of it on my plate. If I order it again, I'd better ask for less rice...

Oh, and the price for this one? RM5. Definitely worth it.

Hello Kitty in a car

How often do you see Hello Kitty holding an ice-cream cone? And sitting in a child seat?

Well, there's one near my place.

I took this photo some time ago. At the time I parked my car outside, and I passed this same car every day when walking to or from my car. I finally decided to snap a photo. Not sure whether it is still there now...

The day I requested volunteers

Over the weekend, I did some baking and brought some of the "results" to work. It is the norm for people in my department to send out collective e-mails inviting people to come and take some of the food or snacks that they have brought. Since I didn't have enough for everyone, I decided to write a slightly different e-mail.

For the title, I put "Calling for volunteers..." instead of the usual "[food name] at [location]". (You see, there are several people who have already offered to be in my QA (quality assurance) department)

I made sure to clear up any doubts in the body of the message:

For the taste test of a new product called latticed jam fingers. :)

Location: L3-W045 (software section)

While stocks last!

This certainly weeded out those who have a fear of volunteering and who do not read their e-mails! :P But by far the best are Citra and Swee Hak who came to volunteer without even knowing what they were volunteering for. They came over and asked, "You were looking for volunteers?" :D

Attending Hogwarts

I signed up on J.K. Rowling's post-Harry-Potter-books website, Pottermore recently. All because I wanted to read some of the new stuff she has written.

Besides going through the "books" (in quotation marks because they are actually some interactive scenes from the books, and not the whole story), we can "attend" Hogwarts by getting a wand and a pet, and then get sorted into one of the houses.

It seems that Ollivander has gone high-tech; he has come up with an automatic test to determine your wand. Here's what I got:

Vine with unicorn core, ten inches, slightly yielding

And in Hogwarts, I got sorted into Hufflepuff!

Good, badgers are good. As opposed to lions or eagles or snakes, I'd definitely like a cute furry badger. :P

How well do you know the Harry Potter characters?

I just took another quiz similar to one that I posted before. This time it was on Harry Potter last names.

If you want, you can try the quiz here before continuing on to the rest of the post.

I got a score of 37/42, giving me 88% correct.

However, that isn't really true because I didn't get Quirinus Quirrel (I had never heard of Quirinus before - not that I remembered, anyway*). But at first I thought we could only answer the questions in order, so I decided to cheat and search up that one, and just deduct it from my score later. Then I bumped into Amycus and couldn't answer it either. Not wanting to cheat a second time (and also thinking it strange that they would block us that way), I tried typing the answer to another question. And it worked! *sigh* How silly of me not to have tried it earlier.

I couldn't recall Pomona Sprout, though I know I have heard a professor being called Pomona before. Cuthbert and Wilhelmina stumped me completely, like Quirinus.

But, Lily Potter? I feel so cheated... I kept trying to recall Harry's mother's maiden name, but I never thought of putting Potter! (her name was Lily Evans) Or maybe they meant Harry's daughter, but that would make me feel cheated too; she is such a minor spin-off character!

So I guess my actual score is 36 out of 42, giving me 85.7%. Not bad, but I did think I could do better!

*Note: After some research, I confirmed that Quirrell's first name is not mentioned in the books. It was mentioned in a trading card game and on J.K. Rowling's site Pottermore. Can't really confirm for Professors Binns and Grubbly-Plank, though.

Welcome to our Pokemon Center!

Remember how I said that the koalas would be there for a long time? Well, they were... for the whole month that they were entitled to.

Past that deadline, I pulled out my "happy family" (previously hiding in a cupboard because there were still some things unfixed on my cubicle) and decided to draw them a home.

It didn't go so well behind the scenes, though. I had a red marker pen that I had gotten from the stationery person some time ago (we only had black and blue ones before that). For this occasion, I wanted to use the red for the Pokeballs. The first one came out fine, but for the second one my first attempt was a little skewed. So I rubbed it off to try again. Or tried to. Because it wouldn't come off!

That was when I discovered that I had just been using a permanent marker.

I didn't think of taking this photo until I had rubbed off the second "skewed" Pokeball.

I went off to get some dishwashing liquid to wipe off the ink with a tissue (someone had recently brought a bottle of dishwashing liquid to the pantry). It wasn't until halfway to the pantry that I remembered my no-water-needed liquid soap. No matter, I tried the dishwashing liquid first. And then the liquid soap... it worked better.

And so I cleaned up my mess and borrowed a red marker from a nearby whiteboard to finish the drawing.

Now that the "happy family" is out here, suddenly someone came by and said they would fix our cubicles this Saturday. So I thought, does that mean the family had better leave for vacation this Friday?

But I forgot all about that before I left the office today, so too bad, the family will have to fend for themselves this weekend.

Here is a closer view of the Jigglypuff I made. I had printed it out quite a long time back, but made it only recently, maybe two weeks earlier?

And this was where they lived before the Pokemon Center was built.

(The Totoro is the one who was involved in the earlier case.)

Nasi hujan panas

Today I decided to try the western food in our cafeteria. Lamb chop, to be exact. I had seen other people ordering it a few times, and it looked really appetizing. So today when there was no queue at the stall, I went and ordered myself a lamb chop.

As they were grilling my lamb, I looked at the other stalls (there were less people around at that time) and I saw "today's special" on a whiteboard: nasi hujan panas.

Now I think I've heard of nasi hujan panas before, but I didn't know what it actually was.

So I asked the guy who was standing there, "Apa tu nasi hujan panas?" (What is nasi hujan panas?)

Not sure whether this guy didn't speak Malay or what, but he gestured to another guy who came over to see what I wanted. (actually he did the same thing earlier when I wanted to order, and it was the second guy who took my order)

So I asked the second guy, "Apa tu nasi hujan panas?"

He told me it had sold out (it was quite a late hour for lunch, around 12:45pm), but then showed me the nasi, which was some light-yellowish rice with specks of colour. (an online search told me that it was actually the same thing as nasi minyak, but with some colouring for the rice) When I asked whether it came with chicken (just a guess, but which is usually right for these kinds of rice), he said yes, it comes with chicken and *something else* (that I didn't catch). Probably the sauce.

After that he said again that it had sold out. So I said, it's okay, I'll try it another time.

Then he said, "Ooh, susah lo... ini bukan hari-hari ada punya... kena ada hujan, ada panas, baru boleh buat... macam semalam hujan, hari ni panas, baru ada." (It rained quite heavily yesterday, causing a massive traffic jam when we left work. :s )

Haha... that made my day! I just laughed and said, okay, next time after it rains, I will come and see!

As for the lamb chop, it was not bad but not quite tender enough. A bit hard to chew at parts. The sauce (mild black pepper) was good though, and so was the coleslaw that came with it. Considering the price (8 ringgit), I guess I shouldn't complain. It pales in comparison to the hujan panas joke though!

And I also just found out that to make nasi hujan panas, they cook the rice until it's done, then immediately poke "wells" in the rice to add the colouring and let it seep in before mixing the cooked rice. I always thought that the rice had to be separated and coloured before being mixed in. You can check out this recipe if you want to know more.

Hakka food in Cheras

To wrap up the posts on the KL trip (see the two previous posts), here are some dishes from a Hakka restaurant in Cheras. We went there specially for their claypot lamb brisket. Not that the other dishes were in any way inferior...actually all the dishes we ordered are the house specialties.

steamed fish (can't remember the name of the fish)

stir-fried long beans and brinjal

claypot lamb brisket

claypot vinegar pig trotter

It was all very yummy :D

In case you want to pay the restaurant a visit, here's the name card.

French crullers

I don't know where I first heard of French crullers, but I never knew what they looked like.

Until I saw them in a donut shop in 1Utama. The shop was called Mister Donut.

We bought two, because there was a buy 1 free 1 promotion (on the crullers only). There were a few types; some had the chocolate frosting (like above) and some only had sprinkled sugar on top. There were even more kinds of "normal" doughnuts.

But all in all, the crullers were rather disappointing... they looked really good but they tasted more like stale puffy bread. Not sure whether it was because we didn't eat them on the spot... but then, what use are doughnuts that can't keep for a few hours?

Of candy and Pokemon

Two weeks ago, I was in KL for a few days. We stayed near Petaling Street, and went there to buy the famous (and highly expensive) muar chee.

When we were there, we happened to see someone selling this candy:

ting ting candy

Ever heard of it? It's a traditional candy, but this was my first time trying it. Very sweet! :)

And then we came across this:

So cute!! ♥

I wanted to buy it, but the seller wouldn't reduce the price enough for me. (the cloth was rather thin, so it didn't seem worth paying too much for)

On the subject of Pokemon, I saw these Nanoblocks in a supermarket:

Pikachu and Eevee

Bulbasaur and Squirtle

These were also too expensive, or else I would have bought one :P

Today's special

Last Thursday, there was something new on the "Today's Special" menu. I was wondering what it was when another person ordered it, and after taking a look at the dish I decided to give it a try.

It looks like rojak, doesn't it? Everyone around me said that the sauce looks like rojak sauce. There are even crushed peanuts sprinkled on top, completing the "rojak" look. The actual name (written on the menu) is "mee sotong Sabah style". The noodles are spaghetti, and there are fish cake, fish balls and squid under all that sauce too.

As for the taste, it was slightly similar but not exactly the same as rojak sauce. It was rather spicy, too; after a while I kinda regretted mixing in almost all the sauce. But overall the taste was only so-so. It wouldn't be my choice again unless if I got tired of everything else the canteen has to offer (which is quite likely; what is unlikely is that this would be on the menu again on the same day!).

Actually two of my colleagues were also looking at it, but they decided against ordering it. How about you? Would you order it if you saw it on the menu, picture included?