The Port Dickson food tour

Before going to Port Dickson, I searched for food recommendations. There didn't seem to be anything special in the town of Port Dickson itself, but in the nearby town of Lukut (also considered to be part of Port Dickson), there were two famous dishes.

The first is the Lucky King Bun, a curry chicken bun similar to Kampar's. The bun seems to be slightly bigger, and the curry chicken has more potatoes compared to the one from Kampar. But it's been a long time since I've tried the Kampar bun, so I'm not very sure of the comparison...

Here's the bun, with a normal Seremban "siew pow" beside it, for size comparison.

And opened up:

We had to pass through Lukut on the way from Seremban to Port Dickson, so we made a stop and bought the bun to eat for dinner in our apartment.

The other famous dish in Lukut was the "la zha mian", or so-called "dirty noodles". From my online research, it seems that the name comes from the location where the noodles were first sold - beside a dirty drain. In any case, they are now in a coffee shop (clean enough) and when we were there, the shop owner told us that they would soon be moving to a new location nearby.

This is the main dish: "dry" noodles.

Then there is the "fried" version.

Then the "lor" version, which is kinda like "yee mee", but not really. They even have black vinegar on the table so that you can add it to the noodles.

And a bowl of soup with "liaw". I think this bowl is supposed to accompany the dry noodles above. When we ordered, the shop owner asked whether we would like to have extra "yong tau foo" with our noodles, so we said yes, a small portion. In this soup, there were a few "yong tau foo" pieces, veggies (which you can see) and quite a number of pieces of meat. We saw someone at another table eating the dry noodles with a small bowl of soup, so most likely the soup and meat are supposed to accompany the dry noodles.

The "yong tau foo" was actually not very good. But the noodles were... I liked the "lor" version best, my mother liked the dry version (which I liked less because I felt there was not much taste), and my father liked the fried noodles, so I guess every dish has its good points!

We also dropped by the Tesco in Lukut which had just opened recently (less than a month ago). It was so new that the food court was having a promotion (a few dishes had promotional prices of a few ringgit less than normal). We saw some people ordering mee bandung, and it looked good, so we ordered one too.

Looks good, doesn't it?

And it was so good, we ordered a second one.

I've never been a fan of mee bandung, but this one was really good. The gravy was thick and creamy, and there was a shrimpy taste that I don't think we usually find in mee bandung. (But given that I never order mee bandung... I might be wrong. Maybe the first mee bandung I had was a bad one, and it made me never order mee bandung again. :P ) I looked up mee bandung online, and it seems the recipe does use shrimp (a bit). Maybe this shop used more. Looking around us, it seemed to be the most popular dish in the food court.

In Port Dickson itself, we went to two Malay places for dinner. Both had ikan bakar... we ordered that at the first place and decided not to have a repeat the next day. I didn't take any photos at the first Malay shop, but at the second, the presentation was somewhat nicer so I took some photos.

Clockwise from left: sotong goreng tepung, sayur campur, and telur bungkus

The telur bungkus was good, but the rest were only so-so. (Why is it so hard to find good sotong goreng tepung??)

And since we weren't ordering ikan bakar, we ordered ginger lemon steamed fish instead (stim halia lemon).

Looks and tastes good! :) I think I may try making this in future... besides ginger and lemon, they put garlic, onions, and chillies (both big red chillies and bird's-eye chillies). Lots of each ingredient... probably that's why the resulting soup (can we call that soup? I don't think it's gravy...) was so flavourful.

We actually had a very good "lou shee fun" in Seremban (though I feel that what's special is the noodles themselves, which were nice and springy, not the ingredients. The ingredients were just "normal" good, not "specially" good.). We also had the famous beef noodles in the Seremban market, but I didn't take any photos because the dishes didn't look particularly special.

Apa benda tu polisemi??

This is what my garlic and onions came wrapped in.

At first glance, I thought, oh, it's a Malay workbook.

Then I noticed the word "polisemi", which I had never heard before. So I took a closer look.

What is this new Malay word that is being used in schoolbooks? We never had this chapter when I was in school.

Then I noticed something strange. The words have Chinese translations. And on the other pages (on the flip side of the paper, which I didn't take a photo of), there are also English translations sometimes, alongside the Chinese ones.

So maybe this workbook is being used in Chinese schools. But the questions still remains: What on earth is "polisemi"?

Typing "polisemi" into Google, I found out (the Internet is a great place!) that it is an Indonesian word. And through that, I found its English equivalent, polysemy. Basically, polysemy is the capacity of a word to have several meanings. (But somehow those meanings need to be somewhat related to one another... it seems rather complicated, so please refer to the Wikipedia page for more details!)

The word doesn't seem to exist in Malay, though. Wikipedia does not have a page for it in Malay. So it makes sense that we didn't learn of it in school!

That is one mystery solved... however there is a second mystery: What is an Indonesian schoolbook doing here as scrap paper? :P

I don't think I can find the answer to that... but I guess I learned a new word today. In two languages!

Port Dickson beaches and (faked) sunset

As I mentioned previously, I went to Port Dickson for a few days.

Port Dickson is famous for its beaches. Not of much use to us, since we're not into swimming... but we still went to see a few beaches and take photos.

We stayed in a holiday apartment next to the beach, with a hotel next to it (we had access to the hotel swimming pool).

view from the hotel
(the cove is open to the sea on the right... as you will see in other photos later)

with the hotel swimming pool

view from the apartment
Behind the trees on the right is actually the cove that you see in the photo above.

sunset at the cove
See the opening to the sea at the end? A bit to the right...
(photo taken with the sunset setting on my camera. The actual sunset was actually a blue-skied one :P )

And this is at the PD Waterfront.

our hotel/apartment is on the opposite shore

just took a photo of the rocks because they look nice

PD Waterfront

The previous panorama had a wider view, but the rocks weren't visible, so I cut out a narrower view with the rocks.

Back at the hotel, we walked to the other side and discovered the mini-beach there.

The same cove, from a different angle. The path on the left is just below the hotel swimming pool.

on the other side of the hotel
Facing the sunset, I guess this beach is only good to swim at in the mornings.

We went to a few other beaches (real beaches, should I say?). They looked all the same to me...

Pantai Saujana

Pantai Bagan Pinang

another area of Pantai Bagan Pinang

That's it for the beaches! Next up will be the food... or the sights, if I change my mind. :P

Bonus level up!

I may have mentioned previously that I was moving in the office. (but I don't think so)

Previously I moved from Level 3 to Level 4, and I did a sketch for that.

This time, we moved up to Level 6, so I did another sketch.

I can't remember the exact date of the move, but since this sketch was done on the 6th of January, I think we moved to our new place on the 11th, which was a Monday. We packed up all our stuff on Friday, and the movers moved them to our new seats over the weekend (just like when we moved from Cyberplex to Innoplex).

Well, this time the sketch has a tree and an igloo because Innoplex is infamous for being colder as we go to higher floors (remember my penguin phase?). But after moving, it seems the 6th floor is still okay. It is colder sometimes, but using a normal jacket is enough.

I was planning to do another "level up" sketch after moving to my new cubicle, but this time my whiteboard is in a different location. A better location, actually... because I have a cubicle divider beside me now, and the whiteboard can be placed there, instead of across the table (where I have to lean over the table to use it). So now it is very convenient to use the whiteboard for discussions.

Even though I love the new location of my whiteboard, the downside to it is that I may not make any more sketches. Previously I wasn't going to use my whiteboard for discussions anyway, because the location was so inconvenient to draw on. But now, if I sketch on the board, I will have no more space (or a smaller space) to use when discussing work-related stuff with colleagues.

So I haven't done any more sketches since my move to Level 6. I guess leveling up brings changes!

Another thing to mention is that I have now worked on four floors of the seven-floor building. And if you don't count the first/ground floor (Level 1) because there are no offices there, that leaves only two floors that I haven't worked on. (as a refresher, I was in Level 7 - Level 3 - Level 4 - Level 6)

The other day, as I was printing something in Level 4 before moving, I realized I had added the printers of every floor I have worked on. So I took a screenshot.

And then, after moving to Level 6...

As expected, more printers have been added to the list!

Sila pusing kolam

Last weekend I was in Seremban for a short stopover before going to Port Dickson (more on that in future posts).

We stayed in a small hotel called Carlton Star. When entering the car park, we saw this:

So we had to push the button to get the ticket. But what is more interesting is the small handwritten sign on the left. "Sila pusing kolam," it says. What on earth does that mean?

Maybe this map of the hotel and its surroundings will help.

Turns out that we were supposed to go around the pond (called Carlton Pond in the map above). That is, instead of turning left to park at the side nearest to the hotel, we were supposed to go straight ahead and around the pond, because the car park was supposed to be one-way (jalan sehala).

Anyway... it took us a few moments to figure it out.

To give you a better view of the situation, here is a photo of the kolam from our hotel window.

This is the side of the kolam nearest to the hotel, and the entrance to the car park is at the end of this road, to the right.

L'assassin habitait à côté...

A little story from the French textbook.

It's a horror story in three chapters. It starts with "The cry", followed by "The skeleton", and then "The ghost train".

I'm a bit lazy to translate it properly, with all the suspense, so I will just give a brief summary. In "The cry", the narrator says that his neighbour brings a lady home. Then he hears a terrible scream - a woman's scream - from the neighbour's cellar. Later, he sees the neighbour carrying a large bag to the boot of his car.

In "The skeleton", the narrator tells his friend Julien about the incident. They decide to check out the neighbour's cellar. In the cellar, they are shocked to see a skeleton, and they run home.

In "The ghost train", they go to a funfair. The narrator sees his neighbour talking to the ticket seller. Suddenly he recognizes the ticket seller as the "murdered" lady. Then in the ghost train ride, he sees a witch who gives a terrible scream. There is a skeleton as well. And so, he finally understands...

The title of the story is "The murderer lives next door...". The same title is actually written above all three parts of the story, but for the first two parts it didn't make it into the photo.

What's CNY, anyway?

There are a few things I wanted to blog about, but didn't get around to. One of this was related to Chinese New Year.

As I have mentioned before, we are working with some people from Poland. Just before Chinese New Year, we had an online meeting and a Polish colleague shared her screen. And I happened to notice something on her screen:

(click to see a bigger image)

I guess when a bunch of people you are working with (we're also working with people from China) take time off for a week or so, you want to know what's the big deal! :P