Peach strudel

Today's special: Braided peach strudel.

Not so long ago, I found a recipe for peach strudel. So today I tried it out. I used canned peaches instead of frozen peaches, so I patted them dry first... not sure whether they were still damper than frozen ones, but the pastry turned out fine.

The recipe called for brushing with egg wash (egg beaten with a bit of water), but I didn't do that. Instead, I had some leftover "syrup" from my peach mixture, and I used that to brush the pastry slightly. I also spread the bits of almond left in the mixture onto the top of the pastries. That turned out to be a good idea, because the almonds got roasted a bit brown and they tasted quite nice.

Here's what they looked like before baking:

Four small strudels instead of one big one.

The leftmost pastry had the pastry stretched the thinnest. After that, I didn't roll the pastry as thin because I thought it might be too thin... But in the end, they tasted practically the same.

After baking:

Most of them was gone once they cooled down... however a bit was left:

I realized I didn't take a photo of a cross-section of the strudel, so this is to make up for it:

Looks good, if I may say so myself :)

Of idiotic responses

The latest in a list of unhelpful responses:

I was going to a friend's wedding dinner and I knew another mutual friend was going. So I asked him (via text message) what time he planned on arriving. His response? He didn't know what time he would arrive because it would depend on traffic (adding on the explanation that it was because he lived on the mainland).

For goodness' sake, I'm not asking you to let me know the exact time you are arriving, to the minute! I know that it will depend on traffic; my time of arrival would depend on traffic too, since I'm not walking there! And even if you don't know what time you will arrive, you would have a general idea of what time you plan to arrive, so that you would know what time to set off from home...

So sick of dealing with idiots. (some of which I did not write about here)

Architecture of a sports complex

In Relau there is a sports complex being constructed. We heard that there will be a swimming pool and badminton courts there, amongst others.

Last Friday's theme was architecture. So this is fitting!

A rainy morning

This week's theme is morning... and it is so simple to find something suitable, it's difficult to find something worthy!

The other day I woke up to a rainy morning, so I took a photo of the rain pattering down on the balcony. But I didn't like it much. When I was driving to work, the rain had stopped, but there was a bit of fog hanging low on the mountains in the distance. I caught sight of it when I was on a road heading south, with the mountains right in front of me. But I was turning left, and didn't get a chance to snap a photo of that. After that, I got a similar view (though not as good) in my side-view mirror. I had stopped at a traffic light, but it was hard to turn back and snap the photo (the car roof and frame got in the way :P ), so I simply snapped a photo through the side-mirror.

I still don't like this photo very much (not worthy enough); I'll try to do better next week!

Of wedding songs

Last Saturday I was at a couple of friends' wedding (for the second time in my life, I went to a wedding where I knew both the bride and the groom). They had a group of singers on the stage, and as the evening drew to a close, they were singing Beautiful Sunday (Daniel Boone, 1972 - I just found out these details via Google). This was followed by Sha La La (Dreamhouse, 1997 / The Walkers, 1973 - also from Google research). I was pleasantly surprised to hear these songs, which we seldom hear these days. And also, usually at weddings we hear a lot of ballads, but seldom these upbeat love songs.

But after Sha La La, they had to go and ruin it by continuing with Bruno Mars' Marry You. It is one of the worst songs for a wedding, because the lyrics go
It's a beautiful night,
We're looking for something dumb to do.
Hey baby,
I think I wanna marry you.

Like a friend mentioned before, how on earth is a girl supposed to feel flattered when marrying her is qualified as "something dumb to do"?

And later he continues with
If we wake up and you wanna break up that's cool.
No, I won't blame you;
It was fun, girl.

Er... would you actually say that on your wedding?

By the way, I'm not the only one who says that this song is unsuitable for weddings; I once read an article by a wedding singer (or was it a wedding planner?) that listed out several popular wedding songs which had unsuitable lyrics. And this was in the list.

Well, let's listen to the good songs, shall we? (links are above, videos embedded below)

All sports

As I said in the previous post, I was at badminton... and someone asked me what sports I played. Because, as he said, he had heard from people that I played all sports very well! He said it was those in his team... though I'm not even sure I know them. -_-

I actually have people saying to me quite often, "Wow, you play all sports!" I wonder what their definition of "all sports" is though... because my definition of it is definitely not "ping pong and badminton".

(And "very well" is relative... compared to whom, may I ask?) 

In the dark

On my way home I was stuck in a long traffic queue. Across the road, there was a woman carrying something under her arm. Upon taking a closer look, I saw that it was a dog... Then I suddenly caught the woman's eyes, and she was smiling at me! Oops...she must have caught me looking at her dog.

So I just smiled back at her.

I never know when people can see me clearly when I'm inside the car. Especially if it is dark. (This happened at night, at 8+ after badminton)

Another time, when I was having the same badminton session at N-Park, I had returned to my car and I was waiting for the traffic to move before I could drive out of my roadside parking spot. A friend walked down the road towards my car. I thought he might not be able to see me, as the road was dark (no streetlights) and my car didn't even have the headlights on (the traffic light takes about five minutes to turn green, so there was no point switching on the headlights until I had a chance to move out). But he saw me... and even waved at me. lol

Photo Friday debut - Black and White

I've decided to rekindle my friendship with my camera.

And how? With a little help from Photo Friday!

I've already posted about Photo Friday before. I did the challenge for a while before, and stuck them under the label weeklychallenge. I'm not sure why I didn't use the label PhotoFriday, maybe it was because I was trying to do some writing as well. But now I will use PhotoFriday instead... and hopefully it will last longer!

The theme for this week is black and white.

I initially thought of looking for something black and white outside. (I thought of a dog) But then I decided to just snap a photo of some household item... and finally settled on this:

While looking at my old photo challenge posts, I found that I have actually posted a photo of my mouse before... just a different one!

Hey Ho, stormy seas...

Sekai No Owari has a new song! Great as usual... and now the lyrics have been translated by Lyrical Nonsense! So here you go:



A snippet of the lyrics (which I had to type out because Lyrical Nonsense doesn't allow us to copy-paste its lyrics):

If you were to see the sad news that flows from the TV,
But your heart wasn't moved... I would consider that completely normal.
I don't believe it is our duty to help someone else;
It's merely the privilege to see their smile - it's something we do for our own sake.

Now may not be the time for you to reach your hand out to someone else,
But until that time comes, you're fine living just as you are!

Deep...

Jackpot?

This morning I bought a pack of nasi lemak labeled "fish" (or should I say labeled "I"?) When I got home, I found that in addition to a piece of fish, there was a prawn inside as well! Now did I just hit the jackpot, or do they always include a prawn in there? I seldom buy fish nasi lemak, but the last time I did, there was no prawn inside. That was a long time ago though...

What's more, I was actually looking for prawn nasi lemak, but they had run out of that. So I guess I got my prawn (albeit just one) after all!

Pokemon delivery

I got some Pokemon in the mail!

I opened the envelope and saw a Pikachu (the one on the left) when extracting the letter. The next moment, another Pikachu (the one on the right) fell out!

There were more inside the letter... plus a Togepi!

Honing mind-reading skills

Talking with Malaysians is a continuous practice of "They said this, but what do they actually mean?" The French don't practise this; they take what you say as what you mean. This sometimes causes problems when non-native speakers make grammatical mistakes; the French will interpret it as what was actually said.

So often I have to think about what people "might mean" when they say something, instead of just taking what they say at face value. Sigh....

But then the French have one disadvantage - I may have mentioned this incident before, but I'll just go through it again: Once our teacher was explaining to us what the "middle ages" were. After her explanation, my classmate said "I think the middle ages were the age of the dinosaurs." Of course, he meant to say "I thought", but the verb was wrongly conjugated in French. From his intonation, we could tell what he meant, but the teacher took what he said at face value and assumed he was contradicting her, so she explained the whole thing again about what the middle ages were. And he said, okay, okay, I think the middle ages were the age of the dinosaurs (again, he meant "I thought"). And so it went, a few times....

(This slightly rambling neither-here-nor-there post is brought to you by frustration of having to decode too many unclear communications at work.)

A day out in Georgetown

Two weeks ago, we had our department teambuilding activity. The activity was held at Georgetown (there seems to be a local business organising this kind of stuff) and then we went to Equatorial's Kampachi for a buffet lunch. This post is mainly going to be about the activities in the Georgetown area.

We met at 9am at the Tanjung City Marina. Each person was given a packet of nasi lemak and a curry puff (and mineral water), which I expect was included in the package. Then we were split into groups and given our "test papers". I say "test papers" because there were two sets of questions: The first set was to "do" things and take photos or videos, and the second set only required answers to the questions.

The second set first: for example we needed to find the opening hours of certain food stalls, or count the number of lion heads on a fountain.

As for the first set, one of the first tasks was to go to a specific shop and have one member of the group make roti canai, and also teh tarik. Video evidence was needed! In our team, two different people did these tasks.

They actually provided us with bicycles and a trishaw per team, though we could also choose to walk. One of the tasks was to take a video of one of us pedaling a trishaw with another two members as passengers.

Here are a few more random tasks that we had to accomplish (that I have photos of):

Take a photo with a "Penang White Coffee" banner.

(Our group actually split up into two smaller groups; a walking group and a cycling (plus trishaw) group. This is the other group. I was in the walking group.)

Learn how to make a flower garland:

I only made a short portion of it, then we decided that was enough since we were pressed for time (actually that's a pity because we rushed through a lot of the tasks instead of taking the time to appreciate the surroundings, etc). Then the lady extended the portion that I made with a portion that she already had. According to her, this is the easiest flower garland to make. I'm kind of hoping I can make it again, with plastic flowers or something...

After getting home, I didn't know what to do with my garland. It had broken in the course of the day, so I put it back together and hung it up. So here you can take a good look at the flowers (spot the Pikachu lounging on the sofa in the background!). Since they were fresh flowers, they had started wilting the next day...

Another task: take a photo with two policemen in uniform.

(This is actually our department head; yep, I ended up in her team.)

Get a henna art done.

I took a proper photo after getting home:

It was supposed to last for a week, according to the henna artist, but mine came off by the weekend (teambuilding was on a Wednesday). Maybe because I wash too many things... I did laundry on the first night, and could already see the colour fading a bit.


Back to the tasks: Go for fortune telling.

Some members of the group didn't even make it into these photos, which is kind of unfortunate. Another task (a rather ingenious idea, I think) that they set us was to take a photo of five cars parked in a row, of which none must be Proton or Perodua cars (locally-made cars). That took a while to find!