Squirtle spotted

I saw a Squirtle hanging at the side window (at the back seat) of a car this morning! At first glance I thought it was similar to mine... and then I saw the tail. The tail was flat and pasted onto the shell, unlike mine which is more 3D! And the design was only a circle on the tail, it seemed... Okay, mine is still better :D The most perfect Squirtle!

China-style food

Some time ago I heard of a China-style ramen in a Sg Ara food court. The recommended ramen was a dumpling (sui kow) one, so we went and tried that out.

RM7 (RM8 if you want the sui kow fried)

It was good, and the portion rather big too.

Today we went there again for lunch, and this time we ordered a plate of ten sui kow. (RM7 for normal ones, RM8 for fried ones)

RM8

Since we had already ordered sui kow separately, I ordered pork rib ramen.

RM7

The taste is about the same as the sui kow ramen, but it was rather disappointing because the pork ribs were dry and hard, and they didn't even give one piece of the actual pork rib (you know, the part with one piece of bone going through it...  At the stall, the photo of the dish only had that part!). Maybe I should have taken the pork leg ramen instead (but who knows, they might not give the good part either...)

Kinomé

We had a farewell lunch for a colleague yesterday.

It was intially to be a group of almost ten people, but in the end it was whittled down to just five of us. (insert rant about last-minute cancellations here - but I won't go into that again)

We ended up at Kinomé, a small Japanese restaurant that I had been to before. I think I had been there at least twice before this farewell, and I had never been disappointed. :)

Anyway, this post is not so much about the food... but about the photos.

While waiting for the food to arrive, we were taking photos... Wei Han had a clip-on lens for smartphone, and we tried that out.

A shot without the clip-on lens:

From left: Sevu, Faizal, Wei Han, Azura, and yours truly

(I'm not good at taking photos like this, but somehow my position was the best for taking photos... because of the lighting)

Then a photo with the clip on lens:

There is a fishbowl effect because Azura's phone had a casing, so the lens couldn't be fitted exactly onto the phone camera lens. But it looks quite nice. There's also a ceiling fan in our fishbowl...looks kinda quaint.

And to join in the fun, I brought out my camera and we tried with that.

Wei Han is taking the photo with my camera because I said my arm wasn't long enough to get everyone into the shot. :P You can see the bright light from the entrance of the shop...that is why my position was better for taking photos!

And now for food... I didn't take photos of everyone's food because I didn't want to spoil the dining experience :P But all the dishes were well presented! Mine is a salmon-lover's bento with grilled salmon (or is it battered and fried... the skin was very crispy) and salmon sashimi. The sashimi was nice and thick! (and costly...)

Another pic to see the salmon and salad properly. The salad also came with some potato salad on top of it.

It looks expensive, and yes, it is expensive. RM36 if I'm not mistaken.
(there are cheaper sets)

I finished everything but the rice. Completely... even the lettuce. Very satisfied taste-wise. :D

The journey through leftovers

I've wanted to write about this for a looong time... but somehow something else crops up and I post about that instead. This is about finishing up leftovers.

Several weeks ago (definitely more than a month, maybe two?) some people cancelled on me. (part of what prompted this post) At the beginning of the week, they said they would be coming to my place that weekend. On Friday, they said they couldn't make it. Anyway, I had bought most of the necessary ingredients for our meal... so I had to improvise and find a way to finish it.

What I had bought:
12 chicken wings (+2 left over in the fridge)
2 French loafs (2/3 used for breakfast before the weekend)
12 potatoes

On Saturday I roasted eight of the chicken wings, made garlic bread with two-thirds of a loaf, and coleslaw (needed some veggies...)

The plate is for presentation... We ate five of the chicken wings (the drummet part included quite a huge chunk of meat) that night.

That left me with:
6 uncooked chicken wings
2/3 loaf of French bread
12 potatoes (untouched)
3 leftover roasted chicken wings
coleslaw (leftovers were planned!)

The next day (Sunday) we went out in the morning, and bought back our lunch. WW bought nasi lemak without chicken, and we reheated two drummets for him to eat with his nasi lemak. (I believe my nasi lemak had squid)

For dinner I baked the remaining six chicken wings, using a new recipe I found. The wings were baked on a rack and were supposed to turn out crispy, but they also turned out a bit dry. Hopefully I'll have better luck next time!

We ate this with the leftover coleslaw, and with baked potatoes. I baked all twelve potatoes in their skins, and we ate half of them.

Still keeping up? Now what's left is:
2/3 loaf of French bread
6 potatoes (baked)
one whole and two wingettes of leftover roasted chicken wings

On Monday night, I bought some economy beehoon and we had that with the remaining roasted chicken wings. (Why didn't I keep the wings whole, you might ask? Because I prefer the wingettes and WW prefers the drummets...)

To handle the rest of the French loaf, I prepared two types of bread on Monday night, ready to be baked the next morning.

Using a third of the French loaf, was this cheese and garlic crack bread. I had leftover garlic butter from my garlic bread the other day, so I used that together with cheddar cheese slices.

Besides this, I made two "bowls" with the other third of the loaf. It was inspired by this recipe, but I didn't expect it to come anywhere close! (Spoiler: And it didn't :P ) I microwaved a chicken sausage and chopped it up, then mixed it with cheese and the breadcrumbs from the loaf itself, then stuffed the mixture back into the bread.

I wrapped both types of bread in foil and refrigerated it for the next day (as instructed in the recipes).

Tuesday morning, came the baking. (I am mad at having leftover bread because I don't like to do so much when I roll out of bed in the morning. But because of these leftovers which couldn't be finished leisurely over the weekend, I needed to squeeze out some time to prepare and bake them on weekdays.)

So here's how the crack bread looks after baking:

And after browning with the foil open:

There is only a tiny difference to look at, but I assure you that the crust became crispier after baking it with the foil open.

And the rest of the bread? I felt that they were very dry while making them the previous night (they are stale bread, after all...), so I put a small chunk of butter on each of them before baking them in the morning. Result? Not too dry... but not that good either. Just edible, I would say. But then this is a big adaptation just to finish up the bread... nothing like the original!

Now if you're still keeping track of my ingredients, you will know that only the six baked potatoes are left. But the next weekend I was too busy to cook, so I kept the potatoes in the freezer until the following weekend (which is two weekends after the first one where I got cancelled upon).

Then I made twice-baked potatoes. I didn't put as much butter as the recipe asked for... basically I just took the ingredients but didn't follow the quantities properly. Basically I mashed the potato with microwaved sausage (again) and cheese, then put them back into the potato bowls, topped them with some cheese (they look ugly because the cheese is not grated), and put them into the oven to bake. I put salt and black pepper for seasoning, but I think I didn't use any milk. The looked kinda bland coming out of the oven... but the taste was nice and creamy!

I liked this... but I'm not sure whether it was worth the trouble. It looks more like something to wow guests. :P The crack bread, on the other hand... tastes good and is simple enough to make again!

Too many files

When you feel that you have too many files open in your notepad++...

When you get tired of scrolling left and right to find the file that you want...

When you decide to find out how to enable multi-line tabs so that you can find files more easily...

When you find out that all your files will give you EIGHT lines of tabs...

You know that you DO have too many files open in your notepad++!

Edit at night:
Sorry, miscounted. It was NINE rows of tabs!

What shall I eat in this?

This week's theme is small. So here's a small bowl!

This bowl comes from a packet of incense... the cone type. Someone once gave me (or my mother?) a packet of cone incense, and it came with this bowl to put the incense on before lighting it. After all the cones were gone, the bowl remains... and it is still in my display cupboard (moved from Kuantan to Penang, no less!)

The first photo I took is below, with the rooster pattern clearly seen. But I wanted the photo to clearly show that it was a bowl (instead of just a round disc), so I took the second photo (above) and made it my actual Photo Friday pic.

Secret Satay discovered

Last week I went to a rather famous burger stall with a friend. The speciality there is fried chicken burger, and they have different types of flavoured buns. I had been there once before, but my friend hadn't, and wanted to try it.

Check out the colourful buns stacked on the shelf!

The burger stall had a number of tables lined up for its customers.

The burger stall is at the far end.

After all the tables and chairs, there was a satay stall called Secret Satay Penang. I don't think this stall was there the last time I went.

After ordering our burgers, we went to the satay stall to take a look, and ended up ordering some chicken satay.

I was pleasantly surprised by the satay; very very good with strong taste of spices! I would call it amazing, and I don't use the word "amazing" lightly. ;) The peanut sauce was good as well, though not "amazing". lol

Then our burgers arrived. I had chosen a corn bun, and my friend chose yam. They look great, don't they?

Albeit a bit small... here's a closer-up shot of one burger

Ï can't remember whether the size was the same when I went there the first time... Anyway, the taste of the buns wasn't very strong; I could hardly taste the corn in mine, even though I took a pinch of bread that hadn't touched the sauce.

(They provide knives and forks by the way... very useful because of all the gravy)

I also ordered a burger for take-away, for my brother at home... and presentation-wise, it was totally different:

tiny flat burger

That is a strawberry bun, by the way. You could have guessed!

For the buns, they also had pandan, chocolate, and vanilla (blue colour, for some reason), and probably a few others. They had charcoal bun as well, but there was a surcharge for that one.

That's all for the burger and satay discovery...

But since I have a photo of another satay we discovered, here you go:

Looks pretty good as well, doesn't it?

This one was at a homestay in Sungai Ara. My brother and I were going out for dinner... and we actually wanted to go to an area where there is a row of Malay stalls. In the morning, there is a stall selling breakfast, and along that row I had seen a char kuey teow stall, a nasi lemak stall, and more. But all those stalls were closed, so we went a bit further and there was a homestay open for dinner. There are actually two stalls in the compound of a corner house (the homestay), one selling fried rice, noodles and char kuey teow, and the second one selling satay. The banner said that it was Javanese authentic satay.

We had char kuey teow and fried rice (good enough but nothing to shout about), and this satay. (and ais kacang, which was pretty good too) I still feel that the satay we had in Batu Maung (the one above) is better, because the taste of the spices was stronger. But this satay is good enough to satisfy satay cravings without going so far from home!

Both stalls sold their satay at 60 sen apiece. The one in Sungai Ara sold their lamb satay at RM1.30 apiece... which is why I didn't try it. (we didn't ask at the first stall... will probably ask next time!)

From Lyon to Penang

I drove to Georgetown last Saturday to meet a friend who was here on a company trip.

There was a huge traffic jam in Georgetown... even before exiting the highway, the traffic had come to a standstill. Then I turned into a smaller road and it was the same. In the end, I saw a spot where I could park, so I quickly stopped the car there and walked to the hotel where I was supposed to pick up my friend. The walk took ten minutes from where I had parked (I was walking quite quickly because I was already more than a half-hour late; or else maybe it would have taken 15 minutes?). But if I had continued driving, I think it would have taken me at least another half an hour (maybe even one hour!)

My friend had been waiting in the lobby for some time... but at least she knew I was stuck in traffic because the jam extended to right in front of her hotel! (and beyond...) Initially we had thought we could go and see some of the Georgetown murals, but we decided instead to just sit down in the hotel and chat. We went to the executive lounge on the 30th floor, where I took this photo of the amazing traffic jam:

I could actually see my car from there; it is at the location I marked.

Before leaving, Jiamin and I took photos together. I dug through my old photos from Lyon, and found one of us together.

Lyon, Hôtel de Ville, June 2010 (we were at the fête de la musique)

Penang, St Giles Wembley hotel, Nov 2016

Till next time!

(This post was written on Sunday, but somehow Blogger couldn't attach my photos to the post. That is why it is being posted today instead... seems that the problem has been fixed!)

Of missing advertising

Our office cafeteria has implemented a cashless card system since a few months back. Just yesterday I wanted to reload my card, and my friend told me that I could reload it at a self-service machine next to the ATM (yes, there is an ATM in our cafeteria) 

The thing is, when they started using this card, we needed to reload it at the cashier. I don't know when they installed the self-service reload machine, but each time when I went to the cashier to reload my card, she never told me about it. But when I asked her about the machine (my friend had just mentioned it but I didn't have my bank card with me, so I thought I couldn't use it), she said, "Yes, you should use that, it's better!" Well, why don't you tell people who come here to reload about it... I'm sure I'm not the only one who didn't know about the machine's existence!

Anyway, after that I went to take a look at the machine. It does look rather convenient... you just tap your card to check the balance, and immediately after that, you can insert bank notes to reload your card. I will try it out next time...

Priorities

You make time for what's important. I once read some advice that said: Don't say "I'm busy", say "It's not a priority". Then you will know whether you are making time for the right things. So when I hear "I'm busy", I also translate it to "It's not a priority". It's a good filter to see who thinks you are important enough to make time for, and then you can set your own priorities accordingly!

(okay, that paragraph above is a thought that basically summarizes up everything I want to say. But the background and additional thoughts are below...)

Since I read a lot of online articles (especially with friends sharing stuff on Facebook), sometimes I read the same things over and over again, because one website decides to parrot another, especially on "trending" items. Sometimes I read advice that makes sense, but it isn't often that I actually use some advice, and remember it down the road.

This piece of advice is different in that sense. I actually remember it, in its exact wording. I also use it when I tell myself I am too busy. And I find that it keeps making sense.

The surprising bit is this: Some articles are seen again and again on Facebook. I see someone sharing an article, and when I click on it, I realize that I have read the exact same thing before (whether it was from the same source, it doesn't matter, but what I mean here is that the content is basically the same). It is the same old advice, that people read and nod their heads to, but they don't follow. Why? Probably because they don't have time (some advice are harder to follow than others... I grant you that. Or maybe I grant myself that). But this piece of advice... I have only seen it that ONE time. Why? It is good advice... maybe too good that people don't need repeats?

Anyway, I did a search for this, and found that it was posted on Lifehacker in 2012. Maybe that was where I read it, because at one time I was subscribed to Lifehacker on my RSS feed. Until they started recycling items and I got tired of reading the same things all over again.

So, what prompted this post? Well, recently I get the feeling that I'm being pushed to the back of the priority list by some people. For example, when trying to meet up with friends, we settle on a weekend (a few weeks in advance, since we are such busy people...). But when the weekend rolls around, someone who had agreed on that date earlier will say that something had come up and that they are busy. I get it if this happens sometimes... when something urgent pops up, we can postpone a gathering among friends, sure! But when it happens again and again... I can't help but wonder, is this gathering so low on your priority list? Are you unable to book a time for this? And when you set a tentative date three weeks in advance (which would understandably be cancelled in case of something urgent), does any other appointment have a higher priority over this? Because I don't believe that urgent matters would happen on such a regular basis!

So yeah... I am using that piece of advice above to apply my filter. Because if you do not have time for me, I might as well put other things on higher priority over you too.

How do you see texture?

Like this, I guess.

Because this week's Photo Friday theme is texture. And I happened to be changing to a new bathroom mat!

Paint day

Got to the car park and saw that they had painted those parallel speed bump lines with the words "SLOW" in the middle. Because Motorolans don't know how to slow down without being asked...

Then opened the stairwell door and was hit by paint fumes... except that I couldn't see what they had painted. Railing? No. Wall? No. It wasn't until I had almost reached the sixth floor (where I was going) that I saw some evidence of recent painting... some paint drips on the edge of the staircase (probably the railing there was painted), and the walls looked quite white as well...

Anyway, I don't know why they didn't just paint the whole thing from top to bottom, and I hope it is not a work in progress, for the sake of my nostrils...

A new pastime

I somehow started playing DDR (Dance Dance Revolution) again. The last time I played was in France (where some people had the mat), during one of our GE outings. It was one of the games where we were pitted against another player, and I remember winning easily... I had played before in ASINSA (albeit just a little), and the girl I was playing against didn't seem to be able to get the hang of it.

Anyway... I suddenly thought of this game the other day, and looked up the price of a mat online. Lazada was selling a few at around RM50, so I thought, why not? After buying one, I found out that I actually needed to install Stepmania (free software for cheapskates) to use it.

The Stepmania installation came with only two songs (and pretty difficult ones at that), so I had to look for some easy ones. After accidentally downloading a popular mix of songs which turned out to be too difficult, I found a tip on getting Disney songs because they were easy. While at it, I noticed some Pokemon songs and some Korean songs and downloaded them too. The former turned out to be ridiculously difficult, but some of the Korean ones were fine. After some practice on Disney songs, a Korean song Byul by Team (though I cannot find who is Team) became one of my favourites because the steps were simple enough and the song is nice! (listen to it here)

Anyway, there are scores and grades given for each game of Stepmania, and I didn't care much about them at first because they were sooo complicated. But after getting grades like B or C (started off with F and D) I paid a bit more attention... and finally got an A!

I first got an A on a Disney song, and it surprised me to no end because it was the first time I was playing that song. It was a simple one of course, but the tune hadn't been catchy enough to let me pick it earlier :P Then I got another A, on Byul... and I was pretty happy about it :)

After that I still didn't care much... because I found that I could easily slip up on a few steps and the grade would fall back down. But today I got an A (on my (for now, still) favourite song), with "full combo", something that I did not understand. So I searched a bit, and I found something about grading system here. Seems that getting nothing less than "great" would give you a full combo. The page has lots of other details which make my head spin... so I guess I will drop that and not think about those until something else comes up and makes me curious again...

And in the meantime, here's a screenshot of my lovely score :P There's still a bunch of stuff I don't understand... Can you honestly tell me it isn't confusing for you?

Squirtle, I choose you!

I caught a Pokemon on Monday!

Okay, okay, so I bought it... :P For RM15.

This is seriously the most beautiful three-dimensional Squirtle that I have ever seen (I have to mention 3D so that it excludes pictures and animations). I was at the pasar malam on Monday, and I saw a stall selling Pokemon. There were big ones, costing RM40+ and RM50+. Then there were small ones like this, with a string on top with a suction cup to stick onto your car window. The string is not very clear in the photos because I intentionally moved the string out of the way before taking the photos. They had Pikachu and all three starter Pokemon (Bulbasaur, Charmander, and Squirtle if you don't know), and even Eevee, Snorlax and Clefairy (did I miss any?). They had two large Eevee; seems like that one is a good seller; not surprising since it looks like a cute dog to non-Pokemon-fans. They all looked pretty decent, but some had slight flaws that made me give up on them. But this Squirtle is the best! I checked it all over, and there was a bit of excess glue (the end of the tail is glued to the back of the shell so that it won't flop around) on the one on display, so the seller brought out three others and I selected the best one (haha).

Okay, now excuse me while I go train my Squirtle...

Firefly in the house

I was mopping the floor earlier when something fell off the mop. It looked like a small cockroach, and it wasn't moving, so I decided to leave it and sweep it up later. Fast forward to when I had finished mopping (and even finished my dinner) and remembered about the bug, I went back to the corner where it was, and it was no longer on the floor. (Panic! There's a  cockroach on the loose! But fortunately it was a small one so the panic was also small.)

But then I saw the bug on the skirting board on the wall. Okay, fine, I went to get a broom to hit it. But when I hit it, I saw a flashing light...

After I started hitting it and it flopped about with its light on, I went to get my camera. I didn't really dare to get too close to the bug, so I took the photos at about 1-2 feet away, with maximum macro zoom (3×). In a way, the distance was good for the flash... But the photos are still a little blurred.

The bug wasn't dead yet, so after that it managed to flip over.

Even after I swept up the still-struggling bug into my dustpan, it was still lighting up...

And even after I tipped it into my dustbin, tied up the plastic bag... the light was still flashing in there. Good luck, light bug, maybe you'll manage to get out later... though you'll get no help from me!

The curse of the blue shirt

Everyone who plays badminton has hit their low serve into the net before... But when in one set, all your low serves to one specific player end up in the net... you are cursed!

Tonight I hit a few low serves into the net in the first set. In the second set, I switched to another racquet and everything was fine. But in the third (or was it the fourth?) set, all my low serves to one player ended up in the net! After two or three of those, I switched to serving high... but once I tried serving low again, the shuttlecock went back into the net. For that whole set, I didn't manage to serve one low serve to that particular player. That player was wearing a light blue t-shirt today...the only one on the court to wear that colour. So to myself, I called it the curse of the blue shirt!

In the next set, the blue-shirted guy did not play. After that, luckily the curse seemed to be lifted...

In a teacup

Maybe you've heard of a storm in a teacup before. But today I present you: tranquility in a teacup.

This took some effort to achieve... I thought of using the sailboats we folded when we were small, but I had forgotten how to fold them. So I had to search online to find the method. So far, so good. But then when I put the boats on water, they sank because they soaked in the water... which was pretty much expected, I guess. So I took out some scotch tape and taped up the bottom of my boats. It isn't very visible in the photo (although I can still see it if I zoom in on the full-sized pic), but if I turn on the camera flash, it becomes quite clear!

Below is the photo taken with flash. I actually like it better because the colour is much brighter (lighting!), but the reflections of the boats on the surface of the water look strange (besides the fact that the scotch tape is more clearly seen). Most likely because of the scotch tape, the sides of the boat couldn't be reflected on the water! That's a pity... but I don't have waterproof paper to work with. (A thought that came while typing that: And if I taped a piece of paper all over with scotch tape, then made my boat with it? But I'm too lazy to do it again...)

So which photo do you like more?

Today's dishes

There is a famous beef noodles in Penang which we had wanted to try for some time. It was located near a fire station at first, but when we went there, twice it was closed. After that, we found out that it had moved to Carnavon Street, to a shop called ST Loo (the owner is called Loo S. T.). So today we went there to give it a try.

The shop had a huge coffee advertisement, and it was also selling the coffee packets (3-in-1), so we ordered one to try. It came in a small steel mug, with a tall glass full of ice, for us to pour it onto the ice ourselves.

OO white coffee (RM3.20) and beef noodles (RM10)

close-up shot of the beef noodles

The noodles came with quite a lot of pieces of beef meat (beef meatballs, beef slices, beef chunks), tendons, and tripes.

We also ordered a small plate of fried oyster because it was famous together with the beef noodles. The old shop also sold fried oyster, and it seems that they moved here together.

When we ordered the fried oyster, the seller asked us whether we wanted it soft or crispy. We asked him which was better, and he recommended the crispy one because we were eating there. (instead of take-away)

crispy fried oyster omelette (RM7)

The omelette was very crispy, but it was quite different so we didn't feel like we were eating oh chien... In the end we felt that it might have been better to opt for the soft version.

Then for dinner we went to the Golden Lake coffee shop (in Relau, close to my house) and had the yee foo mee / char hor fun there. The one at this shop is one of our favourites, but I don't think I've taken a photo before, so here it is!

yee foo mee (RM6 with egg, RM5 without)

The egg makes a big difference at this stall... it is cooked just nice. :)

An unusual blue

It is not often that we see a BMW in blue, let alone this shade of blue!