Loose ends

Nowadays more and more writers are getting pretty adept at dropping clues all over the place, and making twisted endings that always have the most trusted good guy turning out to be the big bad boss. Blame it on Dan Brown...

But then if you want to leave lots of loose ends, you've got to be good at tying them up too! Unfortunately those who are good at scattering clues are not always that good at tying up loose ends.

Take the latest that I've read, The Osterman Weekend by Robert Ludlum. They say there's an international conspiracy that threatens all mankind, but there is not much information about how that conspiracy is actually going to ruin things.

******* WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD! *******

There is also the bad guy (who is not revealed as such until the very end) who holds a very high position in the CIA, and the CIA knows that he's a bad guy, but lets him run an operation to catch himself. Not only that, they actually leave so many things in his hands that he can do plenty of sabotage without others (who know he's the bad guy) knowing about it. Don't you even put suspected criminals under surveillance?

And the CIA also makes so many mistakes that the person they are protecting goes unprotected... twice!

At the end of the book, they even tell the protagonist, there are many things that you will never understand, many questions that will be left unanswered. Yeah, like how good people sometimes will behave so suspiciously?

It is rather a pity, because the book's basic storyline is not so bad, but unfortunately the events are too unbelievable for me.

No rain

The Photo Friday theme for 15th December (yeah, almost two weeks ago) was rain.

As luck would have it, it didn't rain AT ALL that week. Until the early morning of the following Friday, when there were a few raindrops. So I guess these raindrops will have to do.

This is posted so late because I had a hard time deciding whch photo to use. When there was no rain I even took a photo of my bathroom shower (it is called paip hujan after all...) But none of the photos turned out that well...so it was difficult to choose!

Eating off the table

We went to try the not-so-recent trend of shellout at Fizzy Cafe. It cost RM75 for a set for 3 people. Similar to what is mentioned on this blog, it came with a plate of lala, a plate of kepah, and a bucket of crab and prawns (each had been stir-fried in different sauces). There were three large prawns and six pieces of half-crabs. Then they scattered three pieces of broccoli, two slices of corn, and some purple cabbage on top.

Everything is placed on the table (a clean sheet of paper is draped over it first), including the rice. I don't know who came up with this idea, but it is rather genius, to save washing dishes. :P

Here is my father endorsing the shellout.

We also ordered their sotong goreng tepung, which was quite good, but nothing to shout about. And WW who doesn't eat seafood and thus had nothing to eat in a shellout, ordered nasi goreng ayam (again, good but nothing special).

Something else that was special at Fizzy Cafe was their soursop juice. It is fresh fruit juice, at RM3.50 a glass. It was pretty good... but quite unlike usual fruit juice (probably due to soursop not being like usual fruits?)

There's a funny story about the soursop juice... I was saying I wanted to order it, saying "jus durian belanda". WW said, it's hard (as in the opposite of soft). We looked at him, puzzled... and he said, turkey, right? We said, it's durian belanda, not ayam belanda... (because durian belanda is soursop and ayam belanda is turkey)

After the drink arrived, he tried it and said, "I still prefer ayam belanda".

Protected vehicle

Last week's Photo Friday theme was vehicle.

I didn't really see any vehicle of note, but this was on my way to work.

So I have a photo of a vehicle, taken from a vehicle.

As luck would have it, I saw a "vehicle of note" yesterday, two days after the "deadline". However it might have been difficult to take a photo of it anyway. It was a roofless car, a little boxy. There were I think four foreigners (Westerners) sitting inside. Which is why it would have been difficult to take a photo... with people sitting there, I didn't dare.

Bee in love

Imagine... that you have brought in your dry laundry and are turning a shirt inside out to fold it.

Imagine... that you see a dark roundish blob on your shirt.

So you shake the shirt, trying to shake the blob off, but it sticks fast. So you take a closer look... and discover that it is an insect! That looks like a bee...and the wings' flapping sound like a bee's too.

So you shake the shirt harder, not wanting to touch the bee... but it won't leave!

After some thought, you take an umbrella and use its tip to golf the bee off. (more like putting instead of a golf swing :P )

The bee (assuming it is a bee) did not want to go away even after that treatment...

After that I swept it up into a dustpan (in which process it clung to my broom and I had to scrape it into the dustpan), took it outside and left it there, hoping it would leave instead of coming back.

Meanwhile, I shut the object of its desires into my wardrobe, so that it can't find it again even if it came back looking.

(I put these photos on Facebook, someone said it could be a bumblebee. Maybe. Not quite sure...)

Dhoby Ghaut seafood

Last night we went to Dhoby Ghaut Cafe, this time to have the rice instead of the noodles. I have posted about the food here before. Later on I mentioned that it had changed its name, but during this visit I suddenly saw the old name back.

We ordered some spicy stir-fried squid.

And some lemon steamed clams, but I think they mistakenly gave us garlic steamed clams instead, because it looked totally different from what we had previously. It was also a bit spicy, and had garlic slices in it. (we couldn't remember whether the lemon steamed clams had garlic)

When I was taking a photo of the dishes, I asked my mother, "Do you want to smile?", panning the camera to include her face for a photo. She said no, but I said, "Smile lah!" So she smiled.

If you noticed the two pairs of chopsticks in the photo, here's the story: A little boy brought us the squid dish, together with chopsticks (because most people eat noodles and order these as side dishes), then we asked him for a plate of rice. So he brought us a plate of rice with spoon and fork when bringing the second dish. However he didn't think of bringing an empty plate for the second person, so this is when he went back to get the extra plate and the change (for the money). After that we returned him the chopsticks.

Green tea cupcakes

Earlier on I had tried to make green tea bread by just adding some green tea powder to my usual bread recipe. The results were not very satisfying. The bread had a green tea taste (and a nice green colour), but somehow it didn't taste that special. After trying it out twice, I had a third of my green tea powder left, and decided to try something different.

An online search found me this green tea cake recipe. It is a rather small cake, in a loaf pan, so I made cupcakes with it instead.

The texture of the cake is really nice, soft and moist. The green tea taste was just nice too. However I didn't feel any "wow" factor :P Maybe I'm just not such a big fan of green tea... Next time I might try making this cake again with cocoa powder, since I'm not sure I want to buy green tea powder again.

Note to future self: For every portion of green tea powder, use an extra 50% of cocoa powder, as recommended by Tribute Tea. (although their recommendation is in the opposite direction, to pay tribute to tea!)

Farewell lunch at Arang

Yesterday we had a farewell lunch at Arang Coffee for Sheng Kai, our intern. I have posted about Arang before, and this time I was planning to try the squid ink seafood pasta, which I had seen people ordering when we were there.

I took photos of every dish we ordered, so here they are (in alphabetical order because this is how Blogger uploads them :P )

chicken parmigiana, RM21

double trouble, which is grilled chicken thigh with pasta, RM24

Hawaiian chicken croissant burger, RM23

mushroom aglio olio, RM21

seafood aglio olio, RM23

smoked duck quesadilla, RM19

Before leaving, we took a group photo at the entrance.

From myself to the right: Xing Ling, Hong Aun, Chin Eng, Sheng Kai (the guest of honour), Alex, Song Qiang, Kartig, Duan Yeong, Boon Beng (at the back), Iggy

Some Western dishes

A few days ago, we went to try Will Western Delight at Centrio Avenue (a flat at Bukit Gambir). It is open only for dinner, so we went on a weekday to avoid the crowd.

When we walked in, the waitress came to us and told us there was no lamb or beef that day. That made us hesitate a bit because we usually like to order those. However we went through the menu and found some other items that we could try (they had pork chops and also smoked duck). And when we wanted to order, we asked what they had in their mixed grill. It comes with chicken, fish, and either pork, beef, or lamb (all grilled). We said, but there's only pork today? However the waitress replied, for mixed grill, the lamb and beef pieces are smaller, so we have those.

That is how we ended up with a lamb mixed grill (RM25.50). (the beef option is RM1 cheaper, not sure about the pork option) We chose to have black pepper sauce.

The second dish we ordered was pork chops with garlic sauce (RM10.50). The strange thing is that plain pork chops cost RM10, with either garlic sauce or another sauce it was RM10.50, and with black pepper sauce or yet another sauce, it was RM11. I really wonder whether the RM10 pork chops would be really "au naturel"... just seasoned with salt and pepper maybe?

I liked the garlic sauce better than the black pepper sauce. The garlic sauce had garlic and herb taste, but the black pepper sauce didn't have enough black pepper taste, it seemed...

The last dish was smoked duck. It wasn't in the regular menu, only on the "today's special" board. It comes with spaghetti (bolognese, I think).

The photo above looks better as a whole, but the one below shows the duck meat more clearly.

The food was good in general, but nothing very special. The shop is very simple, which I guess helps keep the price down.

Blue twilight

This week's theme is twilight. It's hard for me to find the proper time to take a photo of twilight. One morning I woke up to this bluish sky, and quickly snapped a few photos before going back to sleep.

I think it was too early for the sky to have a red hue. The next morning, I woke up to a sky with a reddish tinge on the horizon, but this time it was too bright.

So which one looks more like twilight? I would still prefer the first photo...the second one is more like sunrise or daybreak.

Evergreen leaves

This week's theme is leaves.

I have this door hanger which I bought when moving in to this house. It is pretty, albeit a little on the expensive side. What I like about it (besides that it's pretty!) is that the door hook is longer.. which means that the clothes hooks are lower down and I can reach them easily!

Barang berharga

The other day, I received a phone call from a Poslaju delivery man. He said he was waiting outside my house with a parcel. I was expecting to receive a plastic container that I had redeemed from CIMB, so I told him to leave it at the guardhouse.

He refused, however, saying that it was a valuable item ("barang berharga", in his words). He said he would have to take the blame if the item went missing. Then he suggested leaving it with a neighbour, but somehow the neighbours weren't home either.

He asked me when I would be back, and I told him not for another half hour, at least. He told me to call him back when I got home. Half an hour later, as I was on my way home, he called me again, asking me where I was. When he heard that I wasn't reaching yet, he said he couldn't wait any more, and had to leave first.

After he left, he texted me the parcel tracking number.

When I got home, there was no delivery slip in the mailbox. Was that why he sent me a text message instead? Had he run out of delivery slips?

Anyway, I went to the Lebuh Victoria Poslaju office to collect my parcel. It was the plastic container as I had expected.

It's a nice one, actually... with three removable compartments inside that you can take out if you want to use it as a single storage. When I chose to redeem it, I knew that it was this kind of container, but didn't know about the compartments inside. Maybe this can help me pack my lunch better. Plus it's microwaveable! (except the lid)

It's snowing!

There are snowflakes... indoors.

As you might have guessed, these are Christmas decorations. It's in the office; I arrived on Tuesday morning to see that someone had brought out the Christmas decorations and placed the snowflakes this way. Perfect for this week's theme, which is weather.

Mir's Kitchen

Last week we went to Mir's Kitchen. I had gone there twice previously, and was basically pleased with the food.

The star dish is mee kuah tulang.

"Where's the tulang?" you might ask. If we move the tulang up, it looks a lot better!

Then there is their signature nasi pattaya, which comes with some paprik vegetables, cooked with either chicken or beef (they will ask you which one you want). We chose chicken because on that day, the other dishes that we ordered were all beef dishes.

On Fridays they also have nasi tomato, where we also get a choice of chicken or beef. This one is with beef.

We also tried their sup tulang, which is served with white rice.

Again, we can't see the tulang unless if we scoop it up:

The mee kuah tulang and the sup tulang had at least three pieces of beef each.

Then there is laici kang, which came with a load of ice, so my mother scooped some of the ice out (you can see some on the plate beneath the bowl).

Everything was good! I haven't tasted a bad dish here yet.

Soft hedgehog

This week's theme is soft.

Guess what it is?

It's Pickles!

You can see other photos of Pickles here and here.

Deserving understanding

Recently, a friend shared an article about Harvey Weinstein (the now infamous Hollywood producer - or was it director? - I'm not sure and I don't really care about getting it right), which detailed the lengths to which he went to investigate the actresses that he had harassed when they showed signs of wanting to speak up about it. I commented that I couldn't believe someone would go that far, to which my friend responded that these people are happy oppressing others, that they "get off on power". I replied, "These people don't deserve my understanding."

I recall, too, another time when someone shared a video about someone who got bullied so much by his schoolmates, was asked to kill himself, and eventually did. At that time, I said that I didn't understand these people who enjoy bullying others.

These are basically the same thing in the end, feeling happy when you see someone's misery caused by yourself. And it is something that I don't think deserves my understanding.

When some of my friends mention that they were bullied in school, I am always shocked. That is because I do not remember seeing any kind of bullying in my entire school life. Or maybe it did not happen to me, or in front of me. Or maybe it did happen to me, but I was not aware that it was bullying? One thing that my mother taught me from a very young age was to ignore those people who make me upset. Maybe some people did try to bully me. But at the lack of reaction, they probably stopped. Or they continued and I just didn't care. I don't know.

Anyway, whatever happened in the past, I see disturbing things in the present. At the workplace, among colleagues, I sometimes see exchanges that I feel are basically "someone trying to make another person upset for their viewing pleasure". In short, wouldn't that be called bullying? I guess it doesn't go so far though, because this is usually seen among people who are "friends" (supposedly). One example is when one person was trying his best to feed spoilers about a show to someone who had just started watching it. While the other person (the "victim") was covering his ears and trying to walk away. I really don't understand why someone would want to spoil a friend's viewing experience of a show. But back to what I was saying earlier, I guess I shouldn't even try to understand. Because people like these don't deserve my understanding.

What would be the difference between someone who tries their best to upset a friend to get a reaction out of them, and someone who bullies their schoolmate to get them to commit suicide? Isn't the difference just in the scale of their actions? Wouldn't that difference be comparable to, for example, the owner of a sundry shop and the owner of a chain-store empire?

(I don't think this post is written very well as an essay; let's just say it's a jumble of slightly connected thoughts and events, finally put down into writing.)

Bonda : a tasty find

Not long ago, a new nasi lemak kukus stall popped up on the roadside on my way to work. From the first time I saw it, I immediately felt that it looked really interesting.

I already planned to try it, but I decided to first ask a friend whether he knew about the stall, since he also took that road to work. But he said he hadn't been using that road lately... and knew nothing of the new stall. However he was interested to try it as well. So we found a day (and yet another person who wanted to try it), and I bought three packets of nasi lemak on my way to work, to have it for lunch.

Well, one person buying three packets of nasi lemak on their first visit... the guy there (it seemed to be a husband and wife venture; the wife scooped the rice, and the husband was calculating the price) was quite friendly and asked where I worked, etc.

Anyway, on that first visit I was actually surprised to see that they only scooped the rice for us, and then we chose our own dishes. There was quite a variety to choose from: fried chicken, rendang chicken, paru (lung), sotong (squid), sotong kering (cuttlefish), sambal kerang (cockles in sambal), prawns, fish (okay, all those with the exception of the chicken dishes are basically in some red sauce, either sambal or curry). There were also the usual nasi lemak sides: fried egg, cucumber slices, anchovies, peanuts, sambal. So it's like you can mix and match your own nasi lemak dish.

The first time, I took the safest option of chicken rendang, a fried egg, and some cucumber (plus some sambal) for my friends. I myself had paru (because it looked so tempting), the cuttlefish sambal, and some veggies with meat (they had a single veggie dish which consisted of stir-fried French beans and beef pieces. I actually thought the beef were pieces of chicken gizzard...). Each packet cost RM7.50.

The second time, I replaced the fried egg with anchovies and peanuts (to make it more like a nasi lemak set) for myself, because I wasn't that interested in having the egg. This one (below) cost RM7.

Actually those utensils are not mine... this photo was taken on my third visit there, when I bought this for a friend who saw me eat it the previous time. This time around I took the paru and the sotong, and cucumber. The price was RM9. The paru was good (which I knew from my first visit), but the sotong was normal.

Basically all the dishes that I've tried taste good, but the best dish is probably the rendang, and then the paru (for those who dare to eat it!) The price is not really murah (cheap) as advertised, but I feel that with the quality, it can't be considered expensive. Worth it! Not something to eat every single day, however, for the price and the lemak's effect on your health!

I marked the stall's location on a map to show my friends. So why not post it here too?

When time went still

When a clock is swept off a table to the floor, all that remains is stillness.

I really broke this alarm clock a few months back. I wasn't using it as an alarm clock, but as a table clock in my bedroom. One day after picking it up (to look at the time or something, I think I was sick at the time), I neglected to replace it properly in the corner of my dressing table. Why the corner? Because my dressing table has a mirror that opens out to reveal a shelf (what lousy design!), and only in that corner, I could open the shelf without pushing the clock off the table.

As mentioned, I didn't put it right back into the corner... and therefore the clock got smashed to the floor the next time I opened the shelf. :'(

I am really sad about it because I liked that clock a lot. I found another similar one, but it was the colourful type (there's a lot of those being sold all over the place). The only good thing to come out of this is that my table clock has a light again. (That button on the top right is supposed to turn on the light, but it has been broken for ages.)

By the way, you can see in the photo that the fluorescent bit even came off one of the clock hands. That was how hard it fell...and at least one of the hands is bent, which is probably one of the reasons it can't work any more!

Note: The scene in the photo is staged. But I do believe that the battery fell off at that time too!

The cafeteria avoidance plan

Recently I have been trying to avoid eating in the office cafeteria. The food there has never been very good, but eating there allows me to avoid the hassle of going outside. But nowadays the price has been going up, so I am now trying to plan leftovers when I cook during the weekends, to be able to bring them to office for lunch. Besides that, I also try to buy something on my way to work in the morning that I can have for lunch later.

All this while I have not brought sandwiches, even though I have brought some of my homemade bread to go with roast chicken, for example. This is because sandwiches can get soggy if I prepare them beforehand.

To get around the problem of sogginess, I have toyed around with the idea of bringing the sandwich ingredients in separate containers, but I have not done it till today.

The colours look so good! :D

Previously, the largest number of boxes I have brought for my lunch was three. One for my roast chicken, in a microwaveable container to reheat. Another one for my bread, and yet another for my salad (usually iceberg lettuce or cucumber and maybe tomato).

For sandwiches, I guessed I would need three boxes too...but then I felt that the ham (it's actually chicken slices, "gourmet" ones, the package says...lol) wouldn't be enough for a carnivorous eater like me, so I scrambled some eggs yesterday too. The ham was grilled in a pan without adding any oil. The eggs, with a little bit of olive oil, because I wasn't quite sure they would work without any oil. Both of these "meats" are in microwaveable containers to be reheated (just slightly, so that they're not cold) right before assembling the sandwiches. The veggies, on the other hand, were sliced in the morning to be fresh!

And not forgetting the bread... I made wholemeal bread, with some Yogood muesli (gourmet muesli! I'm such a gourmet, haha) added in. Actually I had bought the muesli to be eaten with milk for breakfast, like cornflakes, but I didn't like the texture. However it seems better in bread. The muesli contains some raisins and macadamia nuts (tiny tiny pieces) too. Since I have learned the hard way that adding dry fruits to my bread can dry the bread out, nowadays I soak the fruits in water before I add them to the bread. This time round, I also added some water to the initial bread recipe, and the bread turned out super soft. This might also be why the bread shrunk into itself immediately after it was done (seriously, I could see the sides shrinking from the sides of the bread pan!), but with that texture, I'm not complaining.

The jelly-like thing, again!

To add on to the previous post about the strange plant jelly, here are some photos to show what it looks like in my white fungus soup.

My white fungus soup already did not have that much water to begin with, and after adding the jelly, I don't think it can be called a soup any more! But it still tastes good... though it is now a practically solid dessert instead of a drink.

A strange jelly

Several months ago, the Chinese herb seller (I don't know what else to call him) at the market sold me this jelly-like thing. I still haven't figured out exactly what it is, but he told me that it is plant-based, and recently I saw a packet of the same thing with "precious plant tonic" written on it. (The first time he introduced me to it, the packaging only had Chinese words on it.) But I couldn't find anything about it online.

One small packet cost RM12:

A big packet (with actual packaging) was sold at RM50 for five times this amount, if not mistaken.

The seller told me to soak the jelly in water so that it would expand. He said I could just eat it like that, or use it in desserts.

It turned out that I had to soak the jelly a long long time before it would expand properly (and not even fully... there was always still a slightly harder centre, even after soaking it overnight).

After straining the jelly, I got something like this:

It was totally tasteless (the seller did tell me that), so I tried cooking it with some honeycomb sugar that I had on hand. The result is a sweet tasty dessert (though nothing to shout about).

I also put it in a red date and longan dessert soup (I made a little just for the purpose of trying out this jelly). I scooped just a little bit of the soup into a bowl so that we can see the jelly bits better.

I guess it's nice to have some jelly in the dessert soup. But it's not something that I cannot live without! I still have a lot of the jelly cubes left, and I don't know when I will finish using them, but I guess I won't be buying any again.