Players in motion

We had the Penang Companies' Badminton Tournament (PCBT), or more commonly known as the FIZ tournament last week, from the 14th to 21st of January. It was actually the 2016 tournament... usually it is held at the end of the year, but this edition was delayed to 2017. Motorola had been in third place for three years in a row (since the first year I joined), but this year B.Braun joined with a relatively strong team, and managed to get second place! So Intel dropped to third place and(*Edit: Sorry, I must have heard the results wrongly that day) third place, kicking Motorola to the fourth. Quite a pity, because there were quite a few close matches that could have changed the ranking (I won't go into details here though).

Even though we got fourth place, we received a trophy (smaller than the third-place trophy), and medals. For the women's teams, all six teams received medals, with third to sixth placing receiving bronze medals (only the engraved words were different). So it looks like I have four bronze medals!

Even though the first three are for third place, and the fourth is for fourth (heh, let's just hope the fifth won't be for fifth!)

Anyway, this week's Photo Friday theme is motion. There is definitely a lot of motion at a badminton game... so I brought my camera with hopes of capturing a good moment. I used the night setting on my camera... not sure whether I can get long exposure by tweaking the settings alone, but I didn't bother myself finding out. The night scenery setting would definitely have slow shutter speed, and I wanted that so that the figures would be blurred and convey that they were actually in motion.

If you take a good look at the PCBT poster at the back, you will see that the shuttlecock is a plastic one. When I first saw that poster (in an e-mail to the team), my first thought was, why did they use a plastic shuttlecock? Then I saw the head of the shuttlecock and I thought, why did they use an old one? (you can see that the head is blackened) Why didn't they use a brand new feather shuttlecock?

And that, is the unsolved mystery for this post.

The silent bunch

This week's Photo Friday theme is silence.

I thought for quite a bit about what to take a photo of. An image is always silent anyway... so how to convey that the situation is a silent one?

In the end I decided on this:

I switched on the television and flipped through the channels to find a good image. It was just before eight o'clock news... and two channels were showing cartoons. The Jungle Bunch was showing on ntv7, and on tv9 Upin and Ipin was showing. I went with The Jungle Bunch, because Upin and Ipin were doing some weird costumed dance that I didn't like. :P

Words of winter

Recently I finished reading The Tenth Circle by Jodi Picoult. It was quite good, but somehow it was easier to guess what could have happened. Not the best of her works, I guess... or could I have read too many of them? (I've shared a passage from one of her books before too)

This book is set in winter, with a character who grew up in Alaska, where the native people are called the Yupiit and speak the Yup'ik language. In this page of the book, he is thinking about winter.

This week's theme of winter came just as I was finishing up this book. After some thought about what I could take a photo of (thoughts that came to mind were winter decorations, my Eskimo bear, or my winter gloves or scarf), I decided to snap something more recent. After all, who knows if a similar theme might come up next winter and I might be forced to use those "stagnant" ideas?

Baking crispy chicken wings

Some time ago, I tried to bake crispy chicken wings in the oven. They didn't turn out too well... and last weekend I tried it out again.

This time I checked the recipe again, and looked at the video... turned out I may have used too little baking powder the last time. (and we can't use too much either it seems...) They say two tablespoons but their tablespoon seems huge! Anyway I measured it using a heaped tablespoon instead (the last time I considered it a flat tablespoon... there's a huge difference!), and got better results.

I used a dozen wings this time, so the tray was slightly overcrowded (four wings are smaller than the rest because they came from whole chickens that I had bought). I was too lazy to turn the tray halfway through, so the pieces at the back of the oven are slightly blackened, and the ones at the front a bit too light. I did consciously put the smaller pieces at the front, though...

A close-up to see the better pieces:

The ones in the middle were the best; I should really turn the tray next time.

I had also made baked broccoli and potato salad (I didn't need the potato salad, but WW did, or else he would have finished up all my wings), so here's a plate for presentation:

We had more on the side, of course :P

I kind of regretted making the broccoli, firstly because I had to bake it before the chicken, and it was all cold by the time the chicken was done (warming it up would have made the chicken cold instead... so I didn't bother) And secondly... I also made the honey garlic dip to go with the chicken. That gave us a bit too much garlic in one meal...

Lastly, I just want to show you how much oil dripped off the wings:

Pretty impressive...

A treasure trove of Malay dishes

This post has been in the works for a while... I first started taking photos for it in October last year, coincidentally the same date I posted my first Photo Friday post. I guess that was the time I brought my camera back into action.

Then I think I stopped going to eat at that place... I somehow forgot all about it! (how???) Then today I went again... and snapped the remaining photo needed for this post.

So, you might be wondering, what's this all about? It's about yummy food... at a place called Astaka Taman Tun Sardon. It seems that food courts are called astaka in Malay (not sure whether it's an official usage). Anyway, the place is a Malay food court, next to a market. It is open for breakfast.

It all started when I mentioned that I couldn't find good nasi lemak in Penang. A friend recommended a stall in Astaka Taman Tun Sardon (I'm going to shorten it to TTS from now on; that's what they do for the names of the stalls there too, and the first time I saw "TTS" I thought of my friend who has those initials and uses them regularly :P ). I tried out that stall but didn't like it so much...but instead I discovered the roti jala at this stall (it is hard to find roti jala too!)

We can choose to have either beef (cut into small slices) or chicken (in chunks together with the bone) with the roti jala. I have tried both, and I prefer the beef. The beef set (one set is four pieces of roti jala) cost RM5 last year, but today I saw that the price had increased to RM6. The chicken set was already at RM6 last year, and it hasn't changed.

The first time I bought the roti jala, the nasi lemak wasn't selling. They are actually using the same stall (you will see later), and I think it is a family business, because I saw two guys who looked like they were brothers, one working on the roti jala side and the other manning the nasi lemak side. Then one day, I was lining up for the roti jala and saw people taking their plates of nasi lemak, which looked very appetizing! The queues for roti jala and nasi lemak are separate, so I couldn't change my mind, but as it turned out, they had no roti jala that day. They also sell other dishes like lontong (also pretty good, but too filling for me) and soto ayam. They actually have a whole list of dishes, but some are never seen... So when they didn't have roti jala, I took the chance to try the nasi lemak (I think I was going to try lontong that day, together with roti jala for my mother, so in the end we tried the lontong and nasi lemak). They were nice enough not to ask me to queue in the nasi lemak line again...

The nasi lemak costs RM1.30 plain (with sambal). There are a few choices of dishes to add: egg (boiled or fried) for RM1, fried anchovies for RM1, sotong kering for RM2 (the price has just gone up to RM2.30), beef, and kelempong/paru (lung). (I can't remember the prices for these).

Anyway, I've tried all three of the side dishes (the "special" ones, not counting the egg and anchovies which we can find anywhere), and the best is the sotong. The beef is slightly hard, though it tastes good too. And the lung is too soft for my liking. I like the lung more chewy.

So today I queued up for half an hour for this!

There were actually not that many people in the queue when I arrived... maybe around seven? But some people must have ordered a lot, because their turn took ages... The person right before me was taking away at least seven packets of nasi lemak!

Well, after all that, here's a look at the stall:

The two queues are labeled at the top of the stall (quite easy to miss, actually); nasi lemak on the left, and the rest on the right. On the red board, they have some "goreng" stuff, mee udang and tokua (that is "tau kua" aka beancurd by the way) rendang, but I have never seen those at the stall. Nor wantan mee which is on the yellow signboard that indicates the queues. What I have seen, are the dishes I have mentioned above.

(Only the photo of nasi lemak was taken today; the others were taken back in October, the last time I went there.)

Someone stole my idea!

For the longest time, I have been saying that I wanted a Pikachu on my rear windshield, with its tail as my windshield wiper. Some time after that (quite some time), I started seeing a sniggering cat appearing on some cars, with its tail as the windshield wiper, exactly as I said I wanted my Pikachu to be. But it wasn't until today, when I went to Pisa Corner to buy my dinner, that I spotted a Pikachu instead!

But the Pikachu's tail is not right... they are still using the cat's tail. (looks like a tiger's tail here) I guess it is more difficult to make a zig-zaggy tail and put it on the straight windshield wiper...

There's even a Pokeball in the corner of the windshield! At first I was thinking they had it upside-down... then I realized that it could be seen as a Pokeball being thrown to capture the Pikachu! In that case, it looks pretty good :D

2016 in review

Well, did anyone notice that I didn't post a PhotoFriday last week? Probably not. I forgot about it myself. Anyway, the reason is because the last Photo Friday theme for 2016 is 2016 in review. And it is to run for two weeks (I guess the person in charge is on vacation?)

So here is a review of the past year, intentionally blurred for my privacy. I wouldn't want people to know exactly what I did last year, even if it was in the past... The colours are for public holidays.

I've been using the same kind of planner for a few years, and there's one ready for 2017. I hope every year end isn't going to bring the exact same theme... or else you might just get a similar picture!

Kill Me, Heal Me

I just finished watching Kill Me, Heal Me. I first saw the advertisement on TV and saw that it was about a man with multiple personality disorder (or dissociative identity disorder, aka DID, as it is called these days). I had first heard about the disorder when reading a novel by Sidney Sheldon (Tell Me Your Dreams). It was such a unique concept that it made a big impression on me. After that, I came across other articles about this mental disorder, so I have read quite a bit about it. So I was interested to see this drama and how they would draw out the story.

After watching it, what I can say is, the plot is good, and I really liked it. However, it is part-comedy, which makes it ridiculously silly at times, and gives a whole lot of plotholes! For example, when an alternate personality does something completely outrageous in public, how is it that no one hears about it? I think they decided to put a lot of silly comedy in the drama because the subject matter was really heavy, and it wouldn't appeal to such a wide audience otherwise. Unfortunately, to me that made the drama less good than it could have been. I would have preferred that they keep it more down-to-earth. The serious parts are really good, and I feel that some of the light-hearted comedy moments are okay, because they fit in with the characters' personalities and can be explained away properly in the plot. But some... well, like I said above, some parts are way too ridiculous.

Now, on to the songs. I watched this on Viki, and the subtitles included subtitles for the music. I think it was thanks to the subtitles that I ended up appreciating the songs more.

The main theme song is Auditory Hallucination by Jang Jae In featuring NaShow. One word kept coming to mind when the song came up in the drama: haunting. The rap part also suits the mood of the show, because there is a lot of anger buried in there... (told you the drama is heavy, and pretty dark...)

 

The second song that caught my attention (though it turns out to be the third song in the soundtrack) is Unspeakable Secret by Moon Myung Jin. Well, nothing surprising there, since the main character's illness is a secret... The lyrics are not that new (lots of songs say this), but of course, this is written for this drama so it suits the scenes well.



Here are the links if you want to get the lyrics in one page: Auditory Hallucination and Unspeakable Secret.


Conclusion? Well, I have written about Nine, my favourite Korean drama, before here. As comparisons go, I would say Nine is still better. If only they kept this drama serious instead of adding the ridiculous comedy... who knows, it might be a close fight between these two. Anyway, I enjoyed the journey with all of Ji Sung's personalities :)