The bird

Last night, while doing my laundry, I moved a pail and was startled to see a bird standing behind it. I opened the window and splashed some water across to it, hoping that it would fly out, but it just flapped and hopped about a little. Maybe it couldn't fly because its wings (and tail feathers) were wet. (Note: I only poured the water onto the floor so that it would flow to its feet, so maybe that made the tail wet, but certainly not the wings...)

After that it moved (walked) to a corner of my laundry area.

I didn't use the camera flash when taking this photo, because I was afraid of scaring the bird. Looking closely, the bird seemed to be panting or breathing heavily... its head and shoulders were moving slightly up and down (well, like panting, I guess). I tried to take a video but it turned out even darker than this photo.

Later on, I saw that the bird had gone to sleep. Head tucked under its wing, which makes it look like a headless bird.

Slight digression: I actually saw a bird sleeping perched on a window before, when I was on a trip back to Kuantan. I didn't understand at the time why the bird looked headless...it took me some thinking to figure it out. I took some photos and wanted to write about it, but never got around to it. In any case, this photo is better than those that I took in Kuantan, because that was through a mosquito netting.

Back to the bird in Penang: At that point I was just hoping that the bird would find its way out quickly the next morning, and not poop anywhere that I couldn't clean up easily. I was hoping it would do whatever toilet business it had to do before leaving my laundry area, instead of somewhere else in the house.

And in a way, it was kind enough to grant my wish. When I came downstairs the next morning (this morning), it was lying on its side. (Dead, I presume. I did not check for a pulse.) Before dying, it had pooped in my laundry area.

I'm not sure why it died... not sure whether something was wrong with it even before it came into the house. Or maybe it drank my laundry water, which couldn't have been good for its health. In any case, I couldn't bring myself to touch it, dead or alive, so I swept it up with a broom and dustpan and put it out into the back lane... back into "nature", I guess.

Rest in peace, bird.

Marbly water and its shadow

This week's theme is water.

So here's some marbly water gushing from the tap.

I think it was possible to get rid of the shadow (which came from the camera flash) by finding the exact angle where the flash would make the shadow fall right behind the tower of water. But... it was not worth the effort. :P

A clown with a spring

Spring is here... and with it comes the Photo Friday theme spring.

But there is not much difference between spring and other seasons in Malaysia, so I snapped a photo that I am sure is not what Photo Friday had in mind. :P

Ball at the end of a spring!

"Tainted" blood

I just found out that spending seven years in France automatically disqualifies me from donating blood in Malaysia.

Motorola was having a blood donation drive today. I have wanted to give blood for a long time, actually. In France there were often blood donation drives at INSA. But they were always at an "inconvenient" time, and I was too lazy to go and give it a try because my weight at the time fell below the minimum weight requirement (50kg). If it had been right after class, I would have gone to ask whether being slightly below the requirement could be accepted. But they were always on an afternoon where there was no class (makes sense, actually, to allow people to come).

I remember once having a heated argument with some friends because they were going to donate blood that afternoon and I said I wouldn't be coming out again after going home. I said it would be a waste of time if I came out all the way and then got told that I couldn't donate. Arnaud (see, it was so heated I remember exactly who were those harassing me) didn't listen to my whole sentence and he said, how could it be a waste of time when you are helping people? (and I think I stressed the second part of the sentence back at him) He simply refused to believe me when I said there was a minimum weight requirement. He insisted that there was no such requirement; anyone can donate blood! Another one there was Romain, who demanded me to "just say it if you have a fear of blood". I was furious because I was sure he wouldn't have said that to a guy. (And then when I met Arnaud again the next day, or a few days later, he told me, yes, there is a minimum weight requirement as I said. Well, it doesn't make up for you scolding me so much the other day, does it? -_- )

Anyway... coming back to Malaysia, I still didn't give blood because I never wanted to go out of my way to do it. Besides the weight requirement (which in Malaysia is 45kg, and I pass :P ), I also remembered a doctor telling me I had low "something". I can't remember what it was, but it has something to do with blood... I think it was either blood pressure or blood count. So I was reluctant to go out of my way just to be told I couldn't donate blood.

So finally today I went to "try" giving blood, pretty much ready to be told that I was anaemic and couldn't, but instead they told me my blood count was pretty good at 13.9g% (minimum requirement was 12.5g%). However there was one item in the questionnaire which was about whether we had spent five years or more in a European country from 1980 to now. Err... yes.

The person at the first table who was checking my blood type (O+, it turned out to be) stopped at that question and asked me how long I was there, and whether I ate beef there. He explained to me about something called the "variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD, the human form of the bovine condition sometimes known as ‘mad cow disease’)", a virus that can be dormant for 40 years (or something like that). Then he marked something on my paper and passed me on to the second station which was the doctor's station. Oh, and before that he asked me to weigh myself when I told him my weight was about 50kg. After weighing, I told him yes, it's 50kg (actually 49 or 50, but I don't think they needed to be that precise, right?), and he said, without shoes? Er... do I look that light to you...or that stupid that I would weigh myself with shoes on...

Anyway, the doctor took my blood pressure and stuff, but she also stopped short at the question about staying more than five years in France, and then she told me I couldn't donate blood. Ever. As long as it's in Malaysia. She asked me, I'll put you on the "not allowed" list, okay? (I've forgotten what that list is actually called; it had a better name than that) Okay, so I'm banned from something. Could that be considered an achievement?

By the way, I did some research online about this mad cow disease, and it seems that different countries have different requirements about it. Some say six months, some only restrict people who have travelled to the affected countries during a fixed period of time (instead of up till today). And some are like Malaysia... it's indefinite until they can screen blood for this virus.

It was lucky that I went down to the yoga room (where they were having the blood donation drive) early, so I was only the fifth person in queue to talk to the doctors. Imagine if I had queued for hours (there were more and more people later), and then told I couldn't donate... In the end I only took half an hour. I think all the people before me had given blood before (they had the blood donor's card/booklet). The third table, if I had passed the doctor's station, seemed to be where they updated the booklets, or gave you one if you were a new donor.

Well, no blood donor card for me :P (I'll have to be content with my organ donor card... I suppose they can't be picky about that) So I guess all I got from this "trip" was finding out my blood type and receiving a lifelong ban!

Green house

This morning when I looked out of my window, I was startled to see that the corner house across the road had turned green.

Well, not completely green, but mainly green. I must have missed the change last night because I came home after dark.

And since this week's Photo Friday theme is building, I thought it would be good to share this building.

Glutinous rice flour adventures (Episode 1)

Now this is one of those overdue posts. I had some glutinous rice flour that I didn't quite know how to use up. So I asked some friends and searched online... and found a few recipes.

The first one I decided to try was mochi cake. There are a few recipes, but this one seems the simplest, with ingredients that I usually have at hand.

I don't think my cake turned out right... I might have put too little flour. There was liquid butter all about the baking pan. :(

It was hard to cut because of the butter and the stickiness... I had to soak the excess butter away with paper, hence the paper you seein the picture below.

This is actually the last piece of paper (there's another layer of paper + mochi below it) just to take away the last bits of oiliness; the pieces of paper that were used when I got it right out of the pan were totally soaked (I used three pieces of A4 paper for that, I think). Tissue doesn't work because the stickiness makes the tissue tear.

Even though I think my resulting cake was not really a what I was trying to make, it was still pretty tasty, like a sweet sticky kuih. I let my friends try some (I stored it in the fridge after it cooled down), and they were all very pleased with it. I wonder whether I should try making the recipe correctly (I want to, but I don't know whether I will succeed because I don't know what I did wrong), or just try to make it with less butter and steam it next time... to have this same kuih but less oily.

Lifetime warranty

So I was telling my mother, Tupperware has a lifetime warranty. She said yes, but if they no longer have that product, they will replace it with something different that is currently in stock. I said, but at least the product will last long... She said, so long that when you replace it, they will no longer have the product you want. And I was like, why do you keep wanting to replace the product? I just want the product to last without needing to replace it!

I wonder, how do most people view a lifetime warranty? Do you just think it will last forever, or are you already thinking of how to claim your warranty when it breaks?

Allow me my weaknesses

It's been a long time, but today it happened again. Someone told me that I should learn Chinese.

Let me explain what happened to lead up to this. I am working on Ergo work for a while (even though I am actually in the Signaling team), and this work deals with man-machine interface, so we are manipulating what the user of the Motorola radios see on the screen. We received a report that a certain Chinese character (警) was not rendered properly on the screen (the bottom part was slightly truncated). After some investigation (by another member of the team), they found that they had to redraw the pixels of the character somehow.

While discussing this in a group, someone mentioned that I couldn't do this task. I agreed, yeah, I can't do this task! How would I know how to rearrange the pixels? And then she said, you should learn! Almost immediately, she said she was joking, probably because I started saying, Oh, I should learn?, preparing for a retort. Anyway, I turned whatever retort I had into a joke, because I don't think she was trying to be malicious.

But then again, why do Chinese-speaking people like to tell others that they should learn the language? It isn't just because I am Chinese; some others even told a Malay that he should learn, just because they often speak Chinese (Mandarin or Hokkien) around him. (I won't go into the "speaking languages that people don't understand" issue here, or else it might make a lengthy digression)

Sometimes I don't even feel angry immediately when I hear people telling me I should learn so-and-so, because I have gotten so used to hearing it. (and maybe it's partly psychological; these people always say it like you're in the wrong) But if I think about it, it is highly unreasonable. And rude.

For example, there are lots of people with lousy English around (I've probably also ranted about that before). Sometimes they write comments in code that mean nothing or are highly misleading, just because their English stinks. I usually try to soften the blow when I correct them, and just try to adjust the bare minimum so that their comment makes sense to future developers. There are also sentences in e-mails (official ones! Even those from managers!) that have glaring grammatical errors, wrong word usage, and so on... Of course, the worst are those mistakes that totally change the meaning of something. (like in my previous post about numbers) Sometimes I have to "decrypt" people's sentences just to make sure they mean what they say (since what they say could have a mistake that has changed it's meaning). I have become pretty adept at figuring out that someone is saying something, but that is not what they really want to say...

Anyway, all that to say that sometimes I have to bite back nasty words like "your English stinks". Like when I ask people to change their comments and they ask, "Why? It makes perfect sense to me." Like when I ask people something in a different way, using different words, just to clarify their meaning, and they get annoyed at why I'm asking the same thing again and again... whereas their first sentence was actually unclear or could be interpreted in a few ways, but they thought it could only mean one thing.

But I stop myself each time. I swallow back those words that will tell them "I wouldn't have to annoy you if your English were better!" "You should improve your English!" Because it's rude, even as a joke. Even if their English is lacking, they have other abilities, and I think I should respect that. So why are some people so rude and unable to respect others' abilities apart from understanding/speaking/reading/writing Chinese?

Do allow me my weaknesses, even if they are not the same as yours.

Numbers

I've been thinking of writing this for a while. But most of the time, I forgot about it by the time I had time to write.

A few years ago, while still working in IQ Group, I had a disagreement with a friend about numbers. I have forgotten the number, but it was probably 150 or 1500. Let's go with 1500. He said "one thousand five", which I interpreted as 1005 (one thousand and five). But he being Chinese-educated and highly confident, he scolded me and said that 1005 would be "one thousand oh oh five". -_-

I think after that incident, I interpreted numbers more carefully when they were spoken by Chinese. And I have been noticing in Motorola that people are also saying "one thousand five" when they mean 1500 (one thousand five hundred).

Curious, I searched online to see whether "one thousand five" is acceptable anywhere to refer to 1500. I found this post on Quora that gives you plenty of ways to say 1500, but none of them were "one thousand five". It seems that the most common are "one thousand five hundred" and "fifteen hundred".

I also found this website called CoolConversion.com which helps you convert numeral digits into words. (the link takes you to the conversion of 1500)

Answers.com also says that 1005 is "one thousand five".

And lastly, Google gives me these results:

I rest my case. :P

Sad-looking tomato rice

There is this Malay stall that sells breakfast, and I really like their nasi minyak. It is a pre-packed kind, and I find the taste really good, plus they don't skimp on the kuah (gravy). Last week I chose a new type of nasi lemak over the tried-and-tested nasi minyak. Today I wanted to go and get their nasi minyak, but unfortunately they didn't have it, so I took nasi tomato daging instead (my first time seeing it there too).

It was smaller, but it also cost less (RM1.30 versus RM2.50 for the nasi minyak, which is probably double the size). But in all other respects, it lost big time. Here is a photo of the whole (flat) packet:

And a special macro photo for this week's Photo Friday!

The second photo definitely looks better... because it allows you to imagine that there could be more around it. But sadly, the first photo shows all there is to it.

I should take a photo of the nasi minyak next time!

By the way, I really think that I can improve my English more when I write. Like when I was typing "skimp" above, I wondered whether I should use "skimp" or "scrimp". And I looked both words up online. When reading, I usually don't bother checking out the exact meanings of words if I can understand it from the context.

Crafting flowers

As a prequel to the previous post, let me tell you about our flower-making session!

Two weeks ago, the WBC (Women's Business Council) of Motorola organized an event. They often organize talks or events, and they send it out the the women's mailing list before sending it out to all employees, to give women a higher chance of participating (because places are limited). The event two weeks ago was "craft networking". I like handicrafts, so I registered, and it turned out we were making flowers from paper.

This is what we were taught to make:

Well, we didn't really learn to make all those. We were split into a few tables, and it kinda depends on who is teaching you... At my table, we all made the same kind of flower. We had two hours, and we ended up making two flowers each (although the target was three). I guess it was because we started slow... if we had already known how to make the flowers to begin with, I think we could have made three each in two hours.

Anyway, there was a target because the purpose of making these flowers was to decorate a wall at the entrance to the building on International Women's Day (hence the relation to the previous post). They planned to stick these flowers onto the wall (and they did... I just don't have a photo). Edit (9th March): And here's a photo taken by my friend:

Our "instructor" who taught us at our table, who also happens to be someone I have worked with a little, took a photo of me with my second flower (which was better than the first).

When I got home, I tried out a slightly different pattern... but with using less paper (didn't want to waste paper...) The flower below was made with one A4 paper (with a little to spare!)

For size comparison, this one used one A4 paper. The bigger one above used eight pieces!

For the big flowers, we used a piece of round cardboard (manila card) as the base and pasted the petals on it. There were already templates of the base and the petals for us to use for tracing, so we didn't have to worry about the size being wrong. But for my small flower (by the way, it fits nicely on the palm of my hand), I stuck the smallest petals together with scotch tape at the bottom, and gradually added the outer petals, also with scotch tape (at work, we used glue, and even elephant glue for the centre!). I also improved on the centre of the flower... because after I had made mine (the one I was holding in the photo above), I noticed that some other flowers (that they had made before our session) had a prettier centre.

I would like to make more of these... but I wouldn't know what to do with the flowers afterwards. :P

Be bold and raise your mug!

Today I received my first Motorola mug.

It was a gift for the female employees for International Women's Day. Two years ago we received a rose, and last year I think I wasn't around (I guess I was on leave) but they said they got a cupcake. So I guess they have improved... giving something that lasts instead!

They also said that male employees have been complaining that they get nothing each year, so they came up with the idea that those who wear pink or purple (male or female) would be able to purchase ice-cream at a discount. I wore purple, but didn't buy the ice-cream... for one, I didn't know how much the discount was, and there were a lot of people lining up! (they said it was only during lunch hour, 11am to 1pm) Later a friend told me that the discount was 50%.

By the way, I wish I had thought of this idea for the previous Photo Friday theme, which was reflection. It would have made a much better photo!

The recipe

I've got a bunch of stuff that I want to write about, but they are already late anyway, so let me start off with something that isn't late. Several months back, I saw a cooking show on TV, and they were making this dish. The show was a Taiwanese cooking show, using a mixture of Mandarin and Hokkien (their Hokkien) and with no subtitles (none that I could read, anyway), so I didn't really catch everything. I jotted down as much as I had caught, with a few guesses here and there, and decided to give it a try sometime.

That sometime turned out to be today. The ingredients were simple: pork, egg, black wood fungus (turns out that's what bok nee is called), and carrots. The bok nee and the carrots are julienned, and the pork is cut into small strips. Then here comes the part where I cannot be sure about all the ingredients, but let me just tell you what I used. The pork is mixed with soy sauce, pepper, a bit of beaten egg, and corn flour. Just a little egg is needed to coat the meat. A bit of corn flour water is added to the rest of the beaten egg, and the eggs are scrambled in a pan, then put aside. (I wonder whether it was some other flour instead of corn flour... but who knows.)

The vegetables are stir-fried in the pan, then the meat is added with some cooking wine, and sugar and salt (that's my guess... unless if there are some other white powders that we can add here!) When it is all cooked, the egg is added back in and mixed together.

And voilà!

The Shaoxing wine gives a pretty good flavour to the dish, and I expect that is what makes the difference. I guess coating the meat with egg helps somehow (makes the meat more tender, maybe?), but I didn't feel any difference in the egg after adding corn flour. Maybe it was the wrong flour...

By the way, there should be more egg in the dish, but I put a little less because I had some leftover egg from the previous meal. But then the amount of ingredients doesn't really matter...

Off a shelf

Last week's theme was reflection. It got me stumped... it was the kind of topic that was so easy and so hard at the same time. At the last minute (well, Thursday night), I happened to glance at the reflection of the television screen on my bookshelf... so I tried to frame it properly. So here it is!

Just a note: Triple Tap was showing on TV. I didn't watch it...

Malaysian short films

A few days ago, I saw an article that a friend shared on Facebook. It recommended eight short films made by Malaysians. After watching them, I didn't feel that all of them were that good, but here are my short opinions (no spoilers).

1. Kejar is good!

2. Pasport Ekspres is a part-touristic, part-comedy thing, but has its good moments as well. More scenery than story, though.

3. I've watched My Generasi before, but didn't like it much. More of a YouTube comedy than a short film.

4. Syiling is actually not bad, except that... the concept is plagiarized? But then it can be forgiven because it was made for Malaysia Day... Anyway, I still didn't like it that much because the "coin" concept didn't seem to fit the story.

5. Ah Boy is too far-fetched for my taste. Imagine a little boy being able to wear the shoes his father left behind...and that's only one of the examples.

6. Sebelah Sayap is good.

7. When? is not bad, but the message is kinda old.

8. Pejam Pelik was a bit boring, but it kinda got saved by the ending. I did not see that coming...