Late blooms

Last week the "sakura" of Penang was blooming all over the place. Last weekend, the blossoms had practically all dropped off the trees. However, spring has officially just started and they decided to give the theme of spring 2018 for this week's Photo Friday theme.

I could only find one tree which still had lot of flowers on its branches. However, it was still not as much as some of the other trees the week before! At least it was easy to find as it was just outside my office.

The building behind the tree is Innoplex. The construction items that you can see are there for the new multi-storey car park that they are building.

Costly congee

There has been a new congee stall at Pisa Corner. I'm never too interested in congee, but one day, while waiting for my satay, I was just looking around and had time to read the signboard of the stall. They had several types of congee, amongst which were salmon congee at RM10 (that's the expensive one), a trio-egg (salted egg, century egg, egg cracked over the congee with a whole egg yolk) with chicken, and double egg (salted egg and century egg) with roast pork at RM6. (I can't remember the price of the trio-egg, not sure whether it's the same as this last one that I bought)

So today I went to buy a pack. There were three youngsters running the stall. They are probably trying their hand at selling food for the first time...they were pretty slow in preparing the food. Maybe because they wanted to arrange everything nicely too. I was surprised to see that they put it in a take-away bowl instead of just in a plastic bag. I guess it is to keep the presentation. (At least they didn't charge for the bowl unlike Lao Mu Zi curry mee which charged me 20 sen for a takeaway box, in which they put the noodles, and then still used a plastic bag for the soup. -_- )

The presentation was not bad... but that is probably the best part. The taste is quite good, although not exceptional. The portion was rather small (I get at least one and a half of this at the chicken porridge stall in Relau for less than RM4), and there was so little salted egg and century egg. I couldn't find the century egg at first, then I realized that the greenish bits beside the salted egg is actually century egg, mashed up or something. Not sure whether they mixed it with something else, but I couldn't taste much century egg. (back to the aforementioned stall in Relau, the uncle gives half a salted egg or half a century egg, whichever I choose to add on to my chicken porridge. He chops it up quickly into pretty huge chunks.)

The congee here actually reminds me of the cheap lunch that was previously sold at the food court beside Pisa Corner, where they charge only RM2 for century egg porridge. They put less egg there too, minced up to be mixed more evenly with the porridge. But that is understandable because they only charge RM2.

So in the end, even though the taste is good, it's bad value for money, and I won't buy from Master Congee (that's their stall's name; they even have a Facebook page) again, unless if I see them put more egg in it at least!

A solo business

This week I present you a makcik selling breakfast (and maybe lunch?) by the roadside. Alone. Because this week's theme is alone.

For this theme, I decided to snap photos of people going about their business alone. Who would have though I would get a photo of an actual business?

This stall was on the opposite side of the road on my way to work. I was stopped at a traffic light, and just managed to zoom in for this shot between the cars beside me. That also means that I have never bought anything from this makcik, nor am I likely to buy anything from her in future!

'Tis the season...

The season of Malaysian sakura has arrived again, and the road to my office is again filled with pink petals, both on the trees and on the ground. However this morning I saw another kind of flower blooming in the park near the market. Lots of flowers have fallen to the ground too.

I picked an undamaged one to bring home:

I don't know what flower it is. When searching online for the name of the Malaysian sakura, they say it is called tecoma. When searching for tecoma, I actually find pictures of yellow flowers! However they look similar to the pink tecoma and not like this one. The petals of this flower are thicker, not as fine as those of the tecoma.

By the way, I found that this yellow flower has a pretty pleasant smell! Maybe I should have picked more and placed them in my car... maybe it could be a bit of an air freshener. (Or maybe it would stink instead. :P )

Ever heard of a bread slicer?

Some time ago, my mother complained that my bread slices were uneven. Different pieces have different thickness, and some slices are thin at one end and thick at the other. I let her try slicing the bread instead. She did worse. :P (actually my slices are getting better with practice)

Then one day we saw a bread slicer at Daiso. It can help you slice bread at different thicknesses.

You can see in the picture on the packet how it is used. The bread is pushed to the blocking plate, which is locked at a fixed distance from the "doorway", and you just need to keep your knife sticking to the "doorway" while slicing so that the slice has an even thickness. In the photo, my bread slicer is not assembled yet, so you can see the grooves that are used to lock the blocking plate in place.

It actually works quite well... except that the thinnest slice we can set it to is 15mm thick. That is still too thick for my liking. 15mm gives us 8 slices of bread, and I usually slice mine to 9 slices. That would make my slices around 13mm thick. It sounds like a small difference, but somehow when eating the bread there is really a big difference. So I am unable to use this...unless if I manage to find a board about 2mm thick to wedge between my bread and the blocking plate. As of now, I haven't found anything suitable yet.

Pony tales

Today we went to Pony Tale De Cafe at SPICE Arena for our manager's farewell lunch. There is a pony head on the facade, and on the wall inside, there is a world map painted on it with pictures of the pony (a cartoon pony) visiting different places.

Basically, the food was not cheap. And the portions were small. The presentation however, was pretty good. Here, you judge for yourself.

Chicken nasi lemak, RM25.80
The rice actually comes as a dome like the other plate of rice below; the dome on this plate had fallen apart!

Japanese grilled salmon with mushroom, RM35.80

lemongrass spice chicken with fried rice, RM25.80

mix mushroom spaghetti, RM22.80

spicy clam pasta, RM24.80

The five dishes above were in the set lunch menu. The set lunch comes with either soup or coffee/tea (the soup is purple cabbage soup and the tea is Thai tea) and dessert (a small piece of cake).

The two dishes below are à-la-carte.

Italian pollo valdotana, RM28

Tunisian baharat chicken, RM26

The two à-la-carte dishes and the salmon (basically, the Western-style dishes) came with the same side dishes. The Tunisian dish (that I ordered, actually) had mashed potato too, like the other two dishes, but it's quite hidden because they made it into a bed for the chicken.

The taste of the dishes was not bad, but like I said earlier, the portion is small. It looks even smaller because they use big plates!

Note: The dish names are from the list that my friend sent out for sharing calculations, presumably copied from the receipt. Where there are grammatical errors, I'm not sure whether they were typos from my friend or the official name from the receipt. In any case, I will keep the names as is, assuming that Pony Tale decided on those names!

Racquet tip

I am tidying up the miscellaneous photos that I've taken, posting all the little stuff that's not so important but that I wanted to post anyway. Hence the previous post. And now this one.

The last time I changed my racquet grip, my friend taught me to wrap the bare racquet handle with cellophane tape first. She said it would prevent the grip from sticking too tightly onto the wooden handle, making it hard to peel off.

I did that the last time, and now I'm changing my racquet grip again, the racquet handle looks great after I strip off the old grip.

Bye-bye sticky bits of grip on the racquet handle! :D

Things that make me happy at work

At work we are using Bitbucket for code reviews. We can upload a picture for our avatar. And then one day I suddenly saw that someone had updated their avatar! (this was back in December, by the way... I took the screenshots and then neglected to write about it)

Pikachu, Pikachu everywhere!

The secret garden (nighttime)

Finally I am continuing my previous post about the Avatar Secret Garden!

After walking over the whole garden in the daytime, we walked to Viva Food Court nearby to have our dinner. This was because we had already been charged RM5 for parking... we weren't going to drive out and back in to be charged another RM5!

It was just as well that we didn't drive out for dinner (monetary concern aside), because when we were walking out, we already saw more cars coming in (there weren't as many cars when we arrived earlier), and later when we walked back in after dinner, there were even more cars driving in.

The dinner was not exceptional, so I didn't take any photos. When we walked back through the entrance gate, we were asked to pay RM1 each. :O However when we said our car was parked inside and we had just walked out for dinner, they just waved us in. Hmm... seems like everyone can just say that to avoid paying?

At night, they light up everything at the garden, even the sandy area by the sea and its tower.

And the secret garden:

The tulips are lighted up at night! I had noticed that they were fake tulips (tulips don't grow in Malaysia) but I hadn't noticed that they had lights.

Even the chess set is lighted up. I couldn't get close enough to see how the lights were placed; as you can see, there were a lot of people there! On the left is the doorway to the chess set (that you can see in the earlier post), and through the doorway we can see the viewing tower (I didn't notice that it was framed so nicely until I was writing this post).

At long last, here are the hanging lights that everyone goes to see!

When I saw the lights from this angle (the photo above), I suddenly realized that there was really an Avatar there! However I'm not sure whether it was intentionally designed that way.

The lights change colour continuously, so I have lots of photos, some from the same angle but with different colours. I tried to select photos of different colours for this post.

From the area where the lights are, looking down to the temple (and car park) area, it's really quite pretty with the Chinese New Year decorations.

This is the area near the sea (just on the right is the tree with "coins") that I didn't find interesting enough to take a photo of in the daytime. However the lights make it look nice!

Did you notice that the blue-white lights are actually the frame of the swings?

When we wanted to drive out, but there was a queue for that too! We actually walked back to the lights again while waiting for the traffic to ease. The second time we attempted to leave (the queue was shorter by then), we heard the parking attendants calling out, "If you want to leave, it's now!" Turns out that after letting this batch of cars leave, they will let cars come in instead (the road in and out is very narrow). They were even using walkie-talkies to coordinate the traffic. It's a simple park converted into a little business (admission used to be free).

I hope these are natural

Last week's photo theme was nature. I didn't realize until today that the theme runs for two weeks. I was surprised that no new theme came in my e-mail yesterday.

Last weekend I was at E&O for a wedding dinner... and by the sea, there are some lovely rocks. I hope they are natural... but if they aren't, at least the sea is!

Egg distribution

Remember the hokkien mee that went away?

The aunty has been coming back once every few months. And she will open her stall for a few weeks when she is here.

Today she is back, so I bought my breakfast from her. She says she will be there tomorrow, but next week she can only open the stall if she finds a helper. During her last trip back, she had also said the same thing. Each time she finds either a friend or her daughter to help her at the stall.

In June last year, during one of her trips back here, I took some photos of her stall to help my friends recognize it:

The helper here is a friend of hers, the other regular helper besides her daughter.

She has a new helper today, and she was teaching the new helper how to distribute the slices of egg evenly: Take one end with the yolk and add another slice of egg white. Then the other end without yolk and add a slice with yolk. See, that's how you distribute egg! Not like some places where they sometimes give you two slices of egg white from the same end of the egg. :P

Don't touch my panda!

On TV they are showing Impossible Challenge. There is a challenge where ten pairs of parent and child are given a plush panda (furry ones!). Three of the pandas are exchanged with a foam panda and the blind contestants have to detect which ones are the foam pandas using echolocation. I tell ya, if I were one of them and the judge (Harlem Yu was the one tasked with choosing which pandas to exchange) had tried to exchange my panda, I would have said "noooo don't take my panda!!"

Famous faces

I pass this advertisement board on the way to work each morning. Previously they were advertising dimsum, which is some kind of video subscription I think (name certainly taken from the food called dimsum), and now it has been replaced with Astro's advertisement for their TVB channels.

This week's theme was faces, and I was still wondering what photo I could snap when my eyes fell upon this board. It is definitely a lucky find!

This week, there was another opportunity for a worthy photo. This is the first time I've seen a Happy Pocky Wagon! (the photo is dark because of the very very bright sunlight in front of us)

I wonder where it goes and what it does... does it sell Pocky or distribute them at parties?