Used gel and new gel

Previously I wrote about a pair of gel insoles that I had bought.

Early last month, they were finally at the end of their (not very long) life.

after 7 months of usage

Verdict? It worked but it doesn't seem to last long enough... However, my shoes' original inner soles came off some time ago, so maybe that contributed to the wear and tear.

After that, I bought a pair of Asics shoes, which have gel at the ball of the foot. They seem to be working very well for now, and I don't even need cushioned socks with them. (I needed cushioned socks with the gel insoles.) These shoes cost me a bit over RM200, so I sure hope they last!

Hopefully

Some time ago, I read Jeffrey Deaver's The Skin Collector. It features Lincoln Rhyme, a detective who happens to be a real stickler for grammar rules. As evidenced by this piece of text:

Basically I just learnt from this book that "hopefully" literally means "filled with hope". Never really thought about that before...

As for the storyline, it's pretty good. But somehow it's not as enjoyable as some other books are, I'm not sure why...maybe the writing style? And the characters aren't that likeable either.

A belated sharing of cute things

I realized that I have a few Pikachu photos from last year that I don't seem to have posted.

A friend went to Japan last year and brought this back for me!

Thank you so much, Faizal! :D

And once when we went to Technocenter (the building opposite Innoplex where Motorola rents some offices) to take a look at the new ping pong table location (an awfully small room, by the way), I saw these at a cubicle!

I love the one on the left! If I ever see it I need to buy one!

Beside those (I believe it was at the cubicle to its right) were two squirrels!

It's a pity I usually never go there, since it's not my office...

Superhero catch-up

Recently I’ve been “catching up” on the Avengers movies. Previously I had caught the first Avengers at the cinema (can't remember why I went), and enjoyed it. Then some time ago I saw the first Captain America movie (The First Avenger) when it showed on TV. I enjoyed it as well. However, I just didn’t specially try to watch the other movies.

That left me with two Captain America movies and two Avengers movies. (Let’s not talk about the other heroes) I watched those in order, so first, Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

Warning: SPOILERS AHEAD

I liked The Winter Soldier. The storyline was good, with the reappearance of Steve Roger's best friend. (awesome, so no one dies? lol)

Second, Avengers: Age of Ultron

This was not bad either, it followed closely behind The Winter Soldier and the story continued very well (although basically all the trouble was due to Tony Stark’s stupidity :P )

Third, Captain America: Civil War

This one had me groaning over the appearance of too many superheroes. And the plot was a little too far-fetched...the bad guy wanted to pit them against each other, but the other events that happened around them just seemed to conveniently help out the bad guy’s plan, and the bad guy seemed to be just counting on that. He didn’t seem to work hard enough to make things go his way, if you get what I mean. He just got lucky that it worked. More concretely, he wanted to get Captain America and Iron Man in the same place so that he could show Iron Man that Captain America's best friend killed his parents. So Iron Man would try to kill the Winter Soldier (aka Captain America's best friend) and Captain America would fight Iron Man to stop him. But the fact that only these three were there in the first place was highly unplanned. There could easily have been one less, one more, or a different person there, then how would the plan work?

Fourth, Avengers: Infinity War

This one had quite an okay storyline, with the focus being on the bad guy trying to gather all the infinity stones. But again, too many superheroes, I got really tired of keeping track (maybe because I didn’t follow the other movies?) But the worst part of the movie was not the storyline...it was the appearance of Steve Rogers aka Captain America. When he appeared, I couldn’t even recognize him! I was wondering who that was. He got himself a beard and a longer slicked-back hairstyle. Where did my handsome Steve Rogers go... :’O

Luckily (in a way) he was not the main focus of the movie, so we didn’t see him that many times. Because every time we saw him, I was mourning...

There was another part which was silly and didn't make sense. Doctor Strange was guarding one of the infinity stones, and at the beginning of the movie he warned Tony Stark that he wouldn't hesitate to sacrifice any of the other people before the stone. But in the end, he offered the stone to the bad guy to save Tony Stark, making the bad guy stronger in the process. Er... where did your righteous responsibility go?

There is a last Avengers movie coming, called Endgame. I guess they had to announce it together with Infinity War because in Infinity War, the bad guy wins, and we know we can't have that...

Gender-specific socks?

The other day I bought a set of grey socks. Before that my father had bought a similar set of white socks, which we shared (it was basically free size, 4-8). But this time I saw that the grey socks were labeled as women's socks. On another rack was the same set that we had bought previously (white with blue/red/green pattern), and those were labeled as men's socks. But both kinds were sized 4 to 8...which makes them exactly the same except for the colour and the label (as far as I could see).

white socks from previously-bought set, and the newly-bought grey socks

Usually men's socks would be available in a size range that is bigger than women's ones, so I was curious why they would label the socks as such. A thought occured to me that men might prefer white with bold colours while women might prefer grey with soft colours. (though that purple is not very soft) I certainly prefer the grey ones myself!

So I asked my friends on Facebook which colours looked better. Of all the people who replied, everyone preferred the grey socks, whether they were male or female. So...sorry guys, the manufacturers seem to want to give you the less good-looking socks. :P

Félicitations mes petits!

In my previous post I mentioned a parcel sitting in the middle of my porch.

The contents said "2 plush", which explains why the postman was comfortable throwing it into the driveway. And the rubber band was actually holding a local letter (see the white envelope?) to the parcel.

Upon opening the parcel, there was a card, with a Mi Box box...

...which contained 2 plush! ♥

Actually, a shower of hearts fell out when I was opening the box. There were a few hearts left in the bag with the wedding bears, so I guess they fell out of there. That is why you see red hearts around in the photos...

And since the parcel is from the same people who sent me Duffy, and Duffy loves hugs, here we go again!

Félicitations, mes petits!
("Congratulations, my little ones!" Because they are little to Duffy... :P )

Good salesman

On Saturday I got door visors installed for my Myvi. I actually didn't even know that the covers above the car windows were called door visors, until I needed them :P

The original price at Perodua was RM150, while this cost RM78.

'Twas a real sunny day; I had wanted to get it done earlier but either I was busy or it was raining.

The guy at the shop tried to sell me a number of other things (in roughly this order):

1. Something that would allow stepping on the brake to trigger door lock.

2. Tinting
When he saw that my car windows weren’t tinted, he asked, “You don’t want to do tinting?” I’m not sure whether he does general tinting for the whole car as well, but he just asked me whether I wanted to add a piece of tint on the top part of the windshield. When I asked, he said that it cost only RM20.

3. Armrest with storage space
I was confused about what this was, so he brought it out to show me. Turns out that it is a hollow box to be fitted on top of the hand-brake, with a box mounted on top of the hollow space, and the top of that box is a cushioned armrest that can be opened up to store items. I have seen cars with it before; I just never knew that it was simply placed on top of the hand-brake, no extra installation required. This one cost RM48. Having an extra storage space is good (though I'm not sure I would be willing to pay that price), but covering all but the handle of the hand-brake (and half of the handle too, when the hand-brake is pulled up) is not something that I like.

4. Carpets
I only have the original carpets from Perodua. He said that these carpets easily get dirty when there is rain (I believe him, it's happened before). But I'm not sure I want heavy carpets that are hard to take out of the car to clean. Anyway, I passed for now. (as I did everything else he recommended :P )

After getting the door visors, I came home to see a parcel on my porch. It was right in the middle, so I had to get out of my car to move it before I could drive in.

This photo was taken after the parcel was safely rescued into the house.

But the story of the parcel will be in another post!

Who makes rules for fun?

I read a novel in English from the 1950's and the language is pretty much the same as modern novels, with exactly the same spelling. Whereas the Malay language has had different grammar and spelling from my parents' time to my time, and they still want to change it for the children now. Do you have too much time on your hands, DBP? -_-

(The rant against DBP was already in my head some time ago when I read about them updating some grammar/spelling rules. Today I am reading a compilation of novels from the 1950's, and this thought resurfaced.)

Group hug!

Just for fun. One day they just happened to be sitting this way, and I took a photo.

Freedom of choice

You step into a shoe shop. You notice a pair of boots, and pick them up for a look. Then you suddenly notice a label on it: "For sale to Russians only". You ask for the store manager and complain, "How can you limit this item to Russians? What if locals want to buy this too?"

The manager replies, "You wouldn’t want to buy it anyway, why are you complaining?"

(If you happen to be Russian, please replace "Russians" with "Africans".)

Now replace
"a shoe shop" with "your workplace"
"a pair of boots" with "a few colleagues"
"pick it up for a look" with "join them".

Replace the label with the colleagues speaking a language that you are not familiar with. Imagine that when you ask them to not continually do so, they say, "You wouldn't want to join this discussion anyway, why are you complaining?"

This store manager’s response is akin to saying "We speak Mandarin because you don’t want to join our discussion anyway."

This is a common response that I hear when I ask people to speak in a common language that everyone can understand. They tend to justify their actions by claiming that they know what others want. But how do you justify taking away someone's freedom of choice? If you are the one deciding, it means that you are actually not allowing the person to join your conversation. It is not that person who decides that they do not want to join your conversation.

There is a huge difference between blocking someone from entering, and leaving an open door so that they can enter if they wish.

New year, new home

Psst... we actually wanted to show off our Pikachu and Umbreon t-shirts, but Umbreon didn't show up right (I guess Dark Pokemon like to hide :P )

Like our new home? It even has a fireplace with teddy bears on the mantelpiece! :D

Well, not really. In my previous post I mentioned that I had taken a lot of Christmassy photos last year. These were the decorations in Gurney Paragon.

There were floating teddies! ♥

(Who cares about the wrapped gifts? :P )

There was also a stage with a giant teddy (looks more like a mouse, I don't like this one so much) on it.

There were a number of Christmas trees around the stage. And they have teddies as decorations! ♥

Behind the tree you can see a little room (with three walls and the fourth side left open). This is how they decorated the room:

On the other side of the stage (the room above was on the left of the stage), they had another room with furniture inside (well, technically just an armchair), which we took photos in.

Those two cubes/stools were empty cubes... I thought they were sturdy enough to sit on but they weren't. So in the photo at the beginning of the post, I was actually holding on to the armchair to sit upright.

And the teddies were stuck to the mantelpiece. (poor things!) I guess they thought ahead and decided to thwart any kidnapping attempt. :P

Christmas with Santa

The photo theme from two weeks ago was Christmas. The theme ran for two weeks, which is why I am only posting this now.

I took so many Christmassy photos that it's hard to choose which one to use for Photo Friday, but in the end I decided to use the first photo that I got.

a Christmas gift, complete with mistletoe!

I received this gift from Angelene, who had handpacked some hand moisturiser and shower cream in it. One of the hand moisturiser tubes had Rudolph on it!

Rudolph with Rudolph hand cream :P

This year we also had Santa visiting the office. The four of us in the Tetra "Fun Place to Work" committee organized it with our Santa volunteer (I won't say who!)

Santa was really having a hard time under the hot Malaysian sun

an exhausted Santa taking a break

group photo with Santa!
From left: Winter, Angelene, Josie, and myself (I don't have to tell you which one's Santa, do I?)

The leaning tower of burger

After our visit to the park in Batu Kawan, we went all the way north to BKE Corner for dinner.

The first dish that arrived was chicken chop cheese.

chicken chop cheese, RM14

Unfortunately it was cold (room temperature cold). They had big banners telling customers to ask them to change the dish if it was served cold (saying "your satisfaction is our priority"), so we requested to change it. The waitress asked us, "mau tukar?" when we told her it was cold. But the dish came back with the same piece of chicken reheated (the photo below) with extra fries and doused with extra sauce and cheese. (we knew it was the same piece of chicken because we could see the area where we had cut off a bite to eat earlier)

We think that they scraped off the sauce to reheat the chicken, then added more sauce and more cheese after that. It felt too much after a few bites (except for the cheese-and-cold-food-loving Snorlax). Plus the chicken cooled down almost immediately. It would have been better if we hadn't asked for a change. 

The lamb arrived while we were waiting for the chicken chop to come back.

lamb grill, RM19

There is mashed potato and some vegetables (broccoli and cauliflower) under the pieces of lamb.

Last to arrive was the tower burger, their signature dish. It was already toppling down when it arrived...

the leaning tower of burger

...so Snorlax held it straight for me for a second photo.

tower burger, RM25

We separated out the burger patties to make it easier to eat. Inside the burger (just below the top bun) there were two more sticks to keep the burger together. There were three different patties. From top to bottom, there was: minced beef patty, ham (I think it was beef ham), grilled chicken, and chicken chop (the deep fried one). It was really cheesy (as you can see from the photo), too much for all of us except Snorlax.

The beef patty did not taste that good; the best patty was the grilled chicken. The slice of ham was good too.

The lamb tasted the best of the three dishes (to those of us who eat lamb), but it was also not served hot. Basically all the dishes were served cold. We didn't quite understand why, because the place was packed and we had to wait a long time for the dishes, so you would expect them to be freshly cooked.

Verdict? Not recommended except for the photo opportunity and cheap prices. Or if you don't mind cold food. Another thing is, it might be better to ask for "kuah asing" (sauce separated) so that it is easier to adjust our dose of sauce.

The tunnel of four seasons

Last Saturday we went to the Aspen Vision City Park in Batu Kawan. The place has become very popular lately, because of the lovely decorations in a tunnel covered in flowers.

We reached the park around dusk. Lots of cars were parked at the roadside.

there were two fountains

entrance to the archway

the spring family

I specially tried to snap a photo of this baby snowman...

...and its kite! See it?

a blooming Christmas tree

summer musicians

That's one sunny Christmas tree!

Between summer and autumn, we have a plateau with an actual Christmas tree.

the welcoming autumnal couple

This photo just looks so bright with all the autumn colours!

The couple has a penguin, though I have no idea why (or maybe it's a different kind of bird)

Baby snowmen and their presents!

with their parents looking on

exiting the tunnel

fountain spray!

I have difficulty deciding which one of the three photos above are the nicest.

Went close to the lake to snap this photo, and got doused by the fountain. But I think it's quite worth it, this is a lovely angle!

The wind chose to blow in my direction right at the moment when I wanted to snap a second photo (I was trying to get the full arch in). I backed away as fast as possible, but the wind was strong enough to blow the fountain spray all the way along the path that led out of the park. There was no escaping! Everyone who was standing on the path at the time moved away as fast as possible. We even saw some people carrying umbrellas.

Actually when we arrived at the park, we could already feel some "raindrops" from the fountain. But it was nothing like when the wind actually forced the water from the fountain directly in your direction.