Portal to a dream world

Is that a portal to a dream Christmas world?

This week's theme is dream. The other day we were at E&O for a team lunch (one in a long long while!) After eating, I was looking around, and spotted this nice reflection in a mirror close behind my seat. With the theme in mind, I snapped the Christmassy buffet scene framed by the mirror.

I previously wrote about our Captain Tetra. Sometime through the MCO, his shield got slowly vandalized, with first the colour printout disappearing, and then the plastic box cover that I was using as the shield as well :O But after that I guess most people have forgotten about him. I decided to take him to the lunch, and sent out a "mission" for people to find him and take a photo with him. A hint was given: He would be wearing his Captain's uniform. I hoped that the newcomers who had never heard of Captain Tetra would think that they needed to look for a person wearing a Captain's uniform! :P

The idea was to carry the bear around so that more people would notice it, so I took out my Milo bag (yeah the green one in the photo) for it to sit in, so that my hands could be kept free to take food even while carrying it around. I managed to enlist the help of two colleagues to carry it around too, one of whom is Pawan, which whom I took a photo with Captain Tetra too!

(We were given plastic gloves upon entering the buffet hall.)

I didn't realize it at that time, but another colleague took a photo of me at the dessert counter, carrying Captain Tetra. So this is what it looked like... :P

Love the caption that he added :P

Minimum purchase required

Something totally unexpected happened today.

I went to Sunshine for my booster shot, and then went on to buy some groceries at the supermarket (a number of shoppers were the ones I had seen in the vaccination centre... :P )

I selected a small carrot and brought it to the weighing counter. There seemed to be some problem...and then the person there told me to get a carrot that weighs at least 100g. It turns out that my carrot only weighed 70+ or 80+ grams (he told me, but I can't remember exactly), and somehow they couldn't weigh it properly (or they could weigh it but the machine refused to spit out the price?)

I never thought that there would be a minimum order needed! :P

Fire!

This week's photo theme was fire!

While trying to think of what kind of fire to take a photo of, I thought of this song that I had played a few times on Stepmania.

Turns out that there are a number of FIRE songs!

Two wrongs

Today the postman delivered two letters, stapled together. (A normal occurrence)

But the two letters were not meant for the same address. (Rare, but receiving a letter addressed to a neighbour has happened multiple times before.)

And neither address was mine! (A first time occurrence!)

One letter was for the neighbour two doors away, and the other was for someone on the next road.

Tsk tsk, what are the postmen doing? The one who prepared (stapled) it got it wrong, and the one who delivered it too!

Pat poh lemon

Another post about Ipoh food… just some from the Ipoh stadium that I want to save. In case I forget their names…because I forgot that the drink was called “pat poh lemon” and had to ask the seller what drink they had with lemon in it. :P

Here is the drink in question! (I had already drunk some, then decided to take a photo when I saw my friend taking a photo of hers)

The bean sprout chicken is from Yoon Kee, a stall that is said to be Michelle Yeoh’s favourite. This is the smallest set, and it cost RM17.

big mound of beansprouts

My friend ordered this rojak-like thing from another stall. I don’t know what it’s called, but those things you see lining the edges of the plate is deep-fried tau-pok (the tau pok is turned inside out first, so it becomes like a small plate)

The very next morning, we went there again (having run out of places to eat breakfast :P ). A lady asked us to sit near her drinks stall, which happens to be actually a soybean stall. We ordered the 3-in-1 (soy milk, soy curd, and tang yuan). I liked it, the tau hua was smooth. One of the tang yuan had black sesame filling, and the other had peanut filling. It costs RM4 per bowl, and the name of the stall is Duo Jia Zu Soya Bean House (I can look up the name and price because I paid using TNG e-wallet :P )

Can't see the tang yuan, huh? I assure you they're there!

It was actually quite a good choice to order this for our drink, because it took ages to get our food, and this kept us from feeling too hungry. We ordered a bowl of fish noodles from Fai Kee (RM11, but I don’t know what noodles it was because my friend is the one who placed the order), and a roti canai (RM1.20) from Fuad roti canai, which is pretty famous. I wanted to order another roti canai which I remember being nice and crispy, but I think it was closed. Looking at the stalls that were closed that day, I am guessing that the stall’s name is “James”, but I can’t be sure till I see it open again!

The roti canai stall told us that we had to wait 20 minutes and then go and get it (it was at the halal section, while we sat at the non-halal section). We had ordered the fish noodles before we went to order the roti canai, but it was only after we had brought our roti canai back to the table that the fish noodles arrived!

The roti canai was pretty good, quite crispy too. I didn't go "wow" like I did the other one though...I still want to go back and have that one next time :P

The fish noodles are okay, in my opinion. Not bad, but I wouldn't rave over it.

A very interesting cafe

When in Ipoh, I finally managed to meet up with Win Nie after many years!

Doris didn’t know her (yet), but tagged along for the meal.

Win Nie took us to Chapter 6 Cafe, which is a very special cafe, as you will see ;)

There were teddy bears for a Christmas decoration.

Note the Doraemon on the mini-guitar!

sour mix (not mine) and matcha latte (mine)

spicy citronella chicken chop (mine)

big brunch (not mine)

For a meet-up, photos of people are important too!

After our food arrived, we could finally take a photo with our masks off.

That would have been the end of the post… but just before leaving the cafe, I requested to use the bathroom.

We couldn’t find it even after being given directions by the cashier, and finally an employee showed us where it was. (and opened the door for us, if I recall correctly)

See it yet? The doors slide to the left. It was no wonder we couldn't find it!

I still may not have taken a photo to post about it…but upon entering the restroom and closing the door, the first thing I did was to whip out my phone for a picture.

Because…

Where else would you see a restroom door like this? There are even instructions on how to lock the door, because otherwise anyone would have been stumped. (for a while at the very least!)

So when I went back out, I told my friends that I HAD to take a photo of the restroom doors from the outside. :P

Tong Sui Kai curry mee

Last month I went to Ipoh with Doris on a touristic trip. We visited no less than seven temples… but that is not for this post.

This post will be about food!

I had never properly eaten at Tong Sui Kai before, and this time we tried a few things. The only thing I liked was the curry mee.

My friend said that she said no to the pork skin and something else. I'm not sure how it would have looked like otherwise.

Additional ingredients picked out to go with with curry mee.

I never really liked this kind of chee cheong fun anyway. My friend liked it. I regret letting her choose between this and the curry chee cheong fun (there were five items on the menu, and these were the only two I felt I could eat); I should have chosen the curry one directly. But then maybe she would have found it hard to swallow… you’ll see why below below :P

The biscuit is too thick to be properly crispy, and the sotong kangkung is a bit…strange. It seems like the whole sauce is made with peanuts? And there are more peanuts sprinkled on top. I like peanuts (especially the sprinkled ones), but the creamy sauce is not for me… the same way I don’t really like creamy peanut butter, I guess. And the kangkung is all at the bottom.

So the only thing I would order again from these is the curry mee. However my friend didn’t like it…she says it was too spicy. (for her :P )

We have quite different tastes in this respect… we also went to Choong Kee for their yong tau foo. My family prefers Ah Peng’s yong tau foo (in the same area), but we didn’t go there because it’s only open till around noon, and we had other things to eat up to lunchtime :P So we went to Choong Kee for a late lunch/snack.

I asked for curry soup this time, since I didn’t recall that their soup (or yong tau foo, for that matter) tasted good. The curry soup was definitely better than the clear soup. And here my friend liked the curry, while I said that it was not spicy enough :P 

We had also gone to Moon de Moon earlier (where I didn’t take any photos because I had already done so before), and we ordered some of their fishball items. She disliked some of the fishballs because they were too bouncy (“kew”, or “Q”), while that is what we like about Ah Peng’s yong tau foo… So I think going to Choong Kee was a better choice for her! (and now I see why Choong Kee can be so famous :P )

Fear of the unknown

...inspired by this unknown green insect landing on my computer screen! 

I still don't know what it is, but I swatted it and threw it away. It could have lived if it tried to fly away (I wasn't going to chase after it), but it didn't.

Tortoises on a journey

This week's theme is journey.

Where are you guys journeying to? (yes, they were moving, which is why they're blurred in the photo)

When in Ipoh, we went to a few temples. In Sam Poh Tong, there was a tortoise pond in an enclosure. (with a lot more tortoises than these!)

Peeking into spaces

What do you see?

If you look closely, you can see not one, but two sacred praying altars! (Granted, the second one is facing away...)

Onion in low light

This week's theme was low light.

I had an onion that was starting to sprout, so I put it in water. It grew better than expected! (or maybe because I just haven't tried it with big onions before)

I actually tried snapping a photo from the top, but the leaves are all in disarray so I don't think it looks that good. :P And it's also less representative of low light.

Since I took these photos (almost a week ago when the theme came out), it has been partially harvested, then fully harvested when the bulb started rotting more and more.

People are stupid

Some time ago, I found this sharing on Facebook (it was on 20 October; I had to look for it again and saw the date I shared it). Here’s the link to the original photo that I saw on Facebook, but I don’t know whether it will be there forever, so I’m re-uploading the image here.

This actually made me recall something lots of people say to me. They tend to say, “Eat more, you are so thin” (liar, liar...but let’s let it go) or “Eat more, you are not fat” (I can better believe this one). But what they overlook is the fact that I am not fatter than I currently am, precisely because I don’t eat more than that! Idiots… *eye-roll*

The following is just a rough transcript of what’s in the image, because I had such a hard time finding it back since it was not typed -_- :

This person says they started using Head and Shoulders for their dandruff years ago, and one day they thought, "Why do I still use dandruff shampoo when I don't have dandruff any more?" And bam, the dandruff came back!

Then another person replies with a similar story, but a whole lot riskier: This person had a liver transplant and the doctor told them that they need to take anti-rejection medication for the rest of their life. He warned that they might be tempted to stop taking the medication if they feel fine, but if they do, their liver is going to start failing and they will need to look for another liver.

When asked why anyone would ever stop taking the medication, the doctor replied, "people are stupid".

Crooked imperfection

See it?

This week's theme was imperfection. I happened to go to the dentist...

Actually I think this crooked frame has been there for a few visits. :P

Toasted pop tarts

Months back, I wrote about finally trying pop tarts.

That was before I tried toasting them. Now that I have toasted them, here's an update.

Surprise! (or not) They taste better after toasting.

I'm not sure how people put them in pop-up toasters (or do they?) since the tarts are a lot slimmer than bread slices. I used an oven toaster.

I didn't flip them in the middle of toasting, because of the frosting. We can't really see much difference from the photos, but after toasting, the tarts are slightly browner, and most importantly, slightly crispy.

The filling is also more gooey (and warm).

Again, that's hard to see from the picture, so you'll just have to take my word for it. :P

So I'm toasting the rest of them.

Obsessions

The theme for this week is obsession.

I had a few ideas for this, and the first one (that I rejected) was taking a photo of multiple Pikachu. :P 

In the end, this one makes the best photo... books piled up high!

There's still too much empty space for it to look like an obsession...but I didn't feel like rearranging the books for a better "packed" look. :P

While I was at it, I took some photos of these butter rolls...it is a sort-of obsession as well...I can't even buy any other bread from this bakery any more, because every time I go there, I just want to have this.

See the buttery insides?

Some time ago I bought some similar rolls at the Aeon bakery (La Bohème), but even though they are also called butter rolls, they are a sham! The ingredient list doesn't have any butter in it either, only margarine. This one doesn't have any ingredients listed on the package, but the taste of butter is wonderful. :D

A new wallet

I just bought a wallet on Shopee. My old wallet was already old before the MCO started, and recently, after a long bout of disuse, it started flaking off when I picked it up to use.

Not wanting to go out and browse wallets in shops, I took to browsing online. It is really hard to find a wallet I like anyway...so imagine how many places I would need to go to before finding one that suits me!

My last wallet was bought at a stall in Prangin Mall (I don’t remember exactly which part, but I might recognize the area if I saw it again). They had several pretty designs. And I was pleasantly surprised to see that some pretty designs that I saw on Shopee was from the same brand!

I opted for this wallet because of the numerous card slots. That is usually what I need the most!

One thing I don’t like so much about this wallet, after receiving it, is that there are not two coin slots...the two sides are connected, so the coins can slip from one side to the other. I guess this is what allows it to have so many card slots, so I can’t really complain...it’s quite a fair trade-off. There is also a small risk of coins dropping out the ends of the wallet when the zipper is open...so I shall have to be a bit careful about that.

Here’s what the old wallet looks like now:

The inside still looks pretty new at first glance...but the outside is a whole different story! Blue flakes are in my handbag, and my hands sometimes get a few pieces on them too!

And by the way, from the last photo, you can see the brand name imprinted on the “leather”: Prettyzys. When I realized that was the brand I was looking at, I felt more reassured to buy from them, because I already knew how their wallets feel to the touch! Otherwise buying things online always have this risk that we may not like how the fabric feels when we receive it.

Dark forces of nature

The theme for this week was force of nature.

I was hoping to get a photo of heavy rain, hopefully buffeted by winds. But I didn't...instead, I saw some dark clouds moving in on a bright sky, and tried to snap that.

The dark clouds are actually on both sides of the photo. The contrast between light and dark is not as clear in the photo, but the colours still look pretty nice! (as long as we turn the brightness a little higher on our screens... :P )

Balancing a pen

Because this week's theme is balance.

Magic potion

Brewing a magic potion is just a fantasy.

It's actually herbal tea! (luo han kor, to be more precise)

The lock and the keys

Our Fuda key was not working very well; it was very hard to turn the key from the inside. And it's just not one key, a few keys have been "broken" after they were dropped a few times to the floor. I told my father that this particular key shape was probably less resistant to being dropped, and we should probably just change the door lock instead of buying the same key again and again.

My father: *Fiddles with the door lock until the key can turn, then shows us that every key, including the older "broken" ones, can be used* See, it works now!
Me: You need to try turning it from the outside too!
My mother: The door is open now, you need to try turning the key with the door closed.

Did we miss any use-case scenarios? :P

For eternity

Bugs are eternal.