A motley collection

Finally my Clifton Chronicles collection is complete!

With each book costing about RM40 (and more), this set of seven books should be worth around RM300. But I didn't buy any at full price. Instead, I bought them at book fairs or sales... the cheapest one at RM8, and the most expensive at RM15. So the whole set probably cost me RM100 (should be less than that)...and around 10 years. Sounds rather like using points to get a discount!

I can't remember when I bought the first book, but the price tag has the Big Bad Wolf logo on it, so it was probably during the first or second BBW sale. The pages are also very yellowed by now!

And since beggars (or cheapskates) can't be choosers, choosing the cheapest books available also means that my books are of several different sizes! The last two, which I have just bought, have a different kind of cover too...instead of being glossy smooth, the cover is slightly textured. I kind of like it more that way.

I have finished reading the new books by now, and I found that at the end of the sixth book, there is an epilogue, and the beginning of the seventh book has a prologue. Most of the other books have prologues, but none had epilogues. I found that the epilogue would actually make a better transition if we were to wait for him to write the next book. In this case, I wouldn't have minded a cliffhanger because I had the seventh book ready to read next!

P.S.: I found from a previous post that the second, third, and fourth books were bought in 2016.

Clear blue sky

Does the photo tell you this week's theme? It's a clear, cloudless blue sky! So clear that I decided I would keep the tree-tops in the frame, to know that it really is the sky and not something else!

Besides that photo, I also captured this scene while driving home from work on Monday. (there are more cars on the road now...here I was stopped at the roundabout's traffic light)

I snapped the photo because of the way the sunlight was filtering out from the clouds.

Stepping on it

I mentioned several years back that I was playing Stepmania.

There was a time when I had stopped playing for quite a long stretch... and then Covid came along, and I could no longer play badminton for exercise. During that time, I thought of Stepmania again, and started using it as my exercise.

During that time I improved tremendously...I started sweating buckets while playing because I was playing faster and faster songs. The song Byul, which I mentioned in my previous post, was the song that I played best at that time. But during MCO, I improved so much on the other songs in the Korean pack, that Byul suddenly became a boring song to play. (it's slower than the others, which is why it was so good for me to learn on it in the beginning)

After that, I even moved to the second level of the Korean songs (there are progressively difficult levels for each song in this pack, which is really very good) I found that the second level was also more tiring, besides being harder. So even though I can play quite a lot of them now (maybe I still get a D for some of them, but at least I'm not being totally lost and not being able to keep up), I cannot play too many in a row because it makes me too tired!

So I tend to switch between the first and second levels, so that I can get a "rest" in between.

All this to explain why I played this "easy" level of Sung Suk (another song in the Korean pack). And I got a score that I had not seen before, which is "Single Digit Greats!"

I had already gotten AA before (and on quite a lot of songs, since MCO :P ), so that was no big deal. I seem to have gotten this "Single Digit Greats" before too, but probably pressed "start" too fast and didn't think about it any more.

Anyway, this time I searched online, and found out that it means I have less than 10 "great"s. In my post about my score for Byul, there was "Full Combo". So it seems that getting nothing less than "great" would give you a full combo, because those three scores are combo scores, and if on top of that, the number of "great"s is less than 10, then they would say you got "single digit greats". I wonder what will show up when you only get "flawless" and "perfect", and whether there will be "single digit perfects". :P That would be tough to achieve though...

A curious assortment

Today I collected the 2020 appreciation gift from my company. (they asked for our sizes last year, and it took some time to prepare)

At the collection area, they give us the box, get us our jacket, and let us scratch a card for a lucky draw. My card said "A", and I received a mug, which is the same as the Christmas gift that they gave us in December last year. (more on the mug later) There was also a "thank you" card which means you don't get an extra gift, and I wonder what else there was!

So here is what we received:

A jacket, a pillow (same design!), a first aid kit (which only has hand sanitizer and face masks inside...so it's more like a toiletries bag), a "folding desktop phone stand" (I like this one), a 3-in-1 charging cable (we already have one in white, so this is less special to me), Ferrero Rocher chocolates, and two boxes of instant meals (is this supposed to be a course meal? There are no drinks though :P )

In this next photo, I moved the things around a bit. The jacket's hood actually says "pursue". I don't really get why...

With this curious assortment, I guess MSI would like us to be able to go camping, and while comfortably holding our pillow, we can still be well-camouflaged! We can put safety items into our first aid kit, and we can enjoy a 3-course meal (appetizer, main course, dessert) just by boiling a pot of water (those instant meals come in packs that are reheatable by plunging them into boiling water). No drinks, but you already have your pot of water! As for the charging cable and the phone stand, these will allow us to have entertainment if we bring along enough power banks...

On a side note, I snapped a selfie of myself trying on the jacket. Because the black polo-tee that I'm wearing was also from the company (for my department instead of the whole company), and it is an XL size. Someone was saying they didn't believe I could wear XL, but it was a perfect fit (we chose the sizes based on the sizing chart). The jacket is an XS (also chosen with a sizing chart), and as you can see, they are both a perfect fit. :D

Now back to the Santa mug... I realized that I hadn't posted photos of it! So here's our Christmas gift:

The other side of the mug:

There was a red version too...with a different expression on Santa's face. I only found out when a friend posted a photo of his mug on Facebook. This time, I got the white one again. I wonder whether I can get someone with two red mugs to swap with me :P

So close and yet so far

I don't really like beginner level, but I've been playing it once in a while in the hopes of getting a 1-second record. (have I said that before? :P )

That didn't exactly happen, but I got a new record after 15 years! (see the last record here) 

That was 1.20 seconds...and this new one is 1.08 seconds. (1.087 seconds if I look at the title of the saved video)

So I still don't have a 1-second record... (1.xx is considered 2 seconds in original Minesweeper, because you can't get a 0 time.)

The 3bv is 3... meaning that 3 clicks is the minimum to solve the board. I used 4 clicks... the extra one wasted when starting the game.

I'll need to find out how to convert the video to a "normal" format before I can upload it to Youtube!

And by the way, in these two days, my scores are now 2-20-77. I am glad to announce that I am back to "pro" level, aka with a total of less than a 100. I was surprised to discover that I'm at 99, just under a hundred!

Edit: Video uploaded to Youtube:

A complete expert

And I did it!

Just two posts earlier (and a few hours ago), I said that I wanted to complete one expert game...and here it is!

The 7 was my second-last click. When I was working on the top-right corner, I was already slowing down and being careful...I thought the 7 was the last square and glanced up to the counter and saw it at 107.x. But then I spent another 20 seconds looking for the last square, which was the 4 on the 6th row, 9th column. Well, it wouldn't have been a record anyway, and I should be glad that my time could have been only about double my record, instead of triple or quadruple :P 

Edit: After playing a bit more, now my scores for today are 3-22-90. I'm especially happy that I managed to get sub-100 in expert.

No ghosts here

I just finished watching Catch the Ghost.

I enjoyed it...but I would only say that it is nice...instead of actually calling it "good". (It has too much ridiculous happenings in it for me to call it "good".)

Actually I have seen it on Viu for quite some time, and I would have watched it sooner if I hadn't been misled into thinking that it was a paranormal mystery. (because hey, there's a mystery, and it stars Kim Sun Ho whom I've seen and liked a lot in Two Cops) But since I'm less interested in paranormal stuff, it took a back seat to other dramas. Also, the synopsis on Asianwiki didn't sound that interesting... The actual synopsis that I would write is that there are dead bodies discovered on the subway, and it's a serial killing!

While watching, at the beginning I kept waiting for the ghost to appear, or at least for a kind of ghost to be introduced. But it turns out that the murderer is nicknamed the Subway Ghost, and it's not an actual ghost! (at the beginning I was still suspecting that the culprit was going to be a real ghost)

The storyline is pretty good, with twists and red herrings, and there are plenty of funny bits too! That is why I enjoyed it. But here and there, people would act in stupidly ridiculous manners.

For example, this cop has a gun. The bad guy is about 4-5 metres away from her, and she reaches for her gun. But when the bad guy takes out a steel wire (used for strangling), she suddenly hesitates. What, do you expect that he can come and strangle you from 4-5 metres away, faster than you can get out your gun??

And that's not all... in the end she does take out her gun, and the bad guy keeps taunting her to shoot, saying that she would never shoot him, etc... In the end she doesn't shoot, but she puts her gun away, takes out her handcuffs, and goes over to the bad guy to handcuff him.

But the bad guy had never surrendered! Did she expect he would go with her quietly?

And of course he didn't, so she got strangled. *facepalm*

Seriously, someone like this has no business being a cop!

All along the story, the cops also keep saying that cops work in pairs to protect each other, but they would also run here and there alone without reason. (and then get themselves into trouble with no one to protect them :P ) There are also plenty of other stuff, but there's too much to list out!

This is why this drama cannot be called "good"!

Sweeping again

So this is what retirement is like... my Minesweeper posts are now spaced out longer and longer between each other!

My last post was almost four years ago, where I checked whether I was still the first-ranked Malaysian.

So, true to tradition, here's an update on that.

I'm still the first! :D

Six players were added to the rankings in 2019 and 2020. Most of them were tagged on at the bottom, but one made it to 9th place!

I have changed my laptop since I last played, so I downloaded ViennaSweeper and played a bit. (I used to play on Minesweeper Clone, but it has a bug and its scores are not accepted for rankings any more. I didn't bother changing when I was still on my old laptop, since I didn't think I would beat my old times anyway, but since I'm installing a fresh version, I might as well get one that's certified!) 

My best scores today were 6 in beginner and 24 in intermediate... rounded up of course, to match "original" Minesweeper times. That's about triple and double my best times... I didn't manage to finish an expert game because I kept blasting mines due to unforced guesses (bad habit, trying to be lucky instead of taking a safer route) and misclicks (my mouse ran away where I didn't tell it to go! :P )

I sort of want to just finish one expert game (will need to play it safe); I wonder whether it will be triple or quadruple my best time...

Stalking birds

After all the trouble I went through to get rid of birds, for example these items that I bought (and I did more later because that didn't fully work), suddenly Photo Friday tells me to snap a photo of a bird!

So this week, instead of shooing them away immediately, I acted like paparazzi instead. :P 

I snapped about eight photos (a rough estimate; I didn't count), but since the birds were never close by, all the pictures were slightly blurry due to zooming in. These two are the best!

The second photo is a little less nice, but I still like it because of the "candid" way the bird is standing (did I catch it in mid-step?)

And you can see that the top of the wall is dirty due to bird poop. :(

Homemade bulgogi

The other day, I attempted to make bulgogi.

(I am extremely surprised that I have not posted about Daorae's bulgogi before, and that I had no photo of it!)

I had some leftover pork slices (the type used for steamboat), and I suddenly thought of Daorae's bulgogi, which I absolutely love (the one at Daorae was beef bulgogi, but it's fine, I can try it with pork first). So I searched up how to make bulgogi. I found two very informative articles. Basically the secret ingredient is to use apple! (technically it should be Korean pear, but the recipes all suggest apple as a substitute)

I did it stir-fry style, which is basically the kind that I had in Daorae. It's not even really stir-frying; I just dumped everything in the pot and let it cook. Here's how it looks in the pot! (this is for comparison with Daorae's bulgogi which is served in a pot...but then I found out that I didn't have a photo :P )

The juices dried up a bit...I didn't want to add more water because I didn't want to dilute the flavour.

There are also a lot more enoki mushrooms than meat...because I decided to put in the whole pack of enoki that I had bought. Probably a little less would have been better, proportion-wise.

Somehow after being transferred to a plate, it didn't look so good. (also, I do feel that my phone camera is not as good as my previous camera...but I can't be bothered switching between two cameras)

But the taste was just nice, reminiscent of Daorae's dish! So I'm happy about this...and I might give it a try with beef slices next time!

All-in-one pack

Some time ago, Snorlax gave me a packet of tomato noodles that he had received as a free gift. He did not know how to cook it, and he also felt like it wasn't something that he would like (and after tasting it, I agree).

The packet was quite big:

There were many steps in the cooking, with separate items to add in at different times.

Inside the packet, there were SEVEN separate packs of ingredients!

On the rightmost was the noodles. Top-left is the fried beancurd skin, followed by two packets of preserved ingredients (vinegared bamboo shoots in one pack, and vinegared green beans and black fungus in the other pack). Bottom-left is vacuum-packed peanuts (exactly the kind that we get with nasi lemak), followed by the tomato seasoning and the soup seasoning.

I opened the vinegared ingredients early, because I wanted to see what they were like (and also what they were! The instructions in English are a little confusing because they sometimes mentioned green beans and sometimes black fungus...and it wasn't until I opened the packets that I figured out they were actually referring to the same thing.) The smell of the vinegar immediately filled my kitchen... and I was actually a little worried about using those ingredients because the smell was so strong! I was afraid they would make the noodles sour. But I decided to go ahead because we Chinese do have dishes which use extremely smelly ingredients...and I still eat them :P 

The noodles tasted okay with the vinegared ingredients, but that night, even way after I had packed everything out to the dustbin outside, the sour smell still stayed in the kitchen. (thankfully, the smell was gone by morning)

I even added some fresh greens (because the packet said we could), but that was before I found out that they had green beans! If I had known that they already included green veggies, I wouldn't have bothered adding extra ingredients...

This is the resulting bowl of noodles:

You can see every single ingredient that I mentioned in this photo (you might need to look closely though). The green beans were slightly crunchy, like the kind we find in acar. The soup tasted okay, but what I liked the most was the springy texture of the noodles, and the peanuts.

In the end, it was really a huge portion, extremely filling!

Kitty update

So last week I posted a minor update on those cats... now I have photos to back up what I said!

From left to right, there is one white and two orange kittens (not counting the mother). It's a little hard to see the white kitten because it's camouflaged by its mother!

So when I said the white cat disappeared for a while, I guess it was pregnant at the time!

Pure meat burger

Yesterday I tried a burger from Jom Burgeria, which was highly recommended by a friend.

I opted for a burger called chicken terroryaki (a chicken patty, with some more chicken pieces on top).

(I guess the box is bigger in case we order a set...which would have fries or something else beside the burger)

The chicken patty was really good; instead of minced chicken, it was more like a patty of shredded chicken (what I mean is, you can still feel the texture of the chicken even though it was not a whole piece of chicken fillet). The sauce was quite good as well, but a bit too salty for my taste. Or maybe there was too much sauce? The bun was small and was not enough to "wipe up" the sauce. The burger was definitely filling enough for me, but the proportion of bun to meat was rather small. And there was not a piece of vegetable to be seen...probably I should have chosen a burger that had green on its photo. :P 

Still a very good burger overall, I can see why my friend raved over it. This burger cost RM10.90, one of the cheapest options on the menu. The only cheaper one is the original Jomburger if I'm not mistaken...and that might suit me more because I see in their photo that there is tomato and salad in it!

Seeing orange

Last week's theme was orange.

For a week, I kept noticing orange things!

In the end, I settled for this orange lights.

But before that, I had taken this photo of an orange item, which happens to be an orange, sitting in an orange silicone cup...

I liked the concept, but this photo simply did not look as good as the lights. :P

Where plants rule

I have a neighbour (or should I say I don't have a neighbour since there is no one staying there?) whose garden is always overgrown.

In this place, plants rule!

Remember the cats and kitten that I posted about some time ago? The other day, I saw from upstairs that a parent and a child (I mean cats) were lying in the compound of this house, next to the house wall. I do believe both of them were white (can't really remember now). So I guess it's likely they were a family after all!