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!)