A curious one

As I was finishing off my pizza, I spotted this tiny note on the box.

"You're a curious one. I like you."

Yep, I'm a curious one...and now I'm curious about whether this note has been on all the previous boxes!

Scientist quiz

Some time ago, I created a mini-game for a newsletter at work. It was supposed to be like those cereal-box games; I placed four scientists’ photos together with four meeting room numbers (our meeting rooms are named after scientists), with one simple instruction: Match!

Not sure whether anyone actually played it, but it was in any case a space-filler.

Then yesterday I watched an episode of Running Man (episode 569 to be precise), and was surprised to see one of the photos I had used, being used in their quiz. In their case, they were supposed to guess the name of the person.

Sad to say, I failed to identify the scientist. :P (I had forgotten who was who a few moments after selecting the photos to use from Google!)

But those Koreans are pretty amazing…a number of them actually said that the person was clearly Thomas Edison. When they learn about scientists in school, do they actually make a point of learning their faces too? We only care about the names…

Grow, grass, grow!

Because this week's theme is grow... it made me specially notice this patch of grass (or weeds? :P ) that has completely taken over the square around this roadside tree.

They definitely grew well, huh?

Self-heating hotpot

Have you heard of self-heating hotpot? I recently tried two kinds, making use of Shopee’s promotions (otherwise they are kind of expensive…). I bought two different brands, thinking that if the first one doesn’t taste good, it may be just because that brand/flavour doesn’t suit me.

One was spicy crayfish, while the other one was beef ham (not sure why they call it “ham”; it may be a bad translation)

I tried the crayfish one first.

Plenty of separate packets inside, including a pair of chopsticks!
The two packets on the bottom-right are both crayfish. The blue pack is the veggies/potatoes, while the other two packs are easily recognizable as the "noodles" and the chilli.

The boxes - we are to put the heating pack into the outer box, pour water (just room temperature water, not hot water) on it for it to start releasing heat.

Dumped everything into the inner pot. (except the chilli paste)

Added the chilli paste, but not all of it...I know it's gonna be spicy!

Then we add drinking water to the inner pot, and start heating!

Heating in progress. (15 minutes)

Done!

Then we stir and eat...

I actually felt that I did not put enough water on the heating pack. After the 15 minutes, I felt that the soup didn't seem hot enough, so I took out the inner pot, added more water to the outer pot, and let it continue heating for a while more... not sure whether it made any difference in the end.

When I took out the inner pot to add water to the heating pack, I placed it on a heat pad...and it was so hot it made my heat pad warp. :O

See that the part on the right became thicker?

So…how did it taste? Basically like mala soup… the crayfish were so tiny that it was pretty much impossible to get any meat after taking the shell off. So I was sucking the shells instead… 

I definitely didn’t expect such tiny crayfish…I thought they would give just one or two, but maybe two or three times this size? :P

Moving on to the beef hotpot...

This one has better illustrations, so I'm attaching the instructions.

Translated with Google Lens

Again, all the packets... And they have chopsticks too, really something we can have on the go, with just water. I won't say what each packet is...you can figure it out yourself with the next photo.

There's quite a decent amount of beef. Easily broken apart...which also means it's very tender, huh... :P
The dry noodles (same as the other hotpot) are at the bottom...I just realized that they are totally hidden by the other ingredients!
(I broke the sausage while trying to get it out of the packet. Oops...)

Again, adding the chilli but not all of it.

Heating it up!

This time, I put more water in the bottom compartment. The bubbling was really more intense...though I am not sure whether it's because of the water or because of the product brand. Here's a video:

And then it's done!

There was a little overflowing..

This one tasted a bit better...maybe because of the beef? But it was difficult trying to get all the tiny pieces of beef. The sausage was awful though, it was simply mushy (can't expect too much from this kind of sausage...) Overall the hotpot is not good enough for me to buy again. :P

While eating, I felt like the bowl was extremely shallow...and after pouring away the soup, I realized why:

The heat pack had expanded a lot!

If you want shadows...

I will give you shadows!

Are four shadows enough?

I'm just rather disappointed that I couldn't get the shadows to be darker...

Profile pic blues

I’m thinking that I should get rid of my profile pic at work. People are recognizing me when I don’t recognize them!

First it was someone who was in the same department. We have both been working there for a while, and before MCO there had been some department-wide activities. I had seen his name before, but I didn’t know who he was. Recently we were involved in an activity together, online since it was during MCO. When I went to the office (since I seldom go in), I asked to meet face to face, so that I would know who I had been working with! Well, we did meet up, but before we did, he told me, “I already know who you are!” I had already seen him around before too..but I never knew his name!

The other day, someone else recognized me when I had no idea who he was. Turned out that he was the newcomer to our team… anyway in this case it may be just because I’m easier to recognize (with mask on)? Because I had seen his photo…though it was only once, during his introduction. He probably had more chances to see my profile pic...since it shows every time I send a message in our group chat.

And now someone meets me at badminton once, we didn’t exchange names, and the second time we meet, he already figured out that we had joined the same online activity (whereas I had no idea -_- )

No fair!

I’m not someone who usually uses profile pics…but at work I decided to use it for practical purposes: Sometimes we message someone and then need to go and look for them (before Covid came along). Without a profile picture, we have to guess whether we have found the correct person! Also, sometimes we may not need to go and look for that person, but with a profile picture, we would at least know if we cross paths with that person one day.

But nowadays, with so many people NOT using profile pictures…and with so many meetings online, I don’t even know who I am talking to most of the time. And it’s annoying that THEY can put a face to my name! Again, no fair…so maybe I should level the playing field by removing my profile pic.

A case of forged identity

The theme for this week was identity.

Well, the contents of this jar definitely have a different identity than what the label says... :P

Cautious kitty

Earlier I saw a kitten sitting on a neighbour's back porch stairs. Beside the porch stairs, there was a stack of overturned flowerpots. The kitten stretched out to the top of the stack, but it was just a little out of reach. A while later, the kitten turned around and went down the steps, then climbed up the flowerpot stack.

I guess this kitty is too young to know that it has nine lives! :P

Say something nice

Quite recently, I think since last year, I have started following Tomfoolery on Facebook. 

He writes poems, and reads them in his videos. This year, he has started doing “A poem a day”, each one just 1-3 minutes long. (It's daily, so I'm glad they're short. :P )

The thing is, instead of simply reading the poems, he sometimes creates settings to match the poem’s content. Sometimes, it is really awesome to see the little details he puts into his videos... like the one from today.

So I posted a comment, and was pleasantly surprised when he replied!

The video is about a message he received from Tom Felton (the actor who played Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter movies). The two are friends, and Tom (the poet) was tested Covid-positive a few days ago.

As you can see from my comment, there were at least three things that caught my eye in this video. His Facebook page is categorized as "performing arts", and when I see these details, I always think, "Performing arts, indeed!" Not literature, not just readings, but true performances!

By the way, I almost didn't post that comment, because halfway through writing it, I felt embarrassed for raving about the little stuff. So I’m glad that I did post it…I guess that it is nice to find out that people see those details that you made the effort to put into your work.

So I resolve to comment if I have something nice to comment!

By the way, this reminds me how some time ago, I was raving about how Harith Iskander replied to my comment on his Facebook post...haha

Pink and purple gifts

For International Women’s Day this year we received a pack of face masks, a bookmark, and a rose.

At first I thought that the mask was patterned, then I realised that those were stickers that they had slipped into the packet. Kiddy ones, just my type! :D

It's especially interesting to note that the stickers have the MSI logo on them, so they were specially printed for the occasion, and those kiddy patterns were specially selected for us! lol

Though as a friend remarked, those designs are rather feminine-oriented even though the theme for the year is "break the bias"... Personally I'm not complaining because I like those bunnies. :P

The packet states that it is supposed to contain six masks, but I counted ten inside. Just the day before, they sent out a survey asking whether we would be coming to the office (and therefore collect the gift), whether we would be willing to drive through, or not at all... I suspect that they “redistributed” the masks into the packets based on the responses they received! Again, I’m not complaining ;)

A midnight excursion

This little guy is out on a midnight excursion...

...which did not end well for him, since I spotted him.

Once the photoshoot was over, I squashed it. I've written about the case-making moths that these transform into... I need to kill the babies so that there are less moths, and then there can be less abandoned cases all about the house!

(And this photo was not taken at exactly midnight...but it was time to go to sleep, so I think that counts :P )