Unexpected happenings in Ipoh

Have you ever been served roti canai with chopsticks?

I got myself a roti canai and a roti telur at the Ipoh stadium (Hameed roti canai) the other day, and this is how it was served.

It wasn't the first time I had ordered from this stall...and they had never given me chopsticks before!

This is an older photo from the same stall:

In any case, I'm not sure whether I wrote about it before, but I really like this stall's roti canai. It is crispy on the outside, which is something quite hard to find. It is not very oily either!

As for the roti telur, I feel this is how roti telur should be...with one even layer of egg in the roti canai. Some places have the telur mixed here and there in the dough, and I don't like that.

In a separate incident, I went to a yong tau foo place that is operated out of a home. (seems that the owners are actually living there; they set up tables in the house compound for us to sit and eat there)

The person who brought me my food, after collecting the payment, started saying something long and complicated in Cantonese. I went “huh?”, and he restarted the spiel. This time I cut him short with “I don’t understand” in English. He hesitated and said (or waved?) “never mind”. (seems like he gave up when he realized he had to speak English!)

That isn’t all…there is a part 2!

When he brought me my change, he told me, “Chinese biscuits. You want?” I went “huh?” again. He repeated it, and I caught the words this time, but didn’t understand. I asked, “what is that?” He then said, “for Chinese New Year”. It was only then that I understood that they were selling CNY cookies... 

Ok, Penang isn’t the only place where the level of English is awful. Looks like it’s practically everywhere as long as you bump into the “right” people… :P

I don’t get why he didn’t say “new year biscuits” though…isn’t that a more direct translation from Chinese? And I would have immediately understood!

(Note: He seemed like he was at the end of secondary school. Probably went to a Chinese school and had never spoken English outside of a school setting before...)

Two handsome men in stripes

Because last week's theme was stripes...

January 2012 to January 2024

A colleague from my first job got married recently, and I attended her wedding dinner with another mutual ex-colleague.

We had been meeting up less and less, and the last time the three of us had gotten together was on the eve of New Year 2021. I decided to look up our old photos to see how we had changed, and found a photo from 2012 which was probably the first photo that we took together (the first that I could find, anyway…and this doesn’t include the photos that have other people in it besides us)

All three of us joined IQ Group in 2011, and the first photo I found was during a CNY gathering in 2012.

(I don't even remember whose house we went to...I just remember that it was one of the guys')

Then this was from New Year's Eve 2021 (end of 2020), when we gathered at YY's place for a steamboat.

And the most recent: Doris's wedding.

Just posting them here for keepsakes since I already dug 'em out!

Pretty paper

Last week's photo theme was paper. I kinda think I have taken a photo of this for a photo theme before, but I am not sure. And I am also not sure whether that theme was paper. :P

But it's still a very appropriate photo!

Universal remote controls

First time buying a remote control to replace a broken one…I went to Mr. DIY. The size of the selection surprised me. There are so many kinds...how do people choose? :O

It seemed that they were ALL universal remote controls, so any of them should work for me. (Especially since my TV is not a smart TV, which some of the remote controls may note work with.) After inspected a few of them, I gave up on analysing and decided to select the most aesthetically-pleasing one (to my eyes, at least :P ) And also, with button locations that were more familiar to me.

(And now I realize I did not take a photo of the remote control…too bad, it’s not right here now :P )

Anyway, I had always wondered how universal remote controls manage to be universal. But I had never looked at one properly before. Looking at the different packages, I realized that there were button sequences to first set up the remote control to work with your TV model.

And when I finally unpacked the one I bought, I realized there were even more methods…

But guess what? The last setup method on the box is the one that finally worked for me. I was first trying to find my remote control on the paper, but it wasn’t there (there are more models on the back of the sheet, by the way…). Then I tried the steps on the box, one by one. I was getting rather worried when nothing worked…when finally that last step managed to get the volume bar up on my TV.

Not sure whether I followed all the steps correctly! I still don’t know whether the “plus” symbol means simultaneous or sequential button presses. (I tried both, but neither worked :P )

The shiny green bug

Some time ago I saw this bug that looked a bit like a huge mosquito, and smacked it immediately. When I picked it up to discard it, I realized that it was somewhat shiny, and green.

See the stain on the tissue paper...the bug even seemed to ooze blood out when smacked.

So I was curious and tried to find out what kind of bug it was. Searching for “shiny green bug” yielded no results, but then I tried using Google Lens, and found that it is called a chrysosoma long-legged fly, according to Project Noah.

It looks like there are websites where insect (or animal?) enthusiasts share their spottings and try to identify them. Well, good for me!

Spiral incense

When in Ipoh, we visited a few temples. I have forgotten which temple this was, but some of the incense was in a spiral shape.

I almost didn't think of the week's photo theme at the time...and after walking past, suddenly recalled it an doubled back to take a photo of the hanging incense.

Unexpected baking ingredients

I dropped by the baking ingredients store at Golden Triangle 2 for a look. Upon entering the store, opposite the cashier, there was a toy display cabinet…or so I thought.

The top of the display says “cake decorations”. :O

I realize now that my photo cut off the words at the top. I was snapping the photo quickly while hiding behind a shelf (so that the cashier wouldn't see me :P ), and so the items on the far side cannot be seen. On this side there are fighter cartoon characters, but there are cuter ones on the other side…like Hello Kitty’s black friend (Internet tells me it is Kuromi, My Melody’s “rival”).

After that, I noticed that they had a LOT of White Rabbit candies.

There are actually more of these containers, and most are filled with those shiny candy balls, or other small cake decorations. They are sold by weight. I had seen those decorations earlier, then gone over the whole store (or at least the parts that I was interested in), and was going back to the counter when I noticed that they were advertising White Rabbit sweets. Then I noticed the many many different colours! (Note: This was the shelf that I was hiding behind to take the first photo :P Probably I didn’t notice these because they were at the top)

The selection of different flavours is amazing… In case you can’t be bothered to zoom in on the photos, they are, from left to right) (after the yellow one without a green label stating its flavour) : durian, mint, coconut, coffee, red bean, banana, wasabi, chocolate, mango, and corn. That is already ten flavours, without counting the original (which is not there??). And I’m not sure whether those two unlabelled ones on the left are duplicates.

I thought of trying one of each flavour, but I didn't think I could press the lever precisely enough to get just one. :P

A serene duo

Because the photo theme for the past two weeks (as usual, a prolonged challenge for the year end) was serene.

I've had the bear for a while, and my brother got me the cat for my birthday. He saw it in Mr DIY and said it was extremely cute and cuddly!