It's been a while since I played Knotwords...been rather busy.
Anyway, here's a Sunday classic!
A nice thing about these long words is that once you find a word that fits, it is most likely the correct one and there are no other possibilities. With shorter words, there are sometimes too many possibilities that you don't find out you're wrong until another part of the puzzle cannot be completed.
After the recent acquisition, I needed to revamp the arrangement of my display.
I don’t think it’s the best, but I don't have much ideas for now... (and maybe I don't care enough to come up with a better idea :P )
Wanting to write about this, I realized that I had never posted about the Moto Olympiad back in 2017. And I also don’t have a photo of the medals when they were new. At that time, my team (orange team) won the badminton event. It consisted of two men’s doubles and one women’s doubles per match, and my partner and I won the MVP award, earning us an additional gold medal.
If you look carefully, you will see the two Moto Olympiad medals at the back right of the photo. The MVP medal is delegated to the back corner because it is awfully discoloured...a lot worse than its partner beside it.
I'm annoyed that I forgot to snap a photo before reorganizing the medals. But no way I'm trying to put back the previous arrangement for a photo! At least this photo is here in case I do a future rearrangement. :P
Yesterday I tried the yam rice at Southbay Food Court. I didn’t have high expectations, but I really liked it.
What were the good points?
๐๐ผ Thick flavourful soup
๐๐ผ At least two pieces each (more like three?) of
intestine, stomach, and liver; not tough either
๐๐ผ Cut chillies (green
chilli padi in soy sauce) available upon demand
๐๐ผ The default chilli
sauce is good too (a first for me when ordering yam rice; usually I don’t take
their chilli/black sauce)
๐๐ผ No excessive thirst after eating (or should
I say after drinking almost all the soup)
The price is RM 10 (8.50 for the
soup, 1.50 for yam rice)
The only drawback is that the menu is only
in Chinese characters, so I had some difficulty telling the foreign worker
which one I wanted (I needed to make sure I got the one with the internal
organs). The menu had pictures, but it wasn't like we could see what the soup contains from the picture... :P But then the owner (at least she seemed to be the owner) came back
and took my order in Hokkien.
Update 22nd March 2025:
I went there again a few days ago. The menu is improved with English now!
And I got a better photo:
Just like last year, we ended up getting third place in this year's badminton tournament.
I won't write much this time...but I wanted to post photos of our medal. The
design this year is rather special...maybe because there is a new sponsor,
Mitutoyo instead of Red One.
The trophy this year is extremely small...only the champion's trophy is bigger.
This is a photo of both the women's and men's teams, taken on the first day of the tournament.
The men's team managed to enter the quarterfinals, which unfortunately did not have any prize.
However we had champions in our company; the two team captains joined the individual mixed doubles event and won first place! *clap clap clap*
The annual inter-companies badminton tournament is here again, and this year we have been lucky enough to win 3-0 against our first three opponents in the group stage. Our group stage games are on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday this week.
The badminton club committee has been actively sending out the tournament results out in employee communication e-mails each day. On Wednesday, a colleague came up to me and said “Wow, you won 3-0”! I told him, if you had come to support us, we would have gotten 4-0! (Which is nonsense, because there are three pairs of doubles in a match, so the best score would be 3-0.) He knew as much, and said that it wasn’t possible.
Then on Thursday, another colleague came and asked how our game went. (didn’t read ecom? :P ) So I told him we won 3-0 on Wednesday. He then asked about our next game, and asked, “Will you win 4-0?” Haha, so I was trying to fool the wrong person? :P
The other day, a colleague mentioned that they celebrate Mother’s Day but not Father’s Day. When asked why, he said that it was because the repercussions were severe if Mother’s Day was not celebrated. But Father’s Day could be safely ignored. :P
I have been putting off writing about my Korea trip…now I feel like starting,
for some reason. :P
No promises how long this is going to take…
Before
even reaching Korea, there was a dramatic change of plans. I found out a week
before my flight, that AirAsia had cancelled the KL-Busan flight route, due to low demand.
Since I had purchased a 3-point itinerary (KL→Busan and Seoul→KL; let’s not
count the Penang-KL flights to and fro), my outgoing flight was gone and I had
to select a different one.
I had booked via Kiwi.com (a silly thing
where I was trying to book through the AirAsia website but they transferred me
to Kiwi, with an AirAsia+Kiwi logo, and I didn’t notice that it meant I was
NOT buying directly with AirAsia until I had already paid. *smacks forehead*),
and they offered me a different itinerary which would let me fly AirAsia from
Penang to Ho Chi Minh, and Vietjet from Ho Chi Minh to Busan. This was the
schedule closest to my original flight, letting me reach Busan in the early
morning instead of mid-morning on the same day.
Another difference
was that I now had an almost twelve-hour transit in HCM, so I decided to go
out of the airport to take a look at the city.
(Note: There were
other problems with the flight cancellation, which kept me very busy when I
got the news, but I will not go into those here, because it would make the
post very long. And also, it ain’t fun to read :P )
Before the
transit, I did some research and found that HCM airport (Tan Son Nhat
International Airport, to give it its official name) was located not far from
the city, not unlike how Penang airport is not far from Georgetown. It was
also a transit hub, and yes, there was a sea of people going through
immigration.
|
| First photo taken in Vietnam, lining up to go through immigration |
The airport is huge..and this actually made my transit very tiring. Arrivals
and departures are on different floors, which is similar for most airports,
but the problem was that there wasn’t a simple way to move between the two
floors. I spent ages figuring out how to reach the departure hall (I wanted to
find my bearings before leaving the airport, so that if I got back to the
airport late, I would already know where to go to check in for my next
flight).
Some lifts/stairs were blocked to only go to
departures/arrivals, I can’t remember exactly how. There was also one greatly
empty, and dark hall where people could see their family/friends departing
(KLIA has that kind of hall as well…but why was it dark in HCM? I dunno). In the end I
found out that there was one lift at the end of the airport that could take me
to all floors.
But luggage storage was at the other end of the
airport. So with all the back and forth, my legs were already tired by the
time I placed my luggage in the storage and sat down to have my lunch.
Frankly,
I didn’t find anything super-interesting to eat there. I settled for a beef
banh mi (a slight mistake in my order; I should have selected the cooling tea instead of
simple orange juice, to see what it’s like there). It was pretty good, but
nothing to shout about.
The most interesting part of the meal was this purple sticky rice yoghurt.
 |
| After being mixed. Halfway through eating, I suddenly thought of taking a photo because I wanted to write about it! |
It is basically the same thing as the sticky rice dessert that we have in Malaysia, placed in yoghurt! Very yummy, and I can’t figure out why this flavour did not make it to Malaysia.
After lunch, I took the bus 109 to town.
Before going there, I had been horrified to check that the temperature in Vietnam was extremely high. But as it turned out, it was a rainy day, so it wasn’t so hot when I was there.
I didn’t manage to snap a photo, but as it rained on the way to town, I saw vendors selling raincoats by the roadside, and motorcyclists stopping to buy them. There are LOADS of motorcyclists on the streets…if I was shocked to see the number of motorcycles in Penang when I first arrived, the number of them in HCM is at least threefold, probably more.
I got off the bus at the Ben Thanh market stop. It wasn’t right beside the market, so I took a while to figure out where the market actually was. I had to cross a weird triangular empty area to reach the market. It was confusing because I wasn’t sure (and am still not sure!) whether that area was supposed to be blocked off for cars. As it was, I kept looking around for cars. Haha...
 |
| See the huge triangular empty space? |
Inside the market:
The market was very packed…there were four entrances (at least?). This photo was taken near the centre of the market, and you can see the signs above showing which direction would take you to the northern and southern gates. Right ahead, and behind me, were two other entrances.
Since it was the beginning of my trip, and I didn’t dare to let souvenirs take up space in my luggage, I didn’t look much at what was for sale, and just walked through to get the vibe of the place.
There was no metro when I researched HCM city, but I saw this. Coming soon, maybe? The congestion on the roads would definitely benefit from it…
Also saw bicycles-for-rent.
How about other sights? I saw the Nguyแป n Huแป Music Fountain in the middle of a crossroads, with the city hall (with Ho Chi Minh’s statue in front of it) on the left.
And just a selfie to show that I was really there…
And here’s the opera house, at another direction away from the lotus fountain.
After that, I made my way to the riverside, where I saw all the ASEAN flags fluttering in the wind.
There was also this nice flowery arch (no idea what the occasion was :P ), and a huge billboard across the river. I think it was showing something else and I wanted to take a photo of that, but the display changed and all I got was this.
I mentioned that it rained while I was on the bus to town. The rain had stopped by the time we reached the city area. But as I reached the river, there was a rather heavy downpour, and I took shelter outside a hotel (that was facing the river) for a while. Because of the traffic (it was rush hour after work), I gave up on crossing the road to see the river up close.
As I walked back to town on another road, I saw an outdoor exposition.
And here are a couple of photos of HCM City by night:
This is the Bitexco Financial Tower, which houses the Saigon Skydeck. If I remember correctly, I entered the building to take a look; it looked like it was an office building, with a Watson’s and other shops on the ground floor. There were employees scanning their badges to go in/out to the restricted area.
I had my last meal in Vietnam at Popeyes, also at the airport. Because the timing wasn’t right, I didn’t try any food in town. My set meal comes with two pieces of fried chicken, fries, a sundae, and a drink. Nothing special, but I remember the chicken being very tender. I also remember dipping my hot fries into the already-melting sundae. :P
Because I forgot to take a photo of the shop when I ate there, I snapped a photo later when going upstairs to departures.
The tables are located at a rather open area to the left of the shop; which is why even though I said I was eating there, they gave me take-away boxes in a paper bag.
Just an anecdote; while I was eating, a few Korean guys (was it two or three people?) brought their fried chicken to a table nearby. They opened the chicken and fries in the middle of the table, and…kinda just waited. I was wondering what was going on, when another guy came back with beer bought from another shop. I guess Koreans really want their fried chicken with beer! Haha… (this shop is like KFC, it doesn’t sell beer)
Last bit about HCM before I end the post, is about the airport showers. While researching, I found that there were free showers available at one of the terminals (and it turned out to be the one I would use). I went to check it out, though it was more to wipe myself down than to take a shower.
As expected, it was no-frills, but having such an amenity is a good thing!
P.S.: I did not expect this post to be so long… But I don’t know where to split it, so I guess I’ll keep it all in one post. A one-stop post to read about HCM in future. :P
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