Satay and more satay

After knowing of Ah Basri satay for a long time, and being curious about it, I finally found a proper time to try it.

I ordered two sticks of each chicken satay flavour. I initially wanted to try the lamb satay as well, but seeing how the price is a lot higher, I decided I would only go back and try it if the chicken was good enough.

Upon getting home, I was surprised to find that they had separated each flavour into a different plastic bag. I was glad I didn’t order one stick each of more different flavours! 😅

Verdict? Not super good. But not bad. And the sticks are big, so the price is not too expensive. (Note: the meat is flat, not cubed...so the width you see is not the thickness of the satay.)

The chicken meat is lean, so it is drier than I prefer (but not too dry either, that’s why I still say it’s not bad). The original flavour is kind of bland on its own, but goes well with the satay sauce, which is quite good. The black pepper flavour is better on its own (it has a good black pepper kick), but is a little weird with the sauce. The tandoori takes the last place for me, because it has a tandoori taste, but not such a good one (under-roasted, maybe? :P ), and it doesn’t go well with the satay sauce.

I can’t really say whether I prefer the original or the black pepper flavour. But since I prefer the original one with the sauce, and the black pepper one on its own, and the black pepper satay is more expensive by 33%...I would probably just order the original flavour if I go there again. :P

But I might not go again…Musang Corner satay is better (juicier and more flavourful, I remember) and cheaper too!

The time when I tapao-ed satay from Musang Corner, to go with some leftover nasi lemak biru

Who's surfing?

It seems that I have never mentioned Duolingo on this blog. I started using it more than a year ago (and hit a 365-day streak recently). Initially I just wanted to find out how it worked, after listening to a TED talk by its founder. And then I just decided to continue, with bite-sized lessons each day.

I first selected German as a language to learn, not so much because I really wanted to learn it, but because it seemed to be the most useful work-wise. (We have a lot of German documents, which we translate, so we don't really need to know German…but hey, knowing it would be slightly useful)

After that, as I prepared for my trip to South Korea, I decided that learning some Korean would be useful, so I added Korean to my lessons. By the way, this doesn’t mean that I need to do two lessons a day…I can keep my streak just by taking one lesson a day, in either language.

So I simply alternated the languages, a different one each day.

And recently I added Spanish to the mix…a language that I have already learned before when I was in France…but it is in preparation of a possible trip to Spain for a Minesweeper tournament. (more to come on that if I really go!)

Anyway, that is the intro to my Duolingo usage… but this post is about a specific lesson in German.

The exercise was this:

So the sentence says that my “someone” is on vacation, and this person surfs really well. The options are “dog”, “elephant”, “son”, and “doctor”.

I stared at the photo for a while and decided I did not know who was surfing, then selected “son”.

Yep, as expected, it was wrong. (or else I wouldn't be writing this post :P )

The correct answer was “dog”.

It was only after that that I realized, there is a tail on that surfer!

Making people confused

After work yesterday, I bought salted fish fried bee hoon from a stall at Pisa Corner. It is from the same stall that I often buy tai lok mee and sang mee from. I occasionally order Singapore fried bee hoon as well…but the other two items on their menu, salted fish fried bee hoon and char bee tai bak, are lower on my list, and I seldom order them.

The employee confirmed my order 3 times: once when I ordered, and twice when I went back to get my food. 😂 I do believe that it was my first time ordering this dish since he started working there…

(I have tried every item on this stall’s menu..all of them are yummy!)

Michelin-approved bak kut teh

There is a bak kut teh stall at the Bayana food court which has a Michelin award.

They proudly display it on their stall (the words, I mean...I have no idea whether they get a plaque or something for that), so I noticed it and looked up the stall. It seems that they started out in Butterworth (Raja Uda).

Today I finally gave it a try. I got a set because they seemed to have only sets on the menu...but checking Google now, it seems like they have à-la-carte items as well. I guess they just don't display it as prominently at the stall...

There were three choices for the side dish: oiled veggies, Thai sauce fried tofu, or braised chicken feet (which I selected).

I like the soup and the chicken feet. Very flavourful. As for internal organs, I think there were at least three pieces each of intestine and stomach. Good enough! And it seemed like they were the braised kind (braised and then put into the soup).

I appreciated that they gave a separate bowl of soup, and covered it so that it wouldn't go cold so quickly. It was a miso soup bowl; I opened up the cover for the photo.

What I didn't appreciate was that the soy sauce and dark soy sauce were mixed together in one compartment. So it was like the cili padi was soaked in dark soy sauce. Next time I will have to tell them I only want the cili padi in soy sauce...I don't use the garlic and dark soy sauce anyway.

A difficult Sunday puzzle

If last week's was a smooth Sunday puzzle, this week's was not...

I got blocked sooo long on the top right because I couldn't figure out the word "sciences".

The alternate solution is that I used "gate" and "ham" on the top left, instead of "game" and "hat".

A smooth Sunday puzzle

Played Knotwords again after some time.

It's a pretty decent game. Did not get blocked for long on any of the words.

Cute friends in a bakery

Yesterday after having lunch (at hakka mee, in case I can't recall it one day in the future :P ), we went into a bakery nearby. The first thing I noticed was this white dog, and I couldn’t resist touching it and making its head move a bit. (It was as soft and fluffy as it looked! ♥ )

While taking a look around the bakery, I snapped a few more photos of the other teddy bears (but not of all of them…there are even more there!). The teddies are dispersed around the display of breads and buns.

There were three cats near the entrance…I didn’t even notice them while entering (after seeing the two big bears from the outside, my eyes were immediately drawn to the dog upon entering the shop).

Two of us only noticed the cats (and that they were real! :P ) when we saw another one petting one of them.

And I inadvertently caught my friend’s phone in video mode as he captured himself petting the cat…see the bottom-left corner of the photo!

And then there was this grey bear that looks like it is in the middle of a yoga pose:

I actually just noticed the "yoga pose" while writing this post... it looks like a cross between the downwards dog and the puppy pose. :P (Look them up if you don't know what they are...I also didn't know them before starting out with yoga!)