Punctuation matters

This was sent in to The Star as an example of why punctuation matters. Two letters, containing the same words but with different punctuation. I love these examples, so I'm sharing them here!

Dear John,
I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are generous, kind, thoughtful. People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me for other men. I yearn for you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we’re apart. I can be forever happy – will you let me be yours?
Gloria

Dear John,
I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are generous, kind, thoughtful people, who are not like you. Admit to being useless and inferior.

You have ruined me. For other men, I yearn. For you, I have no feelings whatsoever. When we’re apart, I can be forever happy. Will you let me be?
Yours,
Gloria

I read somewhere not too long ago that when we share something from the Internet, we should only provide a short description/teaser and link to it, instead of copying the whole thing, so that the reader can go to the original website to see it. But too many times, the original page has been lost...and I ended up with a partial post. So to avoid that happening again, I am trying to copy as much as is necessary so that my post makes sense on it's own...

This, too, shall pass

Did you hear about the story of a king who wanted something that could cheer him up when he was down, and bring him down to earth when he was overjoyed?

He finally found what he wanted in the words, "This, too, shall pass."

Or in other words, nothing lasts forever.

Just a few hours ago I was upset about something...I was literally gripping the steering wheel as I drove to badminton after work. I couldn't wait to be able to release a load of pent-up energy.

Maybe it was releasing that energy, or maybe it was something else. In any case, this, too, has passed.

Though, to take the words to heart, this, too, shall pass. And who knows what will come.

(And it, too, shall pass...)

The best defense is offense

Hmm...I'm getting pretty good at this. Thanks/No thanks to some of my colleagues.

But I still think that I should only use this strategy on those who have shown themselves capable of using it on me (note: the example is non-exhaustive). And then I shall show no mercy...muahahahaha...

Here fishy fishy...

It isn't April yet...but this is to continue from my previous post on packing my stuff.

In France, April Fool is called Poisson d'Avril, which literally translates to "April's Fish".


This fish is from either our first or second year in France...when we were still in Angoulême. We had lots of French classes in the beginning, and any discussion wasn't off-topic, because we would gain vocabulary on that, and we were supposed to learn about French culture too!

Our teacher, Geneviève, told us that the French make paper fish and stick it to people's backs on April Fool's Day. Anyway, she started cutting out paper fish for each of us, and wrote our names on each one. Then I don't know who started asking her to sign it, then everyone else started passing their fish all over the class for signatures!

Mimi was a big fan of Pierrick then, a guy on Star Academy, the French version of the Idol series. And Hidayah was into Agatha Christie (and Hercule Poirot) at the time...I can't remember why, but I think I pulled her into it, being an Agatha Christie fan from my secondary school years.

Then there was Firdaus and Mai who wanted me to cook fish for them... I had cooked steamed fish with tomyam sauce (really sinple, just put the tomyam sauce on the fish and then steam it). I think it was cooked in Dayah's room because she had a big rice cooker...the one with a steamer. (And when I said, it's so simple, you can cook it yourself...they said, it's not the same when someone cooks it for you...haha, lazybones!)

So yeah, I kept this fish for the five years after leaving Angoulême. It was in my document folder all the time...because I didn't know where to put it. But when I was leaving for home, I decided that it was no use keeping it any longer...but still wanted to preserve a digital memory of it!

I can make GIF files!

I just went for a Photoshop workshop. It was on Saturday and Sunday, the whole day on both days. I found out about it from work...and after asking around whether other people were interested, ended up going there in a group of seven. (there were supposed to be nine of us...then some cancelled, some got replaced, and some didn't turn up :| ) We were the majority in the class...there were only three or four other people :P

The course was in JMTI (Japan Malaysia Technical Institute). I don't know why the acronym is in English...nowhere did I see the name written in English...it was always in Malay (do the translation yourself! :P ) They taught us all about the different features of Photoshop...it was all very quick, so we managed to try out a few things and find out what the program can do...but to be good at it, I guess we'll need to practise!

Anyway, I found out that Photoshop can create GIF files. I never knew what program could make them...and I never took the time to find out (I didn't need to make any anyway!). So here's the first GIF I made (during the course):


So how do you like it? ;)

Unfortunately Blogger doesn't support GIFs...it only displayed the first frame! So I needed to upload this on Google Docs and then load the GIF from there. Thanks to a forum and this guy's post...and the commenter who said:

The key for me was to publish under the privacy setting "Public on the web - Anyone on the Internet can find and view" and then right clicking on the image to copy the link.

Images that used authentication didn't load in Firefox or IE, so the other permission settings didn't work for me. Hope that helps anyone else with this quirky problem!

I didn't even try it without the "public" setting. :P

Edit: animated GIFs, I should have said. Because non-animated ones are easy...you just save them in that format! :P (Thanks to Alberto for pointing that out to me! lol )

Takrif satu radian

I've wanted to write about this since I was packing my stuff to leave France for good. (more than a year ago!) But procrastination sort of got the upper hand. :P

So now I think I will spread them out over a few posts.

You see, when I was packing, I needed to make sure my luggage wasn't overweight...so I had to throw some stuff away. Some things I really didn't need any more...and if I brought them back it would be to bring them from one dust-collecting storage to another. But some of these have sentimental value...so I took photos of them before saying goodbye.


Remember these buku latihan? They're the same in all schools...apart from the logo. These are my Add Maths notes...I brought them to France for reference, but I think I never used them :P

A peek inside the cover...


We started learning Add Maths with Sukatan Menbulat! (I don't even know what that's called in English :P ) Tahukah anda takrif satu radian? lol

(And you see...learning Maths in BM hasn't hurt my English in any way...but I think I'll keep that rant out of this post.)

Sunset after the rain

It has been raining rather often in Penang lately. (and in the rest of the country too, it seems) I can't remember when I took this photo, but it was after a rather heavy downpour during office hours...and when I was driving home from work I got this blinding sunset in my eyes (thank goodness for sunglasses).

But blinding or not, I found the colours really beautiful...like a "real" sunset! lol One that we don't see all that often...

So I pulled out my camera (I somehow "managed" to be the first car stopped at the traffic light) and quickly snapped a photo...there wasn't much time to adjust any settings, even the little time I used to switch to scenery mode cost me a motorcyclist's head in front of me (see that roundish shape in the photo? :P )


Anyway, even though the photo is a bit blurred, and not exactly the greatest sunset photo one could hope for...I still like it because of the lovely colours! (or colour...lol) Doesn't it look a bit like the sepia effect we can choose on phone cameras?

It was a lucky thing that the photo challenge was still going on at the time... You might have noticed that it is over now (or more like on hold...we might find new topics later on! For 2012 maybe... :P ) Well, because of the photo challenge I had been bringing my camera around...these past few days it has been hibernating at home! I'm wondering whether I should start bringing it out again...

White and green

I heard this riddle on Fort Boyard the other day.

The white is not white,
The green stays green.

It was a riddle given by the professor, and if the chosen team member answered it correctly, they would receive a clue to the secret word for unlocking the treasure. (if you've watched Fort Boyard before)

Anyway, the guy in question managed to answer it...and I went "wow!" 'Cause I would never have guessed it myself...

What about you? Any ideas?

Answer further below...

























The answer is "house".

Because the White House is not white, and a greenhouse will stay green.

But WW said the White House is white! I don't know...maybe it's a shade of something close to white? :P

Noodle comparison

People say that Penang has great food. It's not that I agree or disagree...but there are particularly two dishes that exist both in Kuantan and in Penang but are very different, and I miss the Kuantan version!

The first is curry mee. (click on the photos to enlarge)


The curry mee in Kuantan is often served with yong tau foo...we go and select the pieces we want, then ask for the kind of noodles (yellow mee or meehoon, or a mixture of both) and the kind of soup (we can have curry or plain soup) we want. In Penang the curry mee comes with cockles and blood cubes, which quite a number of people will say they don't want; tau pok (what do you call that spongy tofu thingy? lol), and sometimes cuttlefish (unfortunately this stall doesn't have that :( )

(all these photos are of "tapau-ed" food...so they're not exactly how the sellers present them)

The soup is also different...the Kuantan version comes with the chilli already mixed in the soup. In Penang the soup is really bland, and the chilli paste is placed on a spoon (or as a blob beside the noodles if you take-away). So you can decide how much chilli you want to mix into your soup. (in Kuantan the method is to pour hot water to dilute the soup...if you take-away :P )

And another thing...when we simply say "curry mee" in Kuantan when ordering, we will receive yellow noodles...while in Penang we will receive mixed yellow noodles and meehoon! So if you are particular about what noodles you get, you'd better be precise in your order... As for me, I just order "curry mee" everywhere :P

Oh, and I feel so weird eating yong tau foo with rice (in Penang they sell it with yam rice or white rice). Sometimes I wish I could buy noodle soup with the yong tau foo...but then I can also "tapao" and then cook noodles in the soup at home (though that means washing an extra pot! Yeah, I'm lazy...)

Okay, next noodle comparison. Yee mee (or yee foo mee):


As you can see, these are completely different! And whereas I like the two curry mee versions about the same (they're just different dishes), the Penang yee mee can't hold a candle to Kuantan's one. We can find the Kuantan yee mee somewhere in Jelutong, I think...but I'm not sure how to go there. :P

The Kuantan version has the noodles all crispy, and then they are soaked in the sauce. We can eat it while the noodles are still crispy, or wait till they are soaked till soft. The inset photo is before the noodles were soaked (right after the sauce was poured onto them). As I mentioned above, these dishes were "tapau-ed", so the presentation is a little wanting... :P

As for the Penang version...there's nothing much to say about it...

Usually stalls selling yee mee will also sell char hor fun (which is basically the same as yee mee, except that they use kuey teow instead of these noodles) and hokkien char/hokkien mee. And this last item is another thing to be careful of, when ordering...

In Penang "hokkien mee" is equivalent to "prawn mee" in other states. You know, the soup kind (which looks a bit like diluted curry mee lol). And what they call "hokkien mee" in other states is called "hokkien char" in Penang.

But! What's more, the hokkien char (to avoid ambiguity, let's not use the term "hokkien mee" :P ) in Penang is still different from the one in Kuantan (I don't quite know about the other states, but I'm pretty sure they're like Kuantan...). In Kuantan the hokkien char is dark brown, almost black, and dry (well, almost...maybe I should say damp? lol). In Penang it is a bit like their yee mee...a little soupy. In any case I don't like hokkien char much (either version), so that's why I don't have any photos :P

And to end this post, here's a yummy beef noodle soup found in Kuantan...in Bukit Sekilau. (I don't know the shop name, but it was at walking distance from my house before we moved...if you know where I lived :P ) I have yet to find beef noodle soup in Penang, I think...


I took the photos of the Kuantan dishes during my last trip back home...then took their Penang counterparts after getting back here. It's been some time, I just haven't gotten around to blogging about it :P

Laughs in the workplace

A couple of anecdotes for your reading pleasure.


The other day when I was leaving with P to go to the canteen, B said, "Your brother is so good."

I just laughed and left...and P asked me on the way, "What did she say?"

I repeated it to him, and my "brother" asked, "Who is your brother?"

Hahaha...it just shows that this is an "unofficial" brother. Did we ever sign an agreement on this anyway? :P


Then yesterday was the boss's birthday, and we had a little party, with cake... One guy had a portion with a strawberry on his plate, and I think he said he didn't want it. Then suddenly F said, "WP wants it... what la WP, you want it but don't dare to say..."

All this out of nowhere... *speechless* (he was joking, of course) Then F took the strawberry and ate it.

It took me a second to recover from the first accusation...then I asked him, "Why did you eat it when you knew I wanted it?"

And he made a gagging gesture, like he was going to spit it out for me...and said, "I wanted to make juice for you..."

*speechless*...again