Of censorship overdone

Have you heard the song It Will Rain by Bruno Mars? The lyrics start like this:

If you ever leave me, baby,
Leave some morphine at my door
'Cause it would take a whole lot of medication
To realize what we used to have,
We don't have it anymore.

Lately I heard the song on the radio, with the word "morphine" missing. It sounds really strange because I'm already used to the original version! Anyway, it makes me think...why censor this word? Morphine is a drug...but so are so many other medication... As far as I know, morphine is a rather common painkiller that is prescribed by doctors...

This also reminds me of how this same word was censored in a TV show from my childhood, Mighty Morphine Power Rangers! Remember that, anyone? :P It was muted out when the theme song played at the beginning of the show. And it sounded awful, like a broken record with sound missing for a second or so, a few times. (This was also after the theme song had already been playing fully for ages)

Anyway, that censorship on Power Rangers was actually how I found out that morphine was a drug. And when I think about it...sometimes censorship is the reason why children would find out that something is forbidden. And when they find out that it's forbidden...well, you know what they say about forbidden fruit...

Better to just leave the word as it is...after all, morphine is really innocent enough...it all depends on how you use it. Like knives...you don't let a child NOT know that it exists...instead, you tell them to be careful with it!

A detour and a find

Yesterday I went to town with a friend...so we decided to take our breakfast there. I ordered curry mee, and when it arrived, it looked so nice, I decided to take a photo.

Yup, I added comments... :P

 
The curry was different from the usual curry mee we get in Penang...maybe more towards the curry mee we find in Kuantan. Pity I didn't know that when I ordered...the seller asked me, "meehoon mee?" and I said yes. If I had known, I would have asked for mee only...

RM2.60. And with the prawns and cuttlefish, I'm happy... hehe.

At the beginning we were planning to go to the famous Pulau Tikus area...but we couldn't find any parking space. So we decided to go a little further along Burma Road...and we found this coffee shop (sorry, I can't remember the name...but I can find it again! lol) It was almost empty when we arrived...but as we ate, more and more people arrived and by the time we left, someone was waiting for our table. Hmm...are all these people like us, coming here as a second choice since there was no more place to park near the more famous eateries? :P

Not that I would go there especially for this again...it's too far away! But at least I know it's there...if ever we're in the area and have difficulty finding a parking space again...

Who ate my veggies?!

Now this was from last weekend...but I didn't get around to writing about it.

I had bought vegetables from the market...two bunches of them. (and by "bunch" I mean the bunch they grow in naturally...not any bunches tied up by the vegetable seller! :P )

Then when I was separating the leaves out to clean, I noticed that the inner leaves were filled with holes...

Who ate my veggies?!?! lol

(Hehe...that's a parody (if we can call that a parody) of Who stole my cheese? - or maybe it was Who moved my cheese?)

So...I'm not quite sure why the bugs only chose to eat the smaller leaves and not the bigger ones...did the mother bugs lay eggs in the middle of the plant? (I kept expecting to find a bug or a worm inside there... -_- ) Or did the bugs learn that the outer leaves kill, because they are covered in pesticide??

I guess the only way to find out would be to ask those who ate my veggies... provided I can find them first. :P (but if I found them...I'd probably crush them before having the chance to ask any questions)

Shy bear

Ooh...I've fallen in love yet again.

Well? What did you expect?

But again, I had to leave it behind... *sniff sniff* (the price was RM55 in case you're wondering)

It was wonderfully soft! The body was really thin though...it was soft mainly because of the fur and not because of any filling! Maybe you can see from the photo that I was squeezing all the breath out of it...if it had breath, that is. :P

There was a ribbon around its neck...the dark brown thing that you can see near my hand. And on the ribbon was written: Shy bear. I guess that's why its hands are like that! (yeah, they're sewn together that way...that was what drew me to the teddy bear in the first place) If you peek under those arms, you will see its eyes...

It's a little strange, isn't it...last time I wore a Winnie the Pooh t-shirt and saw a Winnie the Pooh, and this time I wear a teddy bear t-shirt and I see a teddy bear! I should wear teddy bear t-shirts more often... (or maybe not, to avoid temptation... :P )

(Oh yeah...this was in Gurney Plaza...please someone buy it for me...please please :P )

Word verification or photo verification?

I was reading a blog and I wanted to leave a comment. At the bottom of the comment form, there was a word verification field to prove that I wasn't a spam bot.

Er... What is that on the left?? How do we type it out?

I thought it was a strange photo that had somehow made its way into the word-image files...but the next few photos were the same! It was always a combination of a "normal" word and a photo of some object with some kind of symbol on it. (usually there are two word-images)

Then finally I got this one:

At last, something I can actually read! lol

So that's what the photos are supposed to be... Well, good luck with the first one, though. :P

One step at a time

Il est surprenant comment, après tout ce temps, ça reste une plaie. Comment ça n'a pas encore cicatrisé...

The pain dulls, like when you live with something for so long, that you don't notice it any more. But once in a while, something will make you look at it and say, "Oh! It's still here..."

Et puis on se rend compte qu'on n'a pas encore oublié. Peut-être qu'on ne l'oubliera jamais.

Mais pour oublier, il faut d'abord que ça cicatrise. Si ce tour n'est pas encore joué...comment passer à la suite?

The trip to Cameron Highlands

Last month, we made a weekend trip to Cameron Highlands (led by a couple of colleagues who had already been there several times). For most of us, our participation was "pay up" and "show up"; we paid some money in advance for the apartment we were renting, and for the food we were going to bring there (to make steamboat). Then after they had decided on a time of departure, we had to show up at that time.

We left at about two in the morning, because we wanted to get there in time to see the sunrise. (hence the worry that some people wouldn't "show up" in time :P ) Anyway...I'll spare you the details and show you how the sun looked like when we first arrived at the sunrise-viewing spot.

I hope you can see the tiny bit of sun

It was raining a bit when we arrived in Cameron Highlands...so we went to the hotel and took shelter there for a while. Then when the rain stopped, we went to the sunrise-viewing spot, as I called it.

A little later...

the photography enthusiasts with their huge cameras and tripods (no, the leftmost one doesn't count :P )

we girls taking a photo while waiting for the sun to appear more

as it got brighter, we could finally see where we were (and where we would end up if we fell down...)

tea...

It would be a long fall...

After the sunrise (and after taking all the photos we wanted to), we went to a tea plantation. We had to wait outside for a while because it was still too early, the plantation wasn't open yet! There was a little waterfall thingy (can we call that a waterfall?) and some pretty flowers on the roadside where we waited...so some of us started snapping photos again.

I like this one...lovely rose, complete with dew on it ^_^

Then we went into the plantation...we had to walk up a bit to a little terrace-restaurant, where we had breakfast.

can't believe I managed to catch the sunrays with my camera...those high-tech cameras the others were using must have captured them even better!
And yup, that's the terrace-restaurant I mentioned.

this is the entrance

There was a shop selling tea, a TV screen showing documentaries on the tea plantation (or Cameron Highlands in general?) and even a tea factory which we could visit...but we didn't go in, partly because we had to wait for the visiting time, and also because we weren't really that interested...

tea, viewed from the terrace

On the way out, we saw people picking tea (click on the picture, in larger size you might see them!)

or I'll just zoom in for you :P

And then...since we had so many professional photographers with us, of course we had a few special shots. Here are all the girls, photo courtesy of our driver Philips :P

From left: Doris, yours truly, Nichole and Yi Yin

He also took photos of us on the terrace.

the guys after breakfast
From left: Beng Sun, Ch'ng, Frankie and Samson

The table wasn't big enough for all of us, you see...so here are Wooi Kiang and Steven

And of course, it wouldn't be fair to leave out the person who took all those photos... so here's a photo of him, courtesy of Frankie.

Cute, eh? Kekeke...

There are more photos...I'm not sure how many, but this isn't the last post on this trip! ;)

Of self-bloating mirrors

I just saw a blog post (I say "saw" because I didn't read it all the way through, just skimmed through it) about a girl getting injections in her face to look prettier. She says that her chief complaint about her face is her eye-bags, and she decided the get injections in her cheeks to make them look fuller too.

Okay, this isn't new...everyone's heard of botox, right? But what makes me gasp is how excited she sounds about the whole thing...she sounds like she's a little child who's been shown into...Charlie's chocolate factory? Maybe she has to sound excited because it's a commercial...but still...I think the excitement is overboard.

Now maybe some people are going to say, "Easy for you to say, you don't have any eye-bags to hide anyway". I'm not sure whether that's true...I actually have difficulty making out dark circles under anyone's eyes, be they mine or other people's. I don't even stare at anyone's eyes that much. Not enough to notice any eye-bags.

I might not be sure about the eye-bags, but I'm sure about one thing...in Penang everyone is saying that I'm thin. :O (and that they're fat) And here I am, unable to wear some of my jeans...

Don't get me wrong, I refuse to say that I am fat (plus I don't dare, because some people are going to kill me if I do). But I do wonder what's wrong with some people's eyes...once someone said that I would disappear if I lost weight. Hey...I'm not even blown away by the wind yet, okay?!? Don't speak like I'm only skin and bone...it's not even a compliment, I don't want to be skin and bone!

I want to be skin, flesh, and bone...all in correct proportions, if possible. :P

Kung fu noodles!

Ever heard of maggi kung fu? This is what it looks like:

Sorry, the photo's taken half-way through eating...I didn't think of blogging about it until then!

I went to a Malay stall eatery (it's not a stall, but not a restaurant...just a roofed space on the roadside) not too far from my place, on my way home today. I had wanted to try it for some time, but there isn't much place to park there, so I always ended up thinking, "nah, let's not risk it..." Today I finally made it there, and ordered this (and nasi goreng ayam merah, which was not bad but more like nasi paprik actually) for take-away.

I saw maggi kung fu on the menu, and asked the guy there, what is this? He said, the gravy is thick. Then I asked, is it spicy? And he said, it can be spicy or not, as you like. -_- I find that Malay food sellers like to say that...but when I ask, I usually want to know the "normal" state of it, you know? Or else I would need to say "pedas" or "tak pedas" each time I order it...

Actually the maggi mee is deep fried, somehow...then we pour the sauce on it. It's not bad...but the noodles look like they come from a single packet of Maggi, which is...um, not much. (okay for me, but definitely not enough for WW) There's a lot of squid, though...and that is enough to make me happy with it :P But I think the guy who took my order could have told me it came with seafood...I mean, what kind of description is "the gravy is thick"?? And there I thought it was fried noodles with sticky sauce...lol

The fried rice was okay...not exceptional but good enough, I guess. I might go there again. :) They also cook dishes served with white rice...but that will have to wait till there are more people to go there.

Tumbling down the hill

We had planned to go hiking after work, but it rained in the morning and was rather cloudy in the afternoon. So we were discussing whether to go ahead with our plan.

Me: I'm worried about falling down (if the ground is slippery)
C: If you fall I'll carry you down lo, what to do...
Me: I'm afraid you'll just roll me down the hill instead...
C: (starts to laugh) You also know ah...
(and after a while) I'm not so unkind, I will wrap you up first, so that you won't feel painful when you roll down...

Great friends I have, huh? -_-

Hahaha...okay, really, it's pretty funny. :P


Oh, and I cut myself on the finger last Saturday. Not a really bad cut, but deep enough to draw blood. And the lousy thing is that it's really easy to rip open again :( I already ripped it open once Saturday night, and today I kept a plaster on it the whole day so that I wouldn't tear it at work. When I got home and took off the plaster, I was glad to see that it was better... and then I tore it open again. Drawing blood again. -_-

So much for being plaster-free tomorrow. I don't like plasters very much because I feel that they trap my skin, not letting fresh air through. Oh well, I'll see how it is tomorrow...