Today?

That is the question of the day.

I was playing badminton after work, so I changed into my sports clothes in the office. There was only one colleague left there at the time, and he asked, where are you going? I replied, badminton. Then he asked the question of the day: "Today?"

I started laughing... but managed to reply, "Tomorrow?" LOL

He admitted, "I deserved that." Muahaha...

He claimed that he wanted to ask where, but it came out as today. Hmm... I guess that's possible. Gave me a good laugh anyway :D

By the way, this reminded me of another incident with another friend.

I had just gotten a haircut, and when he heard someone remarking on it, he walked over to see. Then he said (or asked), "Cut shorter?"

I replied, "Yes, cut shorter... takkan longer meh?"

This also made me laugh a lot at the time... :D

Spotted in the supermarket freezer

Crêpes camouflaged beside some paratha.

The crêpes are square... not sure whether the edges are folded in, or whether they were cut off. 

This was in Sunshine...

Then in Tesco, I saw a new kind of ondeh-ondeh. I had only ever heard of the kind filled with gula melaka, with coconut flakes on it.

I know this as ta pa kuih, a rather common Chinese snack. (they had peanut filling in the frozen section as well, but I took a photo of this one because the green filling makes it look nicer :P ) I wonder whether it is called ondeh-ondeh for lack of a better Malay name, since it resembles the usual ondeh-ondeh a bit.

I didn't buy either of these... so, there will be no further comments! (in case you are thinking there will be some more photos after cooking...)

Going Dutch

Not sure whether I've tried a Dutch recipe before. But if I haven't, here's the first one!

Some months ago (last October, if my recipe Notepad file was created at that time), a friend made Dutch butter cake and posted a photo of it on Facebook. It looked yummy, so I saved the recipe for "one day". And that day is today!

It's really simple, only using butter, flour, sugar and salt. And everything can be done by hand, no need for a mixer! 

It's not really a cake, though... it's more like a cookie. After baking, you cut it into squares (like shortbread!) and serve.

And the taste? One word: Heavenly. If you love butter you will definitely love it!

before baking

out of the oven!

I have no idea why there are some tsunami-like waves on the cake...

If you want to try making it yourself, here's the recipe: Dutch Butter Cake (Boterkoek)

I should have taken some photos after cutting it into pieces (like that website, and like my friend did); it would look more appetizing that way. But I got busy feeding my mouth and forgot about my camera :P And after putting the pieces into containers, I'm too lazy to bring them out for a photoshoot!

Personal note: I used Anchor butter (New Zealand butter) this time.

Fossilized words

I came across this interesting article recently, on old words that are no longer used nowadays, except as parts of old English expressions. I found that those words sure have rather surprising origins, except maybe roughshod, which I feel we can still guess at its meaning.

Quizzes galore

Lately I've been playing some quizzes on Sporcle. I saved some of my results, because it seemed a waste not to. (pack rat mode ON)

First there was the AL A-to-Z quiz, where we have to find the answers beginning with "AL". The 26 questions each had the third letter going from A to Z, but unfortunately I didn't figure that out until halfway through playing (those are hints!). Anyway, for all these quizzes I paused the game a few times while playing because I didn't want the time to run out. I wanted to think the clues through and get as many answers as I could, without being limited by time.

Followed by another AL quiz, with "AL" in different parts of the word.

Then I found some alphabet food quizzes. Started off with C-foods.

And then Q on the menu, which was a lot harder, probably because Q is such an uncommon letter. Some of these I've never even heard of before. But actually I knew coquille St. Jacques (the last one), except that I probably typed it wrongly (with a dash, maybe? (St-Jacques)), so it wasn't accepted. I even tried typing St Jacques coquille (to use the English order of words), but it wasn't accepted either (I can't remember whether I used a dash in that too!)

Then there's Z on the menu as well, another difficult one. I fared better than on Q, though.

I knew Ouzo! I even tried it when I was in Greeze. But somehow I couldn't remember the actual name... I kept thinking it was "uzo" instead. I had a feeling that I was typing it wrong, but all the variations I tried were wrong too.

In the middle of all that, I tried out a few spelling quizzes too, like this one:

They gave us five minutes for this. Who needs five minutes? :P But then I didn't do so well on a few other similar quizzes... made a number of silly mistakes for trying to be too smart and clicking too fast. :P

Cracker and crackers

I learned something new recently.

Now I'm sure most people have heard of crackers. As in one cracker, two crackers, ... referring to the biscuit or snack.

And then there's crackers, in its plural form only. As in, "That guy is crackers." Meaning that he is crazy.

What I didn't know was that a cracker was also a slang to refer to white people, similar to how nigger is used to refer to black people.

It seems that this word was used in the southern United States because white people used to crack their whips over slaves or animals.

You can read more on Wikipedia. The article also says:

In reference to a native of Florida or Georgia, however, it is sometimes used in a neutral or positive context or self-descriptively with pride (see Florida cracker and Georgia cracker).

So it is not necessarily pejorative.

Anyway, I learned this while watching a quiz show. I never knew of this usage before, but very soon after that, I came across it in a book I was reading (Life Sentences by Laura Lippman). If I hadn't known the meaning, I would probably have thought they meant crazy people. This makes me wonder, have I misinterpreted any other usage of crackers before this?

Another vicious attack

My Totoro got attacked again.

The koala witnesses were so scared they almost fell off their perches (unfortunately I forgot to snap a picture before helping them back on, but you can see them here)

The kangaroo witness had fallen over on his side; probably shoved by the perpetrator. Maybe he hit his head and lost consciousness till morning. (also forgot to take a picture; you can see him here)

But the worst injured was still my fragile Totoro. Gotta make him stronger...

Jigglypuff was fine. (oh, maybe he sang Totoro to sleep, and consequently the kangaroo slept as well) Pikachu too. The red cow had a minor injury on her behind, being torn away from her "home" (see the red pin?)

The tiger on his high perch was unharmed. Nobody dares to mess with Kim Jong Kook! :P

저는김종국입니다
(I am Kim Jong Kook)

Actually some people had come to install some fixtures for us, so they knocked some stuff over. (let's leave it at that; I'm lazy to go into details) I could make another CSI case out of this, but I don't feel like writing so much at the moment.

The red animals were part of our CNY decorations. We were supposed to discard them after CNY but it felt like such a waste...so I adopted them. (there were others, supposed to be adopted by other people, but I'm not sure what happened to them)

Is that a cover?

I hate it when singers release covers of someone else's song when the original isn't even a decade old!

Like Boyce Avenue covering Justin Timberlake's Not a Bad Thing. (I heard it on the radio recently, which is what prompted this post)

Or someone covering Green Day's 21 Guns. The original was so powerful, and the cover was disappointing. AND... the radio loved playing it. :s

There was also Bruno Mars' song - what was it? - I can't remember but I would probably notice if I heard it again, because the cover is slightly different from the original. I didn't like the song that much anyway, and didn't care for the cover either.

You see, when a song is old, the current generation doesn't really know it, so making a cover is like a tribute to the original singer; you want to promote their song to the people of today. But when you cover a "rather new" song, you are basically taking over someone else's song. Or trying to show that you are better than them (or maybe lose... in some people's eyes - or ears). At least that's how it looks like to me.

Are people so desperate to release songs these days, they can't wait to write their own songs (or wait for songs to be written for them)?

Stopping the aging

Lite FM currently has a contest going on called "Stop the Music". It is a rather good concept actually; you listen to the beginning of a song and say "stop" when you feel you can guess the song and the artiste. The prize money starts off at a thousand ringgit, but goes down as the time ticks away.

I had heard the game being played a few times, but most of the time the person couldn't guess the song at all. Once they guessed the song, but got it wrong (correct artiste, wrong song, unfortunately). But yesterday I heard someone win a thousand ringgit! The song had started playing for only one or two seconds (basically I had heard nothing), and he said "stop". I didn't even catch his answer, but it turned out to be correct. He must be a really big fan of the song. :P I don't blame him... it's a great song, I like it too! (never knew who sang it, though)

So here's Forever Young, by Alphaville (never heard of them!)

Currently reading

I'm reading The Blue Handbag by Fiona Robyn at the moment. It's about a widower who found his deceased wife's old handbag, and something unexpected inside. So he goes on a journey of finding out things about his wife that he never knew about.

The synopsis caught my attention because it had the elements of a mystery in it. And true, there is a mystery in the book. But I feel that it is more of an emotional journey; the book describes the main character's thoughts and feelings very thoroughly. It makes the story's progress slow, but somehow I don't find it boring. I can put it down any time, but I do enjoy how the writer describes things.

One not-so-small flaw about this book, though, is that it has quite a number of grammar/typo errors. I have seen words missing from a sentence. I have seen mis-spellings (like stationary instead of stationery). I thought editors were supposed to catch all that? It's not like there are some in every page; it's more like one every few chapters. Doesn't really take the enjoyment out of reading, but a published book is supposed to have ZERO flaws, if you ask me.


By the way, right before this book, I read The Thief by Clive Cussler. One of the best books I've read. The plot was interesting, and the writing style suited me, too. What I don't quite understand is that he wrote it with someone... so whom does the writing style come from? Will other books written with other people (he has a few series with different lead characters, each written with a different person) have the same style?