A new pastime

I somehow started playing DDR (Dance Dance Revolution) again. The last time I played was in France (where some people had the mat), during one of our GE outings. It was one of the games where we were pitted against another player, and I remember winning easily... I had played before in ASINSA (albeit just a little), and the girl I was playing against didn't seem to be able to get the hang of it.

Anyway... I suddenly thought of this game the other day, and looked up the price of a mat online. Lazada was selling a few at around RM50, so I thought, why not? After buying one, I found out that I actually needed to install Stepmania (free software for cheapskates) to use it.

The Stepmania installation came with only two songs (and pretty difficult ones at that), so I had to look for some easy ones. After accidentally downloading a popular mix of songs which turned out to be too difficult, I found a tip on getting Disney songs because they were easy. While at it, I noticed some Pokemon songs and some Korean songs and downloaded them too. The former turned out to be ridiculously difficult, but some of the Korean ones were fine. After some practice on Disney songs, a Korean song Byul by Team (though I cannot find who is Team) became one of my favourites because the steps were simple enough and the song is nice! (listen to it here)

Anyway, there are scores and grades given for each game of Stepmania, and I didn't care much about them at first because they were sooo complicated. But after getting grades like B or C (started off with F and D) I paid a bit more attention... and finally got an A!

I first got an A on a Disney song, and it surprised me to no end because it was the first time I was playing that song. It was a simple one of course, but the tune hadn't been catchy enough to let me pick it earlier :P Then I got another A, on Byul... and I was pretty happy about it :)

After that I still didn't care much... because I found that I could easily slip up on a few steps and the grade would fall back down. But today I got an A (on my (for now, still) favourite song), with "full combo", something that I did not understand. So I searched a bit, and I found something about grading system here. Seems that getting nothing less than "great" would give you a full combo. The page has lots of other details which make my head spin... so I guess I will drop that and not think about those until something else comes up and makes me curious again...

And in the meantime, here's a screenshot of my lovely score :P There's still a bunch of stuff I don't understand... Can you honestly tell me it isn't confusing for you?

Squirtle, I choose you!

I caught a Pokemon on Monday!

Okay, okay, so I bought it... :P For RM15.

This is seriously the most beautiful three-dimensional Squirtle that I have ever seen (I have to mention 3D so that it excludes pictures and animations). I was at the pasar malam on Monday, and I saw a stall selling Pokemon. There were big ones, costing RM40+ and RM50+. Then there were small ones like this, with a string on top with a suction cup to stick onto your car window. The string is not very clear in the photos because I intentionally moved the string out of the way before taking the photos. They had Pikachu and all three starter Pokemon (Bulbasaur, Charmander, and Squirtle if you don't know), and even Eevee, Snorlax and Clefairy (did I miss any?). They had two large Eevee; seems like that one is a good seller; not surprising since it looks like a cute dog to non-Pokemon-fans. They all looked pretty decent, but some had slight flaws that made me give up on them. But this Squirtle is the best! I checked it all over, and there was a bit of excess glue (the end of the tail is glued to the back of the shell so that it won't flop around) on the one on display, so the seller brought out three others and I selected the best one (haha).

Okay, now excuse me while I go train my Squirtle...

Firefly in the house

I was mopping the floor earlier when something fell off the mop. It looked like a small cockroach, and it wasn't moving, so I decided to leave it and sweep it up later. Fast forward to when I had finished mopping (and even finished my dinner) and remembered about the bug, I went back to the corner where it was, and it was no longer on the floor. (Panic! There's a  cockroach on the loose! But fortunately it was a small one so the panic was also small.)

But then I saw the bug on the skirting board on the wall. Okay, fine, I went to get a broom to hit it. But when I hit it, I saw a flashing light...

After I started hitting it and it flopped about with its light on, I went to get my camera. I didn't really dare to get too close to the bug, so I took the photos at about 1-2 feet away, with maximum macro zoom (3×). In a way, the distance was good for the flash... But the photos are still a little blurred.

The bug wasn't dead yet, so after that it managed to flip over.

Even after I swept up the still-struggling bug into my dustpan, it was still lighting up...

And even after I tipped it into my dustbin, tied up the plastic bag... the light was still flashing in there. Good luck, light bug, maybe you'll manage to get out later... though you'll get no help from me!

The curse of the blue shirt

Everyone who plays badminton has hit their low serve into the net before... But when in one set, all your low serves to one specific player end up in the net... you are cursed!

Tonight I hit a few low serves into the net in the first set. In the second set, I switched to another racquet and everything was fine. But in the third (or was it the fourth?) set, all my low serves to one player ended up in the net! After two or three of those, I switched to serving high... but once I tried serving low again, the shuttlecock went back into the net. For that whole set, I didn't manage to serve one low serve to that particular player. That player was wearing a light blue t-shirt today...the only one on the court to wear that colour. So to myself, I called it the curse of the blue shirt!

In the next set, the blue-shirted guy did not play. After that, luckily the curse seemed to be lifted...

In a teacup

Maybe you've heard of a storm in a teacup before. But today I present you: tranquility in a teacup.

This took some effort to achieve... I thought of using the sailboats we folded when we were small, but I had forgotten how to fold them. So I had to search online to find the method. So far, so good. But then when I put the boats on water, they sank because they soaked in the water... which was pretty much expected, I guess. So I took out some scotch tape and taped up the bottom of my boats. It isn't very visible in the photo (although I can still see it if I zoom in on the full-sized pic), but if I turn on the camera flash, it becomes quite clear!

Below is the photo taken with flash. I actually like it better because the colour is much brighter (lighting!), but the reflections of the boats on the surface of the water look strange (besides the fact that the scotch tape is more clearly seen). Most likely because of the scotch tape, the sides of the boat couldn't be reflected on the water! That's a pity... but I don't have waterproof paper to work with. (A thought that came while typing that: And if I taped a piece of paper all over with scotch tape, then made my boat with it? But I'm too lazy to do it again...)

So which photo do you like more?

Today's dishes

There is a famous beef noodles in Penang which we had wanted to try for some time. It was located near a fire station at first, but when we went there, twice it was closed. After that, we found out that it had moved to Carnavon Street, to a shop called ST Loo (the owner is called Loo S. T.). So today we went there to give it a try.

The shop had a huge coffee advertisement, and it was also selling the coffee packets (3-in-1), so we ordered one to try. It came in a small steel mug, with a tall glass full of ice, for us to pour it onto the ice ourselves.

OO white coffee (RM3.20) and beef noodles (RM10)

close-up shot of the beef noodles

The noodles came with quite a lot of pieces of beef meat (beef meatballs, beef slices, beef chunks), tendons, and tripes.

We also ordered a small plate of fried oyster because it was famous together with the beef noodles. The old shop also sold fried oyster, and it seems that they moved here together.

When we ordered the fried oyster, the seller asked us whether we wanted it soft or crispy. We asked him which was better, and he recommended the crispy one because we were eating there. (instead of take-away)

crispy fried oyster omelette (RM7)

The omelette was very crispy, but it was quite different so we didn't feel like we were eating oh chien... In the end we felt that it might have been better to opt for the soft version.

Then for dinner we went to the Golden Lake coffee shop (in Relau, close to my house) and had the yee foo mee / char hor fun there. The one at this shop is one of our favourites, but I don't think I've taken a photo before, so here it is!

yee foo mee (RM6 with egg, RM5 without)

The egg makes a big difference at this stall... it is cooked just nice. :)

An unusual blue

It is not often that we see a BMW in blue, let alone this shade of blue!

Peach strudel

Today's special: Braided peach strudel.

Not so long ago, I found a recipe for peach strudel. So today I tried it out. I used canned peaches instead of frozen peaches, so I patted them dry first... not sure whether they were still damper than frozen ones, but the pastry turned out fine.

The recipe called for brushing with egg wash (egg beaten with a bit of water), but I didn't do that. Instead, I had some leftover "syrup" from my peach mixture, and I used that to brush the pastry slightly. I also spread the bits of almond left in the mixture onto the top of the pastries. That turned out to be a good idea, because the almonds got roasted a bit brown and they tasted quite nice.

Here's what they looked like before baking:

Four small strudels instead of one big one.

The leftmost pastry had the pastry stretched the thinnest. After that, I didn't roll the pastry as thin because I thought it might be too thin... But in the end, they tasted practically the same.

After baking:

Most of them was gone once they cooled down... however a bit was left:

I realized I didn't take a photo of a cross-section of the strudel, so this is to make up for it:

Looks good, if I may say so myself :)

Of idiotic responses

The latest in a list of unhelpful responses:

I was going to a friend's wedding dinner and I knew another mutual friend was going. So I asked him (via text message) what time he planned on arriving. His response? He didn't know what time he would arrive because it would depend on traffic (adding on the explanation that it was because he lived on the mainland).

For goodness' sake, I'm not asking you to let me know the exact time you are arriving, to the minute! I know that it will depend on traffic; my time of arrival would depend on traffic too, since I'm not walking there! And even if you don't know what time you will arrive, you would have a general idea of what time you plan to arrive, so that you would know what time to set off from home...

So sick of dealing with idiots. (some of which I did not write about here)

Architecture of a sports complex

In Relau there is a sports complex being constructed. We heard that there will be a swimming pool and badminton courts there, amongst others.

Last Friday's theme was architecture. So this is fitting!