Safety first

Our radios are so tough that when I knock one off the table, I make sure it will not fall onto my foot rather than try to stop it from hitting the floor.

This reminds me of the time when we were joking around; I'm not sure what triggered it, but I said that they could just toss the radio out of the window to pass it to me. My colleague responded, "I'm afraid it might break your head instead!"

Note: Our radios (i.e. walkie-talkies) are intended for public safety organisations, so they are made to last through extreme conditions.

Pika-pi, Pikachu!

The other day a friend heard my SMS ringtone. He exclaimed, "That's a cute ringtone!", and then added, like an afterthought: "Did it just say 'Pikachu'?"

Usually people hear it say "Pikachu" and then say it's cute. But I guess in this case, he heard the high-pitched voice first and found it cute, then realized belatedly that it seemed to have said "Pikachu"!

Making a mess

I don't understand people who insist on using messy spacing for their debug/POC code, and then clean it up later. Doesn't it take more effort to clean up rather than to use proper spacing the first time round?

 

It's like making an unnecessary mess even when you know you will be the one cleaning it up later.

To paraphrase Uncle Bob of Clean Coders, you don't work more quickly by being messier, you do that by being cleaner!

(My company bought licenses for us to watch a batch of Clean Coders videos. Even though the content is not bad, I actually dislike Uncle Bob because of his tendency to over-dramatize his lessons.)

Jawi oh Jawi

All this talk about Jawi...but do people really know what it is? This is an article I wrote years back when a French friend asked me what writing we use in Malay. Sure, we use the Latin alphabet. But there was previously Jawi...

As you can see from the picture in the blog post, it is an alphabet. Different symbols to represent different sounds, similar to Russian and Korean, to name a couple of languages. Of course we wouldn't want to make it compulsory for our kids to learn Russian or Korean in school...it would be too much work! However, Jawi is a writing used for the Malay language which they are already learning. And as far as I can see, the plan is not to force students to be proficient enough in Jawi and use it to replace the Latin alphabet.

I actually learned a bit of Jawi when I was little...self-taught using a book that my grandfather had. It wasn't difficult to understand the concept, but to read a text, of course I had to decipher each letter of the alphabet one by one, like when we started learning how to read as kids! In the end I stopped learning because I spent too long deciphering the texts and it became boring. (it was just me and the book...and not very interesting texts at that :P ) Now I have forgotten most of the alphabet. The only thing I remember very well is "petua roda"...which those who have learned Jawi will probably know. :P

So I have no objections to learning a bit of Jawi. And I fully support it being for everyone. After all, imagine going overseas and having a special code to write to your fellow Malaysians in... ;P

Mon premier commentaire adoré

I don't know when my Youtube language preference sort of switched to French...but I'm just going to let it be. Anyway, I received this e-mail after commenting on someone's video.

This is a notification that the Youtuber has put a heart on my comment. In French, they say "adore" when saying that they love something, so the notification stated that he had "adored" my comment. It sounds rather funny...especially at the bottom where it says literally, "Show the adored comment". I can't help but wonder what the English version would say.

I seldom post Youtube comments, so this is the first time I'm seeing this heart thing. (there's now a heart next to my comment on the Youtube page) I searched online, and turns out that it's a way for Youtubers to highlight comments for other viewers to pay more attention to.

(In case you're wondering, the title of this post says "My first adored comment".)

Eiffel Tower in the city

There is a park (if we can call it a park) on my way home from work, where they often change the decorations. These days there is an Eiffel Tower (a rather stocky one) and some hot-air balloons.

And some - are those reindeer? - looking up into the sky... They look like they're worshipping the hot-air balloon.

Gian

In Hokkien there's a word that means "to really wish/crave for something": pronounced "gee-ann" in one syllable, with a hard G. Hokkien is not supposed to be spelled, but the other day my brother wrote that word to me as "gian". Today I came across this in Malay, in a joke:

Saya: Doktor, apakah masalah saya?
Doktor: Tiada masalah. Cuma gian nak travel.

with an x-ray that shows an aeroplane where the heart is supposed to be.

So now I wonder, did they come from the same word? Which language borrowed from which? Or is it just a coincidence?
I even found the meaning of "gian" online:

Definisi : 1. cepat habis, banyak terpakai (minyak dll): orang boros lekas ~, merapu dana hari kemudian; 2. bp sangat ketagih akan sesuatu (dadah dsb). (Kamus Dewan Edisi Keempat)

Very nice Target

Just watched The Target. It is very good! There are these two main characters, one who lands in hospital, the other who is blackmailed to get him out of hospital, then the police who is chasing the one who was in hospital because he is a murder suspect, and also someone who is chasing both the blackmailer and the blackmailed person. Four groups with different goals, all introduced early in the movie. You can't help but wonder what's going on, and it is nicely revealed bit by bit.

In the end, I do wonder who the titular character is supposed to be. Presumably the main character? However, it could be a number of others as well...

Before this I also watched the drama Item. While watching it, I was going to write about it once I had finished. But the ending was disappointing... I felt that they didn't give us enough explanations. I'm still confused over whether I finally like the drama or not, so I didn't write about it till now.

The drama is about items that give the user supernatural powers. We are introduced to different items slowly, and we discover little by little how they work and the "rules" behind them. The beginning, up to the second-last hour (I say second-last hour because each episode is half-an-hour long and each half-hour is technically a half-episode...the credits only appear each hour) was really interesting and I felt that the story unfolded really well. However, the last hour didn't answer the questions that were left. They left a "tail" for a second season, but I still felt they should have wrapped up some other details. I wonder whether they simply did not know how to explain some of the events, and decided to leave it to our imagination.

Revisiting known places

I just realized that I have never written about James Foo. It's a western food restaurant that I used to really like, and always ordered their mixed chicken and lamb grill. The original restaurant was at Fettes Park, and we made the trip all the way there just to visit James Foo. However, in the recent years, a few branches have opened, but it no longer tasted as good as before, so I stopped going. Even the main branch has closed down now.

We went to James Foo again because Snorlax missed the stuffed fish (which is probably still as good as before). I decided to try something new, since I didn't expect the grill to be very good anyway.

My mother ordered grilled Holland pork chop, RM17.80
We felt that the pork was not well-grilled.

I ordered honey-oat chicken chop, RM16.80
The coating was nice and crispy, tasted quite good too. But there wasn't enough of that sauce (the one drizzled over it), and the chicken was sliced too thinly. I would have preferred a thicker but smaller piece (not so spread out).

Snorlax's stuffed fish, RM17.80

 The prices have gone up since the last time we were there. (there was a 6% SST, same as before)

We went to The Six again too. This time I tried one new dish, sautéed spaghetti with seafood and white sauce (RM17.80). The picture has chunks of seafood on top of the spaghetti, but the waiter told us we had to wait 20-30 minutes because they had to bake the dish after sautéeing it, and turns out it was actually cheese-baked, and very unlike the photo on the menu.

It looks quite bad in our opinion. :P But fortunately it actually tastes quite good, not too cheesy, and has lots of prawn, fish, and some scallops inside.

My mother had the roasted duck with rice, which we already tried before. We felt that the duck at London was a lot better. I guess because it specializes in duck, whereas The Six is more of a "general Chinese cuisine" place?

Good but not so good

I have been trying out some new places recently.

One is 19 Hoe Kopitiam at Kuantan Road. The name comes from the address itself, which is No. 19, and is read as "19 hoe" in hokkien.

It specializes in curry mee and cheesy soup noodles.

Two of us ordered the cuttlefish curry mee. The other options were fish or prawn, which were of course more expensive than the cuttlefish version. Our third companion first opted for the fish curry mee, because we were all too scared to try the special cheesy soup. However, after placing our order, he noticed a Facebook "like" icon on the picture of the cheesy noodles, so he decided to change his order.

We all tried the cheesy soup, and it was really quite good. The soup was still liquid, not too thick, just had some creamy feel to it. My other friend didn't like the curry mee very much, and regretted not taking this. I have mixed feelings about it... I still like the curry paste of the curry mee, though I agree that the soup is not that good, it seemed to lack some taste. My friend says that it lacked umami taste. Maybe the fish/prawn version would have been better?

The second place I just tried is Mala Xiang Guo, a place that sells Szechuan stir-fry. We pick the ingredients ourselves and it is charged by weight: RM5.90/100g for meat and RM3.90/100g for vegetables. There is a base charge of RM3 per plate (or should we say per wok?), and certain ingredients (the more expensive ones) are charged separately instead of by weight. A stick of pig stomach (about 3-4 pieces) cost RM5.90! I initially took two because I didn't notice the price tag. After I realized (at the counter), I asked to remove a stick. I wouldn't have taken any if I had seen the price from the start...

Then we can choose which level of spiciness we want (not spicy, mild, spicy, or very spicy), which kind of noodles (RM2), or rice (I can't remember the price). My friend and I both chose glass noodles; hers was mild and mine was spicy.

hers

mine

The bill came up to RM20+ for each of us, including drinks (RM1 for her plain water, RM3.90 for my chrysanthemum tea). Her dish had more "bigger" ingredients, and they weren't mixed together in the stir-fry; instead they were deep-fried and scattered on top. So those ingredients on top were not spicy. Mine had everything stir-fried into the noodles, and it was really spicy...I think I should have gone with the "mild" option. Luckily the noodles came with a bowl of clear soup, and I put some soup on the noodles to dilute the spiciness. I also "washed" the ingredients and noodles in the soup...in the end my bowl of clear soup looked like spicy soup!

Taste-wise it was quite good but not super-good. Or maybe the spiciness drowned out everything else :P It is also quite expensive...probably it would be cheaper if we stir-fried all the ingredients together to share, and then ate it with white rice. White rice would help with the spiciness too...