Baker's Cottage

I was on leave yesterday, and went to Sunshine Square to buy some groceries. Or more particularly, fruits! Fruits are becoming more and more expensive, and Sunshine is still the place with the best price-to-quality ratio that I've found.

Recently I had also heard of a promotion that Baker's Cottage was having for MCO. When I checked their outlets, I found that they had opened a new outlet just outside Sunshine Square. So I decided to try their roast chicken and cakes.

The roast chicken was being sold at RM11.90, which is such a steal. The normal price is RM16.85. There were barbecue and black pepper flavours, and of course I chose black pepper.

The sliced cakes were being sold at RM9.90 for two slices. Without this promotion, there was already a 20% discount at this outlet (from their web page, it looks like they are opening a number of new outlets, and every new outlet will have an opening promo of 20% off a lot of items). The price listed there was RM6 per slice after the 20% discount. Needless to say, I bought two slices.

warmest chocolate

Warmest Chocolate is described on their website as Chocolate sponge cake drizzled with chocolate crumble with layers of creamy cheese mousse.

American Chocolate

On their website, this is described as American chocolate cake filled with layers of chocolate ganache and glazed with creamy L’Opera chocolate ganache.

Both cakes were good, but the American chocolate cake was better, simply because of its chocolatey-ness.

As for the chicken, it is reminiscent of Ayamas chicken, with the rather chewy bite. But taste-wise, Ayamas wins hands down. :P Baker's Cottage chicken is bigger, and it is cheaper too (I can't remember the price of a whole roasted chicken at Ayamas, but I remember it is very expensive!), so I guess it can still easily compete.

Edit: I checked Ayamas's Facebook page, and their promo on the 15th and 30th of every month is one whole roaster for RM24.90 (add RM1 for percik flavour). So I shudder to think of the original price!

What's on TV?

The reflection of Pokemon, that's what!

I placed several Pokemon there, and made sure the TV frame is captured in the photo. It wasn't immediate, I tell ya!

I like Google Lens

Some time after I got my smartphone, Google Lens installed itself on it. When I saw it, I tried it out, and found it quite interesting. It will do an image search with what is captured by the lens, so you can figure out what something is. For example, if I put Pikachu in my lens, it can tell me that it is a Pikachu, and as reference, show me other photos of Pikachu that it has found on the web.

It can also detect text in images, and translate the text using Google Translate.

Today I saw a sign hanging down my neighbour's wall. The words were too small to see (and it was already dusk), and also, they were in Chinese.

After snapping the photo, I zoomed in. I could figure out the word "flower", and on the second line "you can", but I didn't know the last word. That was when I thought of putting it to Google Lens.

Google Lens took the photo, and here's the translation:

After seeing this translation, I went back and snapped the photo that you saw first in the post, with the flower pots. :P Before that, I had only snapped a little of the area surrounding the sign.

A longer time ago (several years back), I had heard of an app that could translate signboards for you in a foreign country. I guess this one can! Whether it's the one I heard of years ago, that I do not know...

Do bears eat durians?

In TeddyVille, the answer is yes! (not sure about elsewhere... :P ) Look at those fruits!

TeddyVille also has a durian stall, with two happy customers :D

 The stall owner is busy opening up more durians!

The extremely bad and the extremely good

All Things Cease to Appear by Elizabeth Brundage has lots of good reviews (I picked it up based on the synopsis though, not the reviews), but after one chapter, I already couldn't keep my attention on it. There is one review on GoodReads that sums up how I feel. An excerpt:

This book is 400 pages long. There are no quotation marks used. Ever. Therefore, there is not only no indication from sentence to sentence of what is spoken, but often there is no indication of who is speaking (call me crazy, but I need this information to follow the story)...and there are clunky, abrupt transitions of past and present and points of view. This made for a challenging and somewhat painful reading experience for me. This book was very well-written, just in desperate need of better editing and stylistic methods. Very dark, deeply-detailed and way too long, this meandered to the point that it became confusing. This was an ambitious drama that enticed me to skim.

At the second chapter, I started to skim. But none of the content of the chapter enticed me to continue reading, or stop skimming and take in some details at some point. Like this review says, I felt like the flow was meandering and I could see no sense or direction (and definitely nothing interesting!)

Most reviews, including this one that is saying that it is hard to read, say that the storyline is great. But first I would need to be able to actually get through the story. As it is right now, I'm not sure whether I will try it again.

This book reminded me of how I felt when I was reading A Painted House. Maybe because of that experience, I am giving up earlier now?

After discarding that lousy book, I picked up Sandrone Dazieri's Kill the Father. Now this one is extremely good! (except maybe for the eyes; I barrelled through the second half) There were some scattered English mistakes/typos throughout; I wondered about the author and the editor, and saw on the copyright page that the original was in Italian. The English translator is actually credited at the end of the book. The writing style is engaging, and I think the translator did a pretty good job there, so I shall forgive him the minor slip-ups. ;) 

The book is the first in a planned series, to take the words from the "about the author" page. I'm quite interested to read the upcoming ones!

Still fan

This week's theme is stillness, as opposed to "motion" two weeks ago.

I thought of taking a photo of a still coin to match my previous photo, but I couldn't make a coin stand still. :P

So I took a photo of something else being still instead.

To not have a reflection of myself in the photo, I used a timer, and it wasn't easy to get the fan in the middle of the photo!

Bears go up the hill

Another touristic spot in Penang is Penang Hill, or Bukit Bendera (turns out that the name comes from “Flagstaff Hill”).

 

And of course the bears visited as well!

Full of bears!

At the tower

The love locks

The funicular tram

A school trip?

The viewing deck

Look at the little bear in the “O”!

A bear couple; did he just propose? :P

Cleaning pots with eggshells

Last year I learned a method of cleaning the blackened bottom of pots and pans, using eggshells. The way is to flatten an eggshell and use it to scrub the bottom of the pot. (I use a hard sponge to "hold" the eggshell.) The blackened bits will come off due to the abrasive edges of the eggshells, while the pot remains unscratched.

I recently cleaned my pan again, and decided to take a photo of "before" and "after" surfaces.

Needless to say, the cleaned part is on the left. (This is in the middle of cleaning, so you can see bits of eggshells around)

Faded signs on a sign

Because this week's theme is signs.

Purchasing monuments

Where can you buy both a pagoda and a pyramid?

The answer is Bread History!

I also bought a sandwich called "Vienna chicken slice"

The pyramid has brown sugar and coconut as the filling. This was stated on the card at the shop.

The pagoda looked interesting because of its form. There was a bit of icing sugar sprinkled on top, but there was no description on its card besides the name. Upon cutting it open, I found that there was some sort of cream cheese filling (not too cheesy, which is good for me).

The bread was nice and soft, but the filling makes it not too special. Maybe I would have liked it better if it was filled with butter and sugar like a Mexico bun.