Circumventing the sun

"This day is momentous considering that you have circumvented the sun once more."

Since a few years back, our HR has been sending us e-mails with a GrabGift for our birthday every year. (Before that, it was a physical Starbucks card.) The first time I read this in the birthday greeting, I felt that it was original. (though not very impressive :P )

I think I started disliking this phrase starting from the second time I read it. And each year, I dislike it more and more. It's like our HR keeps copy-pasting the same stale greeting every year. This year a new person sent out the e-mail, but it seems like they still decided to keep the same old greeting. Maybe they are new to the company and find it original? :P

A second visit to GLK

Read about the first visit here.

This time, we ordered the same kind of steamed fish, but with a different fish.

cai po steamed tilapia, RM43

fish maw tofu, RM23

sambal paku, RM13

We initially ordered two plates of rice, but when the tofu arrived (the first dish to arrive), we were shocked at how big it was, and told them we would only take one plate of rice.

Together with the thick meat on the fish, this was a very filling meal for the three of us.

Lim Kee curry fish head

My mother found this restaurant in Klebang, so we went there to try some of their dishes.

Quite a lot for three people!

Curry fish head (RM40) was nice and creamy, not very spicy. Though my mother said it did not have the proper fragrance of curry.

Char siew (RM23) was not as tender as I would have liked, but my parents both said it was fine. The sauce was a little too sweet for our liking, but otherwise it was good. It came with some pickled cucumbers on the side.

The tofu (RM18) was super soft and smooth! The sauce was normal, but the silkiness of the tofu made this dish very good.

A cafe within walking distance

In Meru, there is a grocery store cum cafe in a row of shop lots just beside our apartment. We had gone there before, but never tried the food.

The morning before we drove to KL, we decided to give this cafe's breakfast a try.

There was a huge selection of nasi lemak dishes on the menu, but the cashier/barista told us that they only had ayam goreng berempah. Too early, maybe? It was 8am+, and they open the whole day from 7am till night (11pm I think).

The fried chicken was crispy, and the sambal was not bad. Plain nasi lemak costs RM4.90, and adding the chicken costs an extra RM4.90.

The stars were the drinks, though.

matcha latte, RM6.90

cappucino, RM8.90

We enjoyed both drinks. The matcha latte was very creamy. The cappucino was good too, according to my mother (I tried it, but since I'm not a fan of coffee, I didn't like it). When we ordered, the barista asked whether we wanted sugar in the cappucino, and we said a little (he didn't ask about the matcha). The drinks arrived with a packet of sugar on the side, but we didn't need them; the level of sweetness was just nice!

The name of the shop is MS Grocer & Caffé. Classy enough to use an Italian word...I don't think there were any Italian dishes on the food menu, though. :P

Zainal's satay this time

Just two posts ago, I was posting about satay… let’s follow up with Zainal Satay in Meru. It is located at ShamAyor char kuey teow (which sells a lot of other food besides char kuey teow, by the way). The ckt there is decent, but even better is the satay. We had tried it earlier this year, and we wanted to have it again.

This time, they told us that they had duck satay that day. So we decided to try it.

char kuey teow udang, RM7 if not mistaken

clockwise from top: chicken, beef, lamb, and duck satay

Chicken satay was RM1.20 each, beef was RM1.30 each, lamb and duck were both RM1.80 each. We only took 3 sticks each of lamb and duck because they were the most expensive, and we had never tried them before.

The chicken was good (like we remembered), and the beef and lamb were both good, but the beef had a few tougher pieces (we couldn't remember whether it was also that way the first time).

I wasn’t so happy with the duck satay, because even though the meat was tender, I felt like they had used smoked duck to make the satay (instead of fresh duck meat). As you can see from the photo, the duck satay is smaller in size, and very uniform in shape. I also felt that the taste of the marinade didn’t really penetrate into the meat…all of this making me think that they used smoked duck meat.

The satay sauce was not that special...probably a little below average. But the taste of the satay is good enough that we don't have to rely on the sauce to make it good. I didn't take a photo of the sauce this time, so here's a photo from our previous visit:

The first time we went there, there were lots of people dropping by to pick up their satay, and we had to wait ages for our order to arrive. To the point that this time, I was wondering whether we should call and order ahead. Not sure whether it was because we were having our dinner earlier, or whether because it was a rainy day, but this time there were no other customers and our satay was served fairly quickly.

Take me home!

After lunch at Queensbay one day, we were walking past a toy shop when I noticed a certain orange creature peeking out from behind a Pikachu.

I went to take a look, and Charmander squealed at me to take it home!

Yessir!

It towers over my Charizard (the smaller one; the bigger one is with WW now)

It had a fun time getting to know its new friends, amongst others:

Hamster: Can you roast my kuaci for me?
Charmander: Sure!

And unfortunately a little case of bullying: 😂

"You are not from our generation! We don't want to play with you!"
Cyndaquil: 😢

Charmander: We're from the same generation! Let's play together!
"Aaaaahhhh..... it's a monster!" *run away*

For those not in the know, Bulbasaur and Squirtle were in the first generation of starter Pokemon, together with Charmander. Cyndaquil is the successor of Charmander, the fire-type starter Pokemon of the second generation.

Satay and more satay

After knowing of Ah Basri satay for a long time, and being curious about it, I finally found a proper time to try it.

I ordered two sticks of each chicken satay flavour. I initially wanted to try the lamb satay as well, but seeing how the price is a lot higher, I decided I would only go back and try it if the chicken was good enough.

Upon getting home, I was surprised to find that they had separated each flavour into a different plastic bag. I was glad I didn’t order one stick each of more different flavours! 😅

Verdict? Not super good. But not bad. And the sticks are big, so the price is not too expensive. (Note: the meat is flat, not cubed...so the width you see is not the thickness of the satay.)

The chicken meat is lean, so it is drier than I prefer (but not too dry either, that’s why I still say it’s not bad). The original flavour is kind of bland on its own, but goes well with the satay sauce, which is quite good. The black pepper flavour is better on its own (it has a good black pepper kick), but is a little weird with the sauce. The tandoori takes the last place for me, because it has a tandoori taste, but not such a good one (under-roasted, maybe? :P ), and it doesn’t go well with the satay sauce.

I can’t really say whether I prefer the original or the black pepper flavour. But since I prefer the original one with the sauce, and the black pepper one on its own, and the black pepper satay is more expensive by 33%...I would probably just order the original flavour if I go there again. :P

But I might not go again…Musang Corner satay is better (juicier and more flavourful, I remember) and cheaper too!

The time when I tapao-ed satay from Musang Corner, to go with some leftover nasi lemak biru

Who's surfing?

It seems that I have never mentioned Duolingo on this blog. I started using it more than a year ago (and hit a 365-day streak recently). Initially I just wanted to find out how it worked, after listening to a TED talk by its founder. And then I just decided to continue, with bite-sized lessons each day.

I first selected German as a language to learn, not so much because I really wanted to learn it, but because it seemed to be the most useful work-wise. (We have a lot of German documents, which we translate, so we don't really need to know German…but hey, knowing it would be slightly useful)

After that, as I prepared for my trip to South Korea, I decided that learning some Korean would be useful, so I added Korean to my lessons. By the way, this doesn’t mean that I need to do two lessons a day…I can keep my streak just by taking one lesson a day, in either language.

So I simply alternated the languages, a different one each day.

And recently I added Spanish to the mix…a language that I have already learned before when I was in France…but it is in preparation of a possible trip to Spain for a Minesweeper tournament. (more to come on that if I really go!)

Anyway, that is the intro to my Duolingo usage… but this post is about a specific lesson in German.

The exercise was this:

So the sentence says that my “someone” is on vacation, and this person surfs really well. The options are “dog”, “elephant”, “son”, and “doctor”.

I stared at the photo for a while and decided I did not know who was surfing, then selected “son”.

Yep, as expected, it was wrong. (or else I wouldn't be writing this post :P )

The correct answer was “dog”.

It was only after that that I realized, there is a tail on that surfer!

Making people confused

After work yesterday, I bought salted fish fried bee hoon from a stall at Pisa Corner. It is from the same stall that I often buy tai lok mee and sang mee from. I occasionally order Singapore fried bee hoon as well…but the other two items on their menu, salted fish fried bee hoon and char bee tai bak, are lower on my list, and I seldom order them.

The employee confirmed my order 3 times: once when I ordered, and twice when I went back to get my food. 😂 I do believe that it was my first time ordering this dish since he started working there…

(I have tried every item on this stall’s menu..all of them are yummy!)

Michelin-approved bak kut teh

There is a bak kut teh stall at the Bayana food court which has a Michelin award.

They proudly display it on their stall (the words, I mean...I have no idea whether they get a plaque or something for that), so I noticed it and looked up the stall. It seems that they started out in Butterworth (Raja Uda).

Today I finally gave it a try. I got a set because they seemed to have only sets on the menu...but checking Google now, it seems like they have à-la-carte items as well. I guess they just don't display it as prominently at the stall...

There were three choices for the side dish: oiled veggies, Thai sauce fried tofu, or braised chicken feet (which I selected).

I like the soup and the chicken feet. Very flavourful. As for internal organs, I think there were at least three pieces each of intestine and stomach. Good enough! And it seemed like they were the braised kind (braised and then put into the soup).

I appreciated that they gave a separate bowl of soup, and covered it so that it wouldn't go cold so quickly. It was a miso soup bowl; I opened up the cover for the photo.

What I didn't appreciate was that the soy sauce and dark soy sauce were mixed together in one compartment. So it was like the cili padi was soaked in dark soy sauce. Next time I will have to tell them I only want the cili padi in soy sauce...I don't use the garlic and dark soy sauce anyway.