They went to Budapest

Here are some photos from the minesweeper meeting...since it was partly for that that I went to Budapest...

Meeting up with those who arrived on Thursday (and earlier!)

Friday night get-together, we met up at a "meeting point" not far from the university

Went to a tea house, where there were pool tables... Some of them played (alternating, since there were more than four who wanted to play), some of us just sat at the table and had tea...and went to watch or take photos from time to time :P

The tournament was on Saturday, in the Corvinus University of Budapest; don’t play-play, it was even mentioned in a tourist guide as “the prestigious Corvinus University” ;P

On the door of the room where we played

During the tournament

Group photo session after the tournament with all 23 contestants; I rushed them to have the photo session right away 'cos I had to leave...the tournament ended at 4.30pm and my flight was at about 7.30pm...and it takes about an hour to reach the airport!

Prize-giving...after I left :/
Clockwise from top left: 3rd, 2nd, and 1st place

And I totally have to show you these photos, even though it has nothing to do with the tournament; they were taken by Roman (the 2nd place winner), and they're great! I'm pretty sure he used zoom...I wish I could do that with my camera!

Here I've got to do a round of thanks; thanks to all those I got the photos from, especially Joni who passed a whole lot of them to me! And for the earlier posts as well...thanks to Goh and Reen for the photos! (and whoever they got them from, if they did...) And not forgetting Ai Leen and Goh for giving me the idea of making photo collages! :D

[Note: the title comes from Agatha Christie's book They went to Baghdad]

Korean restaurant

Well, redundantly I shall say that we went to a Korean restaurant for dinner last Friday. :P Here are some photos:
For the entrée (appetizer) Teik Siang had the wantan soup, Goh had the fried wantan with salad, and we three girls shared the one in the middle; it's a kind of egg-and-flour thing, I think...we chose one with seafood. (there were 2 other choices...one with veggies, and I've forgotten the other :P)

These are our main dishes; I won't bother telling you who had what, because in a later photo I'm sure you'll figure it out...

This is the barbecue that the guys chose; chronologically clockwise from top right ;) They brought the barbecue grill with the meat set on top, and another plate of meat on the side. The meat was sliced really really thinly!

Dessert...recognise something? :P Ribbon biscuits (I think they poured warm honey over it just before serving) and a variant of onde-onde...white with no filling inside.





The restaurant is nicely decorated :)
And the food was good too! It was the first time I tried Korean food; it was spicy, and I'd say just the right amount of spicy! (not like the noodle house I went to once where they put a raw cili padi on the noodles before serving and called it "spicy"...duh!) The dessert was a little disappointing...I was hoping to try something new. For something you can find in Malaysia, it's pretty expensive too! But in France I guess the price is acceptable....especially for the French. Me, I wanna eat ribbon biscuits when I get back! (but theirs are nice, really...the biscuits are so thin!)

lol hope that didn't make anyone too hungry :P

Riddle - find the word!

“What English word is 9 letters long, and each time you remove a letter from it, that word will still remain an English word… from 9 letters all the way down to a single remaining letter?”

Answer below, as usual.














RESTARTED
RESTATED (remove R)
RESTATE (remove D)
ESTATE (remove R)
STATE (remove E)
SATE (remove T)
ATE (remove S)
AT (you know remove which one right?)
A (need I say more?)

Mixed rice

This makes me hungry!!!
(Check it out yourself :P)

Bloody fish heads...let’s make curry!

This post title is, well, a little “special”. I cleaned some fish (sardines) yesterday and ended up with a pile of bloody fish heads...and I thought of it (and especially of fish head curry! lol). Sorry for those who might find it a little gross :P

I had already bought sardines before in Angoulême (fresh ones, I mean, not tinned ones), and I remember that the bones had been taken out so that all that was left were the two sides of the fish, and I fried them. I hadn’t bought them since I moved to Lyon (I hadn’t even seen them!), and on Wednesday when I saw fresh sardines in the supermarket I decided to buy them to make curry, since Hidayah had recommended them (not with the heads, though! :P). It was a pack of 10 sardines (sold by weight, though), but this time they were whole sardines (not even cleaned!)

Now during my practical last summer I was in a Portuguese (well, in France but with Portuguese workers) company, and they had a barbecue with sardines (they said that the Portuguese like sardines a lot). So since I had a whole lot of sardines, I decided to try grilling some of them in my pan, that is, to put them straight into a hot pan with nothing else (and sprinkle salt while grilling)

At the beginning I did wonder whether I should put a little oil, but my pan was oily after grilling it, so I’d say that sardines are oily, so there’s no need for oil...And anyway, if I put oil it would become frying, wouldn’t it?

In fact I was a little too lazy to take the scales off the fish...so I just peeled them off the cooked fish when it was easy, and munched them when they didn’t peel off easily. I don’t know whether there are any adverse health effect of eating fish scales...but then again, if I eat fried fish fins, why not eat grilled fish scales? :P (and we DO eat the whole ikan bilis...fins, scales and all)

You might ask yourself what’s the point of this post...well, there isn’t really one :P I just felt like writing about this. But we could say that the conclusion is: why fry sardines? Grill them!

Budapest photos!

Okay, finally I got around to posting my photos from Budapest.

These two were taken before crossing the river to the Buda (west) side, my hostel was on the Pest (east) side. In the first photo you can see the Buda Castle and the Chain Bridge, and in the second the Fisherman’s Bastion and Matthias Church.

And while crossing the river, we get the best of both sides: from left, the Parliament, the river with the Chain Bridge, and the Buda Castle.

the Parliament; note its shadow on the water!

the Fisherman’s Bastion

the view from the Fisherman’s Bastion







model of the Fisherman’s Bastion and Matthias Church

two views from the Buda Castle

going up Gellért Hill, it’s tiring!










resting after reaching the top

view from Gellért Hill: was it worth the climb?

St Stephen’s (István in Hungarian) Basilica
(I decided to put both photos together since they're almost the same anyway)

Heroes’ Square

the Vajdahunyad Castle

I suppose you noticed that there were some other people in the photos of Gellért Hill...the guy is one of those who came for the minesweeper tournament as well, and the girls were staying in the same hostel where we were staying.

Hope you liked the photos! ^_^

Minesweeper tournament

Well, I don't know how many of you actually saw my previous post in time and managed to watch the live results...but there was a problem and not all the scores were published in real time, some players' names were missing! The missing names have been added now...and I'm 12th out of 23 players: right in the middle! I didn't play too well, but not too badly either, I guess...I'd say it was an acceptable performance. But I'd hoped to get at least 5 sub-20s and 5 sub-70s, I got the 5 sub-70s all right, but only got a 19...I got 8 20s though, so it was pretty close... The thing is, I got an 18 before the tournament started, and I missed a 16 during the tournament...that was a pity.

(Don't worry if you didn't understand the last part, it's minesweeper talk ;) )

Anyway, for those who don't get how it works, we have 3 hours to play, and our score is the total of our 5 best intermediate games and 5 best expert ones. (the lower the better, of course!)

Oh yeah, and I forgot to update the clock on the sidebar for the French time (we had passed to summer time a few weeks ago), so that might have been confusing...I've corrected it now.

I'll post photos of my trip later ^_^

Live updates

Today's the day of the Minesweeper World Championship in Budapest! The guys managed to come up with something to put the results live online, so I decided to share it with you ;) Click here to go to the official IMC announcement; there are two links to check the scores.

We'll be playing from 1.30pm to 4.30pm, so that's when the live scores will come in handy...the time in Hungary is the same as in France, so just check the sidebar for the time here right now ;)

That's all for now... I hope I don't play too badly :P

A couple of quotes

"The first question I ask myself when something doesn't seem to be beautiful is why do I think it's not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason." -John Cage

"When I came back to Dublin I was courtmartialed in my absence and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence." -Brendan Behan

Histoire d'amis

C’est l’histoire de deux amis qui marchaient
dans le désert. À un moment, ils se
disputèrent et l’un des deux donna une
gifle à l’autre. Ce dernier, endolori mais
sans rien dire, écrivit dans le sable :

«Aujourd’hui mon meilleur ami m’a donné
une gifle ».

Ils continuèrent à marcher puis trouvèrent
un oasis, dans lequel ils décidèrent de se
baigner. Mais celui qui avait été giflé manqua
de se noyer et son ami le sauva. Quand il se
fut repris, il écrivit sur une pierre :

«Aujourd’hui mon meilleur ami m’a sauvé la
vie ».

Celui qui avait donné la gifle et avait sauvé
son ami lui demanda :

« Quand je t’ai blessé tu as écrit sur le sable,
et maintenant tu as écrit sur la pierre.
Pourquoi? »

L’autre ami répondit: 

« Quand quelqu’un nous blesse, nous devons
l’écrire dans le sable, où les vents du pardon
peuvent l’effacer. Mais quand quelqu’un fait
quelque chose de bien pour nous nous devons
le graver dans la pierre, où aucun vent ne peut
l’effacer ».

Apprends à écrire tes blessures dans le sable
et à graver tes joies dans la pierre.

PS: l’amitié n’a pas de prix et c’est dans les
moments pénibles qu’on reconnaît ses vrais
amis, ne lâchez jamais un ami parce qu’il vous
a fait du mal mais essayez de savoir le
pourquoi ! Toi qui te reconnaîtra parmi ces
quelques amis, merci infiniment pour m’avoir
porté dans ton coeur; sans les amis la vie n’a
pas de sens.

I just came across this post again and decided to translate it for my non-French-speaking friends ;)

Two friends were walking on a desert. They got into an argument and one slapped the other. The latter wrote in the sand: "Today my best friend slapped me".

They continued walking until they came to an oasis, where they decided to bathe. But the one who was slapped earlier almost drowned and his friend saved him. Later, he wrote on a rock: "Today my best friend saved my life."

His friend asked, "Why did you write in the sand when I slapped you, and on a rock now?"

And he answered, "When someone hurts us, we should write it in sand so that the winds of forgiveness can blow it away. But when someone does something good for us, we should write it on stone so that no wind can erase it."

Learn to write your hurt in sand and your happiness on stone.

PS: Friendship is priceless and it is during hard times that we realise who our real friends are. Never let go of a friend because he/she hurt you, but try to find out why! To you, my friend, thank you for welcoming me into your heart; without friends life is meaningless.

Edit (8th June 2008):
I just came across this quote

Write your injuries in dust, your benefits in marble.

Turns out it's from Benjamin Franklin. So that's where this story came from?