CDG vs KLIA

Who's the winner? WiFi-wise, it's KLIA! ;)

When we were waiting for our flight at CDG (Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris) we tried to use the WiFi connection, but couldn't 'cos we have to pay for it (and we're too stingy for that lol) And now I'm here in KLIA waiting for my connecting flight to Kuantan, and there's free WiFi! :D

I guess the KLIA people know that Malaysians won't pay for WiFi :P

And well, while I'm at it, I'll write this as well: Cuti-cuti Malaysia! :D I'll be here till mid-September ;)

Le talent suprême

Le talent suprême est de faire croire qu'on en a.

- Yvan Audouard

Translation: The supreme talent is to make people believe that we have one.

INSA bowling championship

Last Friday, after our final final test (no, no mistake with the two "final"s ;) ) we had a competition for some of the 2nd-years. We had had to build a machine for one of our subjects, and some groups (like mine) built a bowling machine. It wasn't classic bowling, of course; it was actually a pétanque ball that we were to shoot at, um, pipes :P (you'll see in the photos)

We had to come up with a design, and then actually build the whole machine from scratch (working as a team, of course) My group built 2 machines, this one, which I essentially worked on:
and this one, which is almost undeniably the most spectacular machine in the competition, 'cos it's a pretty unique idea
but unfortunately the chain came off...and here they are trying to repair it...
They didn't manage to put the chain back on, so in the end they had to settle for an alternate solution (sorry, I have no idea how to write it here without going into too much detail)

Here are some other machines:





I couldn't always get photos of the machines alone...





This is the one that beat us in the semi-finals :/








And this is the most dangerous (supposedly) It uses compressed air, so the ball is shot out really forcefully.

The first face-off; we won!

One pin left, and that ball hit it!

The finals

Just stuff (again)

Yesterday I went out of my way to go to a shop (which, by the way, was closed, wasting my time) and I crossed this:

(didn't notice that my finger was blocking the lens a little...)

In Angoulême there are a lot of painted walls (or murs peints as they call it, it means exactly the same thing but somehow it sounds better lol) and we see them quite often. I found out pretty early that Lyon had a lot of them as well, but somehow we don't come across them so often. Maybe it's because Lyon's too big... Anyway, I don't come along this road often so I've seen it before but forgotten about it :P

Here's another photo without the shrubbery blocking it:

Please note that there is a part of the wall jutting out, and it is painted as a pile of boxes/crates being pushed by a man!

I'm not sure which photo is nicer, or gives a better optical illusion... I think I should have taken a photo from further away, so that the building on which it's painted isn't seen so clearly. But I thought that it would turn out too small on the photo...too bad, I'll have to remember to try it next time.

Along another road, I passed a florist and noticed that there was "hibiscus" on its "flowers of the day" chalkboard outside its door. So I looked around for the hibiscus, but didn't see any (I didn't want to go into the shop since I wasn't going to buy anything) But what I did see was this:

and this:

(Anyone know the name of this flower?)

I wonder whether they're considered seasonal flowers around here...maybe they're sold just to put in a house as decoration and thrown away in winter when they droop? (I'm supposing that they will droop...but then I don't really know!)

Anyway...today I made pain perdu (French French toast, so to speak :P) Whenever I buy a baguette (the famous French loaf) I will surely have some left over because it's so long, and that it loses it's fluffiness very quickly (before the next day) So instead of forcing myself to eat half-stale bread the next day, I freeze it to make French toast another day. (I've learnt that you should either freeze it or cut it up before it gets too hard, 'cos once it's rock-hard there is no way you can cut it into nice slices) When there's too much for breakfast, I'll usually heat the rest up in the microwave for lunch (or just do brunch :P), but today somehow I didn't feel like eating plain French toast again, so I did a little "improvising" (if you can call it that)...and ta-dah!

(For the curious: I added a prawn, a bit of olive oil and parsley on each toast.)

It wasn't bad...but it was a little weird... maybe plain bread would be better :P

Search for a song...it ain't easy!

I heard a song on Virgin Radio earlier, and I just couldn't recall the name of the song. I knew I had heard it several times before (in Malaysia), , but I just couldn't recall what it was called. So I did what I usually do when I'm online and I want to know a song's name: I typed in the lyrics I heard and did a Google search. But it was harder than I thought...for the simple reason (yeah, it's simple, but I didn't know it until later, when I had found the lyrics) that I heard round and round instead of around and around, and also wrong and right instead of a wrong and a right! And I had the "brilliant" idea of searching for the whole phrase (with quotation marks), which I don't usually do. (I usually type out the words without bothering the order in which they come in)

I finally found it after trying several different searches (and taking off the quote marks) I knew that title, I think I had listened hard to catch it on the radio when I heard the song several years ago! (it's The Riddle, by the way) So after all that hard work (lol), I present you this lovely, catchy song that I haven't heard in ages! Hope you like it ;)


It seems that an Italian DJ (Gigi D'Agostino) made a remake of this song, I find that it sounds different (there's an accent?), but the video's not bad. I don't like Nik Kershaw's video very much...

Just some stuff...

How to solve a mid-life crisis?

When I was married 25 years, I took a look at my wife one day and said, "Honey, 25 years ago we had a cheap apartment, a cheap car, slept on a sofa bed and watched a 10-inch black and white TV but I got to sleep every night with a hot 25-year-old blond. Now we have a $500,000 home, a $45,000 car, a nice big bed and a plasma screen TV but I'm sleeping with a 50-year-old woman. It seems to me that you are not holding up your side of things."

My wife is a very reasonable woman. She told me to go out and find a hot 25-year-old blond and she would make sure that I would once again be living in a cheap apartment, driving a cheap car, sleeping on a sofa bed and watching a 10-inch black and white TV.

Aren't older women great? They really know how to solve your mid-life crisis.

(from here)

And from the same place (well, almost :P)

Car For Sale

A man was reading the paper when an ad caught his eye. It loudly announced, "$500 Porsche! New!"

The man thought that it was very unusual to sell a Porsche for $500, and he thought it might be a joke, but he said to himself, 'it's worth a shot.'

So he went to the lady's house who was selling the Porsche and she led him into the garage. Sure enough, there was an almost brand new Porsche.

"Wow!" the man said, "Can I take it for a test drive?"

"Sure," answered the lady.

Unlike what he expected, the man found that the car ran perfectly. When he got back to the lady's house, he asked her, "Why are you selling me this great Porsche for only $500?"

Then the lady replied with a laugh, "My husband just ran off with his secretary, and he told me, 'You can have the house and the furniture, just sell my Porsche and send me the money.'"

And...I found out that mo pei yu is called leatherjacket...

Word square

Word Square with a twist. It is a 5 x 5 word square but you are being given 10 clues, 5 for the words across and 5 for the words down. (Usually word squares read the same across as down.)

Across:
1. a fruit
2. to rest
3. to harangue
4. a person who works in a mine
5. characterized by briskness

Down:
1. delicate smell
2. a danger
3. a flat area
4. after
5. to do by effort

Answers below.
















A P P L E
R E L A X
O R A T E
M I N E R
A L E R T

I managed to solve it...even though I didn't know the word orate! :P

Moth in the room

There is a moth in my room. It has 4 days to go out.

The last time I left for a few days (to go to Budapest), there was a moth in my room as well. I tried to shoo it out but it wouldn't go...so when I left I closed the window as usual...and when I came back it was dead. Totally its fault. Hope this one won't suffer the same fate. So get out! (lol like it reads my blog...)

No entry / Do not disturb sign

Yesterday a bunch of my INSA friends were online. But...

(the AAA comes up when it's an MSN user who has decided to use Chinese characters in his/her name...)

What's the point of being online if you put up a "do not disturb" sign all the time? This isn't the first time I've seen such an array of "no entry" signs...though it might be the most of them in a row!

The majority of my friends have this sign up very often. I wonder what they want it to convey...could it really be that they don't want people to disturb them? If that is so, why are they so often online?

I see it this way: When a "do not disturb" sign is put up, I won't disturb the person unless if it's important. But...how important is important? I'm not quite sure... Or I might just leave a message, and not push for a reply... (they're busy, right?) And as for me putting up the sign, I hardly ever do so...I only put it up when I feel that it will take a very long time before I reply...but you can still leave me messages and I'll get back to you! ;)

Curry review

In the past year (this school year in France, I mean, since it's ending in 2 days ;) ) I've tried 3 kinds of canned curry that I bought here, in an Asian mini market. (yes, they have Asian mini markets here!) Since I've been talking about putting up more pictures (and also because I have more free time now :P) I shall grace you with a photo of...the can! lol

Anyway, this is the one I just tried, as you can see, it's green curry. The other two that I tried were red curry (hehe, doesn't sound very interesting, huh?) and mussaman curry (don't ask me why it's called that...) The thing is, the red and green curries taste almost the same to me...only the colour is different! And another difference is, in the red curry there are pumpkin pieces, and in the green one there are bamboo shoots. Wondering what that is? I wondered too (but I think I've eaten bamboo shoots before, just...cut up differently?) Here's a photo with the bamboo shoots...

and as you can see, there are some red chillies as well. And some green veggie that I don't really know. And...drumroll, please... kaffir lime leaves (that's daun limau purut, isn't it?) I had to add the meat myself, but everything else was in the can...

The mussaman curry was more...Malaysian. It had potatoes in it, and it was almost like the chicken curry with potatoes that we usually find. I think that in future I shall buy that again...but maybe not the green or red curry. They're not bad, but just not as good.

But now I'm waiting for rendang :P (sigh...can't find that here...)

Just a little digression: Whenever I buy kiwis, they seem to take so long to be ripe! My mother told me once that to make kiwis ripen faster, we have to keep them with apples.(don't ask me why!) This time (for the first time, I think) I bought these 2 fruits at the same time, but I think of this now, when I just ate the last apple yesterday...talk about irony!