When one of your favourite authors leaves you disappointed

For once Jeffrey Archer has let me down. I'm talking about his novel False Impressions. On the whole it is still a good book, and I enjoyed reading it. But I found at least two discrepancies that are really annoying, especially since I have always found his books well-written with neatly tied up endings.

The first problem is that he seems to have written the same scene twice. On page 330 (by the way, this is an omnibus edition with two novels in one, so the page numbers are definitely different from the original edition) he describes this scene:

pg 330

Then he switches to another scene about another person, and two pages later, when he has switched back to the earlier person, he describes the same scene again, just using different words. Oh no...who proofread this thing?

pg 332

The second thing is a scene where a bad guy is trying to trap someone in his office. He enters a wrong code to trigger the alarm. But this is where it gets weird...maybe you'd like to read it first and see?

pg 379

So you see, he first enters the correct alarm code, which triggers the alarm. Why would the correct code trigger the alarm? And then he enters the wrong code after the security grilles have been slammed closed. Huh??

Not only that, but there was another problem that is really strange. It is related to the last scene above. The bad guy traps the other guy in his office, but what was he planning to do after that? We don't have any idea... because the other guy conveniently gets a stress attack (or something like that) and isn't rescued till several hours later (the bad guy asked the security company not to rush it because it was not urgent), and he lost his ability to speak. But what if he hadn't had a stress attack? What then? There was no mention of the bad guy's plans in that case.

I might have missed the explanation for this part of the plot, but I'm pretty sure I didn't, because when I was reading the rest of the book, I really wanted to know! If anyone finds the reason behind it, please let me know.

Four plush dogs

I just saw a car with four (yes, FOUR) dogs in the rear window (plush ones, I mean). I'm sure I saw three pairs of eyes, but I'm also pretty sure there was a fourth one, I just didn't manage to see it properly because another car came in between us. Not to mention that the car was a little way ahead. Four identical dogs. And I thought, why would anyone buy four identical plush dogs to put in their car? (because I don't think someone would give four dogs as a gift) If I had four identical plush dogs, I'd put one in my car, one in my office, one in my living room, and one in my bedroom! One to cuddle at any time! lol

Another example of wanting to be classy

I remember writing about this when I was still working in IQ Group. Not that changing companies will change anything, though. I certainly did not expect much change.

We received an e-mail saying:

Should anyone of you has borrowed the "something" from me, please let me know.

Wrong. It should be "Should any of you have borrowed..." or "If any/anyone of you has borrowed...".

(not sure whether "anyone" works with "should", but it just doesn't sound right)

Why didn't this person just use "if"? Because they had heard the sentence beginning with "should" before, and thought that it sounded classy, no doubt. -_-

But in that case, learn it properly before using it!

Okay, end of rant.

Makes me smile

On the way home from work, I was stuck in a short bottleneck jam (very very short, as in I couldn't pass a narrow area before the car on the opposite lane moved forward). A woman on motorbike, with a little girl sitting in front of her, stopped behind me, unable to pass. As I was looking at them in my rear-view mirror, the little girl reached up and tapped her mother's cheek, and then pointed in front of her. To the Snow White teddy bear in my rear window, I'd guess. Makes me smile. :)

Musim kemarau

Almost. It hasn't rained in ages, I believe. (or if it has, it has been very short and slight)

There are some plants outside my apartment, and they have been dry twigs for more than a week (or maybe two, I didn't really keep track).

In the park opposite, the grass is all dried up, too. The same with the other park near the market.

(Photos taken from my balcony. My camera has a nice zoom feature, doesn't it? :P )

Kippers

I just read a book set in the '60s, and came across the word "kippers". (A Matter of Honour by Jeffrey Archer; it's great, you should try it too!) I've known for a long time that kippers are fish (from Enid Blyton's children books), but I suddenly thought, "Hey, how come I don't hear about this fish when reading books in a contemporary setting?"

So I decided to find out exactly what kind of fish kippers were. Did they go extinct or something? Why don't people eat them any more? And where better to turn to than the Internet?

I found an article in the Guardian from 2012 which perfectly suited my needs. Even the title itself told me that I was on the right track, referring to kippers as "the breakfast dish that fell out of favour". It says that "Kippers, along with other traditionally popular oily fish such as mackerel and sardines suffered from a culinary prejudice by younger people who considered them old-fashioned and the kind of food eaten by their grandparents."

So what exactly is a kipper? Here's the answer:
"A kipper is a whole herring that has been sliced in half from head to tail, gutted, salted or pickled, then smoked – a process is known as "kippering". Fish have been smoked and salted for centuries, but kippering was popularized in 1843 by John Woodger, a Northumberland fish processor. Oily, plump and pungent, the kipper was popular on Victorian and Edwardian breakfast tables. It has been a permanent fixture on the Savoy's breakfast menu since the hotel opened in 1889. Technically a kipper is any fish that has been through the kippering process."

Sounds good to me... where can I try some?

The article also says that "Kippers were the quintessential British breakfast food", which explains why Enid Blyton mentioned them all the time!

Eggs on rice

This has to be one of the best cooking tips I have ever received. Since Rohijah told me about it less than a year ago, I have tried it out and then continued to use it several times.

Don't get the wrong idea, this isn't a recipe! The eggs are just cooked together with the rice. That is perfect for someone lazy like me, because it eliminates the need to boil a separate pot of water for the eggs, and then washing an extra pot later. :P

Anyway, back to the start. Rohijah was actually telling me about how to "save" rice when you have put in too much water to cook it. Just wash an egg, and put it into the rice when the water starts to bubble! The rice and the egg will be cooked perfectly.

Intrigued, I tried it out the next time I had the chance. And to try it out, I had to put extra water into my rice on purpose! It turned out great, so now this is my preferred method of making boiled eggs. Anytime I'm missing a little something to go with my rice, add an egg! (the eggs will be cooked just nice, so it doesn't work if you like eggs to be cooked extra hard)

But then...this makes me even lazier. I used to fry an egg when I needed to add something to my meal. Now I won't even fry it any more, because cooking eggs this way is much easier!

A tiger to greet the new year

Not that it's the tiger year, this year... but who cares? :)

I bought a wool-felting kit from Daiso some times back (ages ago, actually...was it in 2013 or 2012?) Anyway I just got around to trying it out. Luckily the kit contained instructions in English (not only in Japanese!) so I could read instead of just relying on the pictures.

Seems that I forgot to take a photo of the kit before starting. Oh well, too bad. Here are the head and ears...yet to be attached together.

The head actually looks a bit like Winne the Pooh's tail, doesn't it?

Added the ears to the head, and added the nose. (forgot to take a photo before adding the nose :P )

Added the whiskers, as instructed by the manual.

Added the stripes - I changed the pattern a bit because I didn't like the one on their tiger!

Stripes on the back of the head as well. All mine. The original tiger only had stripes at the top on his head. Why?? Guess my tiger earned more stripes. :P

Now my tiger has his eyes! (looks like a kindly grandpa with his whiskers, doesn't he?)

Actually the kit came with plastic knobs for eyes, but I found it tedious to insert them (I would have needed to get another tool to make holes, etc) so I just used wool to make the eyes.

And here's a side-by-side comparison between their tiger and mine. Mine's cuter, isn't it? :P

I didn't add the bead at the bottom, nor the ball chain, even though both were included in the kit. No, I want my tiger to be a soft furry ball! :P

Yummy food day!

Except for breakfast, I guess you could call it that.

Or maybe you could include breakfast, because it consisted of Ipoh kaya puffs (from the famous Sin Eng Heong - you can search up that shop yourself, it's so famous), albeit a bit stale ones.

(Oh yeah, I posted a photo of it previously, at the bottom of this post.) 

Then for lunch I got to try chee cheong chok (it is SO hard to find a good one in Bayan Lepas - oh wait, I haven't found one yet - and I'm rather lazy to go to Georgetown just to eat a bowl of porridge) from Chowrasta market (or its environs, seriously I don't know where to find it). Anyway, it was because my father decided to make a bus trip to Georgetown "just for fun" and ended up tapao-ing that for me.

Yummy!

For dinner we went to Dhoby Ghaut Cafe. Seems that the original Dhoby Ghaut (or "seh poh keo", as in "wash cloth bridge", literally) in Georgetown was famous for its koay teow thng. Then there is this branch in Bayan Lepas which is supposedly famous for the same thing, plus its curry mee.

Personally, I prefer the curry mee. I don't find the koay teow thng that special, I prefer the one at "7 tiao lor" (Cecil Street market).

So here's the curry mee:

when served

after stirring in the chilli paste

There's this craze about white curry mee instant noodles going on...why eat that when you can get the real thing here? :)

And the koay teow thng:

Besides the two noodle stalls, there is another stall selling seafood (mainly) and other dishes that you can order to eat with rice. We added on the salad mantis prawns for a snack:

Forgot to take a photo before digging in, so this is halfway through eating the dish :P

On a previous visit we had already tried the deep fried squid, which was just so-so, and on another trip, some lemon steamed lala (not sure what was the exact name, but it had either lemon or lime in it) which was pretty good, just slightly overcooked (maybe only on that day).

Oh yeah, I resized the photos to be a bit on the small side. Sorry if the quality's not good enough...but I think it should be...after all, it's only food. It's not like you want to use it for blown-up publicity posters! Right? ;)

How blueberry leads to stomach-ache

I just had a terrible stomach-ache. Let me explain...

A few weeks ago we bought a few packets of biscuits/snacks. Among those was a packet of blueberry wafers. There was another flavour too (maybe vanilla, I can't remember), but I chose blueberry. But because we had a number of other things to eat/snack on, I left the packet of wafers unopened to retain its freshness.

Then today I decided to open it. I called out to WW, "Come and eat blueberry wafers!"

Now WW is a big fan of blueberry. He said, "Eh, are there blueberry wafers?" Now I had already mentioned to him that I had bought the wafers (right after buying them), but I guess he wasn't paying attention. And when I showed him the packet, he said, "Huh? It's blueberry? I thought it was pandan!"

But the thing is, the wafers are purple. So I asked him how he could confuse blueberry with pandan (which is green!). Then he said, "Oops, I meant yam!"

Then he continued with "If I had known it was blueberry, I would have opened it myself, and there wouldn't be any left by now! But I thought it was yam, and I don't like yam."

I laughed so hard...and my stomach hurt so hard too.

At least he didn't say "wrong pronunciation".