The tale of nasi goreng kampung

Today's canteen service was strange.

I ordered a nasi goreng kampung. Isn't there a fixed recipe for that; I mean, every time you order it, it will turn out the same? Usually they just take my order and start frying away, but today the lady asked me whether I wanted belacan, while pointing at the sambal belacan container. I nodded, and she asked whether I wanted ikan masin (salted fish). This made me stop short. I asked her, nasi goreng kampung doesn't have salted fish in it, does it? (they also have salted fish fried rice on the menu) She said that sometimes people want salted fish. Uh.. okay then, let's put salted fish.

And then as she was frying the first ingredients, she was going to take some chilli paste to add in, and she asked me again for confirmation. Strange... Can't I just have a normal, "original" nasi goreng kampung?

I asked for nasi goreng kampung because I wanted to take some cili padi (provided on the counter, in soy sauce) to eat with it. But it turned out that the fried rice was spicy enough that I couldn't even take much chilli with it.

Okay, for one thing, this lady has never fried my dishes before. They work on rotation, and I have never ordered from this particular cook. So maybe she always does this. Another reason could be that today there are less people at the office... and one, she has time to ask me this and that on my preferences. Two, maybe there was too much salted fish left... :P

In the end, my fried rice was bursting with flavour... but a bit too salty. I forgot that the ikan bilis (anchovies) in the nasi goreng kampung would already be salty...

Lost and found

The longest lost-and-found episode in my life, I think.

When I was still in Angoulême, our professors held a "treasure hunt" kind of game for us to discover the town. My team won, and the prize was a picture book of Angoulême, "before and now", for each of us. At that time, taking photos of random objects was not yet a fad, so even though I had a camera, I didn't take a photo of it.

Fast forward a few years, and I brought the book back to Malaysia. Placed it in my father's safekeeping, so that he could look at it whenever he wanted. Unfortunately, a few years after that, when I returned to Malaysia for good, we were unable to find the book again. We searched high and low, and concluded that it must have been thrown out together with some papers. (I was skeptical, because it was a hardcover book, and how can you throw out a hardcover book without knowing it? But since we couldn't find it... who knows, maybe it was thrown out in a box or something.)

Just a few weeks back, my father was going through some old stuff again. And... (no suspense here, you already know what's coming) Voilà!

The sticker on the top-left is from the wrapping paper; I stuck it on the book myself.

A peek into the book:

There are editions of this book for quite a number of cities/towns. I wish I had Lyon's too!

Chinese New Year cloning

This year I received a Chinese New Year card from a colleague. She delivered it by hand, and I left it on my desk at the office as a decoration.

The card inspired me to update my whiteboard for Chinese New Year as well. The drawing on the card didn't look too complicated... just a few sheep (or rams) jumping to progressively higher poles.

So I tried to clone them. Unsuccessfully, as you can see in the photo below.

So instead, I prepared the backdrop, and placed my faith in the viewer's imagination. You'll be able to clone the sheep yourself... I believe in you! Hehe...

As I write this, I suddenly thought of a friend's recent foray into impressionist paintings. Does this count? Probably not... I should have omitted those words saying "insert goat", then it may count. :P

Where's the Pikachu?

Just a short one. Because it is noteworthy.

The other day, while I waiting for my take-away in Pizza Hut, I heard "Pi-ka-chu?". If you didn't know, my message tone is Pikachu calling, "Pi-ka-pi, Pi-ka-chu?" But it wasn't from my Pikachu... whose Pikachu was it then? I didn't see any around... :P

The cute and the cuddly

Some time ago Everlyn gave me a kangaroo from Australia. Together with my koala bears, my cubicle was transformed into an Australian plain (or something like that).

This is my old cube, by the way; see previous post for the (short) story of my move.

Also, the year of the goat is coming. Or you could say lamb. One day when I was in Giant, I saw them bring out loads of baby lambs.

Very soft fleece!! ♥

This photo was actually taken on my next trip to Giant. The first time I saw them, I didn't take a photo. But I also missed showing them to WW, so on our next visit to Giant, we went looking for them. The huge load of lambs (which were initially in the middle aisle of the supermarket) was gone (I wonder whether that many people bought them?), so we went to the toy section where, luckily, several remained.

We also chanced upon a nice Doraemon pillow.

Speaking of Doraemon, we saw a Doraemon car not too long ago, either. But first a little backstory.

We went to the Sg Pinang food court, and discovered that they had an official van. To shuttle who, exactly? Was it to bring tourists from partner hotels to their food court?

Then I spotted Doraemon hiding behind the shuttle van.

It's a lot more interesting than the Sg Pinang shuttle!

I give it full marks for design. :D

Level up!

Okay, so I've been lazy... and I even missed the deadline to update one of my whiteboard sketches. Though that was more out of busyness rather than laziness.

Anyway, here are the new sketches:

For a while we were being asked all the time when we would be moving to our new department. Physically moving, that is... instead of just working for that department. And the answer was... we didn't know. Four of us still stuck in our Accessory cubicles because there were no seats available in Tetra.

And then, miracle of miracles, just a few hours after I drew that, we received news of our new cubicles. The actual move didn't happen until the following week, though. (that was only for me... we could move immediately provided our destination cubicles were free)

So we moved from the third floor Accessory department to the fourth floor Tetra department. Level up!

after the move, new whiteboard

The "UP" should be bigger than the "LEVEL", don't you think? I was actually making them the same size... but the "UP" turned out too small. Oh well, too bad... I was lazy to redraw it.

And the next day, someone left a note to congratulate me and wish me more "level up"s.

A congratulatory note from Jonathan who was still stuck on Level 3 :P

 By the way, Innoplex has seven levels in all (the ground floor is Level 1).

And while I'm at it... someone left a pretty good Pac-Man drawing in the subway zone. (Near my new cubicle, there is one of the many themed discussion areas in Innoplex. This one is modeled like the interior of a subway car.)

I like how they even drew cherries and strawberries! :D

Incomprehensible

Something else that I don't understand about people. (seems like I'm starting this year with rants. Too bad... but this actually happened last year, if that helps)

There is this person, whom we shall call F, who is always comparing photo quality. Be it of cameras or smartphones. He even complained that his phone camera quality wasn't good enough (compared to another phone).

But the thing is, when people take photos these days, they like to send them through Whatsapp. I may have mentioned it here before (I can't find it though, so maybe not), but it is the same for people who share photos on Facebook and don't send the original file to you any more. Be it on Whatsapp or on Facebook, these photos are resized! They are smaller than the originals, so of course they lose some quality. And if you happen to want to print them out? They will not work. (of course, we seldom want to print out photos these days... but if there's a nice group photo maybe I'll want a print of it, right?)

That's why I have never considered putting photos on Facebook as "giving" people the photos. It is "sharing" the image, but you are not sharing the actual photo.

So once, when someone shared a photo through Whatsapp to a group of people, I asked, why do you guys like to share photos through Whatsapp? The picture is resized. And someone asked, why do you want such a high-quality photo for? Unfortunately I didn't think of the above argument at the time; I actually just wanted to zoom in and see some details of the photo, because in group photos, the faces are really small, you know?

But even before I could answer, F decided to joke, WP wants to print the photos as wall posters. -_- Yeah, right, very funny. Not.

Which brings me to the question: Why do people search for high-quality cameras/camera-phones if they only plan to share the resulting photos through Facebook and Whatsapp? Why take quality photos if only you will see it, while everyone else sees a lower-resolution version of it?

What a waste.

P.S.: And that is why, whenever I actually want to pass photos to someone, I will send them an e-mail. Either attaching the photos, or attaching a link to some file-sharing site where I've uploaded the photos. (gosh, this post must have a lot of mentions of "photos" :P )

Stuff that bombs are made of

I saw WW doing something at the washbasin.

So I asked, What are you doing?

He replied, Cuci (washing)

Cuci apa? (washing what?)

Cuci la-sam (washing dirt)

Of course you're washing dirt off something; why would you be washing something if it's not dirty? -_-

So I prompted him for more info. Can't remember what I said, but it was probably along the lines of What dirt?

And he said, Using toothbrush to wash, otherwise I cannot reach some places.

But washing what, for goodness' sake?!?! Again not in these exact words, but I was already frustrated.

Only after that did he say, Washing my drinking bottle.

And he says I get mad for no reason. -_-

This always happens, by the way. I always have to ask multiple questions to get an answer that could have easily been given at the first question. Aaargh!!! So annoying. Not to mention a waste of time.

Language packs

This is the latest drawing on my whiteboard.

Why do so many people insist on using the half-installed language pack, rather than choose among the four functional ones? Beats me.

I need a t-shirt with this printed on it. Or a cap, though that can probably only fit in the Mandarin one. :P

Cuti gembira

It is the end of the year again, and the top management decided to send us a holiday message.

They even made the effort to wish us "Happy Holidays" in our languages. But it seems that they relied too much on Google Translate.

I checked on Google Translate myself, and it really did translate "happy holidays" to "cuti gembira" in Malay.

I also found out that the one after Chinese is Hebrew (I think it is supposed to be read from right to left, because it was right-aligned on Google), and after that is Danish.