Birthday decorations

Some time back I wrote about a birthday calendar in the office. What I didn't mention was that they were going around decorating the cubicles of those whose birthday it was.

They were recycling a row of triangular flags spelling out "Happy Birthday", a cardboard sign saying "It's My Birthday!" and some balloons (they probably had some extra stock of balloons... since those shrink or pop :P ). Some more hardworking people would do some extra stuff.

Before my birthday, I sketched out a couple of prohibition signs.

Those "triangular flags" that I mentioned are pictured on the right... each triangle holds a letter of the greeting.

Because I have no wish to have a bunch of banners and balloons at my cubicle... trop criard! Too eye-catching... More subtle decorations I wouldn't mind.

And what's more, a few weeks earlier a neighbour's cubicle had been decorated... and he was told later that he was supposed to do the decorations for the next person. Er... I don't really want to have that obligation...

But on the day itself, all the banners and balloons still came.

I actually like how my pets are all around; it's like they came out to play! :P

My Jigglypuff and Totoro were on my docking station, you can see Cowboy clearly, and Amy Rose is on my Frodo (the black thingy, which is actually a radio, the kind police cars have). Even the koalas are hanging around! (literally)

It's just a little unfortunate how my Pikachu's arms got "broken" in the process. You can't really see it in the picture, but one arm is gone and the other got longer instead. But no matter, it could be easily put back into place.

(The banners are not in the photo because they were higher up.)

It seems that my sketches were noticed after all... there was a little note appended.

I guess those balloons do look like scissors... Sorry, I can't draw!

Just to clarify though... I do appreciate the decorations... and I did thank the person who did them (I found from someone else who was "responsible"). But I do have mixed feelings about this "obligatory" stuff. Oh well...

A "hot" story

Today I had yong tau foo in the Technoplex cafeteria. After getting my yong tau foo, I went to the condiments area to get chillies (they have cut chilli padi there, and soy sauce too, besides chilli sauce and sambal). There was none. I asked one of the cafeteria workers nearby, are there no more chillies? She said no, but then later she called to me and brought out a bowl. After she had scooped me a spoonful, she told me "this is chargeable". I went "What? How much?" I didn't really catch her reply but I think she said fifty sen. Then she asked me whether I wanted more.

I didn't think that the quantity she had given me would be enough, so I said yes (surely I wouldn't be charged based on number of pieces of chilli, right?). Then I went to the counter to pay. But turns out I wasn't charged for the chilli padi after all. I just passed the slip of paper with the yong tau foo price on it to the cashier, and he keyed in the same price. No addition for the chilli. I'm not sure whether the cashier knew that he should charge for the chilli. I'm not even sure whether the lady who gave me the chilli was pulling my leg. I kind of believed her because usually the chilli is already there, swimming in soy sauce... and usually if it runs out, the bowl containing the soy sauce would still be there. Today I was given dry chillies and I added my own soy sauce.

At first I was thinking maybe too many people took the chillies and they felt they were making a loss or something... Now I wonder. I will need to see whether they have chillies next time...

The cake, the photo, and the flash

Yesterday WW bought me a slice of cake. He activated the camera on his phone and passed it to me so that I could take a photo to send to the parents.

I asked, is the flash on?

He said "Let me do for you" and took the phone from me. After fiddling with the settings a bit, he passed it back to me.

It turned out he had just turned the flash off. But I wanted it to be on!

I said as much, and he groaned, what exactly do you want?

But I hadn't asked him to switch the flash on or off, I had merely asked whether the flash was on!

And this, folks, is a classic example of people making assumptions too early, causing them to hear what they thought was said, instead of hearing what was actually said. -_-

Poached egg

When I was still in France, a friend told me how to make poached egg. She said, just crack an egg into very hot boiling water, and it's done! I tried it out, but wasn't successful... I can't remember how it turned out, but the egg definitely did not manage to stick together.

Today I wanted to make grilled orange fish (or fish à l'orange if you want it to sound more classy). I had a wholemeal loaf too, so I thought, let's try making poached egg again. I searched online for tips, and found this video by Jamie Oliver.

The tips I got were:

1. Crack the egg into a bowl first.
I guess this makes it easier to put the egg into water in one go.

2. Make a whirlpool!
I saw this tip in several other recipes. Jamie Oliver says that poached eggs should be made with fresh eggs, and that the whirlpool method is only necessary for less-than-absolutely-fresh eggs. Anyway, my eggs are definitely in the latter category, so whirlpool it is! The swirling water created by the whirlpool is supposed to help push the egg white to wrap around the yolk. Though in my case, the water didn't seem to swirl for a long enough time after the egg got into it. (I'm thinking maybe my pot wasn't big - read: wide - enough) So the egg white didn't really wrap around the yolk... as you will see.

He also said that the water should be simmering, not boiling... but I don't think I got that temperature right. Maybe next time...

Now for photos!

Like I said, my egg white didn't really wrap around the yolk. It sort of fell off.

The second one fared even worse on the egg-white-loves-and-protects-egg-yolk part.

They are actually still stuck together... but by only a small amount of white. :P

But when we cut the yolk...

Lovely. And so is the second one!

So, I consider it a pass. Not with flying colours, since presentation fails. But the taste is what's important! And... I also hope to lose less egg white in future... some were left in the pot. :(

Rudolph the red-nosed... Viva?

This morning I saw a Viva with antlers. Yes... brown antlers coming out the side of the car, somewhere between the front and back doors. Close to the roof.

My Viva wants antlers too!! :P

Teddy in TeddyVille

Now does that sound like the title of a children's book?

This would be the illustration, if it were actually a children's book:

(The bright white light is the sunlight reflecting off the floor)

It seems that TeddyVille Museum is opening soon in Gurney Paragon. So there is a contest ongoing - we need to take a photo with the teddy bears below, then post it on the TeddyVille Museum Facebook page. I didn't take a photo with them...I doubt my luck (again :P ).

They wrote "Do not touch" on the stage (can you see the signs?). That is so unfortunate (albeit expected)... I would have loved to touch those bears! :D

Something's a-going on...

In Innoplex, I mean. My office.


I don't think I've mentioned it here before, but several months ago, they painted the floor at the bottom of the stairwell green. A bright green, resembling the bubbling pots of toxic waste that you often see in cartoons. Yes, that shade of green exactly.

I remember when I reached work the first day after they painted it. I opened the door to the stairwell, was lifting my foot to step in... and abruptly stopped when I saw that green "goo" on the floor. It's like those cartoon characters slamming on the brakes while walking. (Yes, cartoon reference again :P ) I wasn't sure whether the paint was dry yet... but someone passed by and told me it was.

They painted the stairwell floor on every floor the same green colour... but a light grey on the every half-floor. I feel the grey looks better... it's the cement-like grey. (And I can't for the life of me recall what the floor looked like before it was painted.)

So... after a while we got used to it. But recently, they painted the bottom of the stairwell BLACK. B-L-A-C-K. Like tar. Again, the first time I saw it I got a shock... but with no "wet paint" sign anywhere, I decided it was safe to step in. (It was.) The other floors were untouched though.

That's when I started calling the office the Innoplex horror house. Because, besides walking down the stairs and seeing a pool of green goop or a black pool of nothingness, there were also the lift incidents.

I've only heard of it happening to other people, but it was enough to make me swear off the lift (I already take the stairs most of the time anyway). Once, earlier, one lift had dropped a few floors before stopping. The people in the lift were shaken but not hurt. A few months later, there were lots of stories of the lifts going rogue - ignoring button presses, closing the door and going up to the topmost floor or bottom floor, then opening the doors. It seemed to happen randomly. With some people unluckier than others... one of my friends had it happen to him three or four times. So we joked that we shouldn't take the lift with him. :P

Back to the stairwell floor. Not two weeks after becoming black, it had changed back to the previous green colour. That was a few weeks ago, and to this day I have no idea why...

Anyway, all this led to the latest drawing. I had no idea what to draw... and my one-month deadline was approaching. So, here you go: The making of... the Innohouse of Horrors!

Sorry, some things are still top secret... they wouldn't give away the secrets of their trade! (I also wanted to draw a lift but I wasn't sure it would be recognizable as such :P )

Nasi 7 benua

There is a small Malay restaurant nearby, which became famous sometime last year for its nasi 7 benua (literally: 7-continent rice). I had noticed the restaurant before, but didn't know what it was selling. After seeing people posting this colourful dish on Facebook, I thought I would go and give it a try... but postponed it after hearing that the queue was very long.

Basically this just got postponed again and again... until last Tuesday (it was Deepavali) when we finally decided to go there for lunch.

When we reached the shop, it was around 1pm. The shop was almost full, and the queue extended to the entrance. (That would make around 20+ people in the queue.) We had a half-hour wait before it was our turn. By that time, some people had left, so there was definitely enough places to sit.

So what's so special about this restaurant? It serves seven kinds of rice on a same plate:

The lettuce came with the rice; the other dishes are self-served, economy rice style.

And the seven mounds of rice is what makes the wait long... each plate of rice needs to be scooped seven times instead of once! There were three people working together to prepare the plates of rice... they would check which types of rice were still missing and put it on the plate. We could also opt for only one kind of rice... which is what I would probably do next time, because the taste of the different kinds of rice sort of got mixed up after putting the sauce/gravy on it.

In case you're wondering, each of our plates above cost RM6.70. The restaurant also serves free drinks... if you choose syrup, iced tea, or plain water. Other drinks are charged for as usual.

Of polite wishes

Maybe I've written about this before. Or maybe I haven't. I really don't know.

When in INSA (ASINSA, to be more precise), some of the students started organizing monthly birthday celebrations. At first it was only for their class, but later on they extended it to all the classes in our year. Somehow I never felt excited about those celebrations... I didn't even attend when they started including everyone. It was a while before I figured out why I felt something was "off".

I guess to me, holding a monthly birthday celebration defeats the purpose of the celebration. It is as if you don't care about the individual person, and instead decide to hold a celebration at fixed intervals so that no one can blame you for forgetting.

It's like taking the easy way out.

Recently in the office, they decided to start a fund for a quarterly birthday celebration. I wasn't really into it either... but since people seemed to like it, fine. Let's each contribute a few ringgit a month for this celebration. (I think it's 2 or 3 ringgit a month... but they collect it by quarter. Somehow. They just started, so there's no fixed system in place). For me, it just feels like chipping in for a quarterly team party. Who cares that it's your birthday this quarter anyway?

Why did I think of this today? Because someone shared a Google calendar with people's birthdays. My birthday wasn't on the calendar... and jokingly I asked the person who sent it out, "Hey, my birthday isn't in there! How could you use an outdated calendar?" (Just a few months ago, I remember being asked to update my birthday in a spreadsheet... when they were starting to talk about doing the quarterly celebration)

He replied that the calendar had been created some time ago... and he wasn't going to add newer additions to the birthday list. He told me that we were supposed to add our own birthdays.

Erm... no, thanks. That sounds to me too much like reminding people to wish you a happy birthday. I've even removed my birthday from Facebook so that I wouldn't get flooded with insincere messages... so no way I'm going to, of my own accord, create another way to get insincere messages.

Not sure what I would do if someone added it for me. Should I remove it? I would be tempted... but then again, it wouldn't be very nice to remove someone else's reminder.

The thing is, with a blatant reminder... some people would feel obliged to offer their wishes. And being unable to tell the difference between sincere and forced wishes... it's hard to appreciate any of them.

KIK!

One day, in a group chat, one of my friends suddenly wrote "kik". When there was no clarification, I ignored it. A little later, she wrote "KIK". And then again, "kik".

So I asked, what is "kik"?

Another person replied, it is lol!

LOL - laughing out loud.

Take a look at your keyboard. If you have the US layout, then you can see that KIK is just left of LOL.

I really laughed at that one! :D

What's surprising is, she didn't even correct her typo. Which means... kik is universally accepted as lol now?