Loose ends

Nowadays more and more writers are getting pretty adept at dropping clues all over the place, and making twisted endings that always have the most trusted good guy turning out to be the big bad boss. Blame it on Dan Brown...

But then if you want to leave lots of loose ends, you've got to be good at tying them up too! Unfortunately those who are good at scattering clues are not always that good at tying up loose ends.

Take the latest that I've read, The Osterman Weekend by Robert Ludlum. They say there's an international conspiracy that threatens all mankind, but there is not much information about how that conspiracy is actually going to ruin things.

******* WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD! *******

There is also the bad guy (who is not revealed as such until the very end) who holds a very high position in the CIA, and the CIA knows that he's a bad guy, but lets him run an operation to catch himself. Not only that, they actually leave so many things in his hands that he can do plenty of sabotage without others (who know he's the bad guy) knowing about it. Don't you even put suspected criminals under surveillance?

And the CIA also makes so many mistakes that the person they are protecting goes unprotected... twice!

At the end of the book, they even tell the protagonist, there are many things that you will never understand, many questions that will be left unanswered. Yeah, like how good people sometimes will behave so suspiciously?

It is rather a pity, because the book's basic storyline is not so bad, but unfortunately the events are too unbelievable for me.

No rain

The Photo Friday theme for 15th December (yeah, almost two weeks ago) was rain.

As luck would have it, it didn't rain AT ALL that week. Until the early morning of the following Friday, when there were a few raindrops. So I guess these raindrops will have to do.

This is posted so late because I had a hard time deciding whch photo to use. When there was no rain I even took a photo of my bathroom shower (it is called paip hujan after all...) But none of the photos turned out that well...so it was difficult to choose!

Eating off the table

We went to try the not-so-recent trend of shellout at Fizzy Cafe. It cost RM75 for a set for 3 people. Similar to what is mentioned on this blog, it came with a plate of lala, a plate of kepah, and a bucket of crab and prawns (each had been stir-fried in different sauces). There were three large prawns and six pieces of half-crabs. Then they scattered three pieces of broccoli, two slices of corn, and some purple cabbage on top.

Everything is placed on the table (a clean sheet of paper is draped over it first), including the rice. I don't know who came up with this idea, but it is rather genius, to save washing dishes. :P

Here is my father endorsing the shellout.

We also ordered their sotong goreng tepung, which was quite good, but nothing to shout about. And WW who doesn't eat seafood and thus had nothing to eat in a shellout, ordered nasi goreng ayam (again, good but nothing special).

Something else that was special at Fizzy Cafe was their soursop juice. It is fresh fruit juice, at RM3.50 a glass. It was pretty good... but quite unlike usual fruit juice (probably due to soursop not being like usual fruits?)

There's a funny story about the soursop juice... I was saying I wanted to order it, saying "jus durian belanda". WW said, it's hard (as in the opposite of soft). We looked at him, puzzled... and he said, turkey, right? We said, it's durian belanda, not ayam belanda... (because durian belanda is soursop and ayam belanda is turkey)

After the drink arrived, he tried it and said, "I still prefer ayam belanda".

Protected vehicle

Last week's Photo Friday theme was vehicle.

I didn't really see any vehicle of note, but this was on my way to work.

So I have a photo of a vehicle, taken from a vehicle.

As luck would have it, I saw a "vehicle of note" yesterday, two days after the "deadline". However it might have been difficult to take a photo of it anyway. It was a roofless car, a little boxy. There were I think four foreigners (Westerners) sitting inside. Which is why it would have been difficult to take a photo... with people sitting there, I didn't dare.

Bee in love

Imagine... that you have brought in your dry laundry and are turning a shirt inside out to fold it.

Imagine... that you see a dark roundish blob on your shirt.

So you shake the shirt, trying to shake the blob off, but it sticks fast. So you take a closer look... and discover that it is an insect! That looks like a bee...and the wings' flapping sound like a bee's too.

So you shake the shirt harder, not wanting to touch the bee... but it won't leave!

After some thought, you take an umbrella and use its tip to golf the bee off. (more like putting instead of a golf swing :P )

The bee (assuming it is a bee) did not want to go away even after that treatment...

After that I swept it up into a dustpan (in which process it clung to my broom and I had to scrape it into the dustpan), took it outside and left it there, hoping it would leave instead of coming back.

Meanwhile, I shut the object of its desires into my wardrobe, so that it can't find it again even if it came back looking.

(I put these photos on Facebook, someone said it could be a bumblebee. Maybe. Not quite sure...)

Dhoby Ghaut seafood

Last night we went to Dhoby Ghaut Cafe, this time to have the rice instead of the noodles. I have posted about the food here before. Later on I mentioned that it had changed its name, but during this visit I suddenly saw the old name back.

We ordered some spicy stir-fried squid.

And some lemon steamed clams, but I think they mistakenly gave us garlic steamed clams instead, because it looked totally different from what we had previously. It was also a bit spicy, and had garlic slices in it. (we couldn't remember whether the lemon steamed clams had garlic)

When I was taking a photo of the dishes, I asked my mother, "Do you want to smile?", panning the camera to include her face for a photo. She said no, but I said, "Smile lah!" So she smiled.

If you noticed the two pairs of chopsticks in the photo, here's the story: A little boy brought us the squid dish, together with chopsticks (because most people eat noodles and order these as side dishes), then we asked him for a plate of rice. So he brought us a plate of rice with spoon and fork when bringing the second dish. However he didn't think of bringing an empty plate for the second person, so this is when he went back to get the extra plate and the change (for the money). After that we returned him the chopsticks.

Green tea cupcakes

Earlier on I had tried to make green tea bread by just adding some green tea powder to my usual bread recipe. The results were not very satisfying. The bread had a green tea taste (and a nice green colour), but somehow it didn't taste that special. After trying it out twice, I had a third of my green tea powder left, and decided to try something different.

An online search found me this green tea cake recipe. It is a rather small cake, in a loaf pan, so I made cupcakes with it instead.

The texture of the cake is really nice, soft and moist. The green tea taste was just nice too. However I didn't feel any "wow" factor :P Maybe I'm just not such a big fan of green tea... Next time I might try making this cake again with cocoa powder, since I'm not sure I want to buy green tea powder again.

Note to future self: For every portion of green tea powder, use an extra 50% of cocoa powder, as recommended by Tribute Tea. (although their recommendation is in the opposite direction, to pay tribute to tea!)

Farewell lunch at Arang

Yesterday we had a farewell lunch at Arang Coffee for Sheng Kai, our intern. I have posted about Arang before, and this time I was planning to try the squid ink seafood pasta, which I had seen people ordering when we were there.

I took photos of every dish we ordered, so here they are (in alphabetical order because this is how Blogger uploads them :P )

chicken parmigiana, RM21

double trouble, which is grilled chicken thigh with pasta, RM24

Hawaiian chicken croissant burger, RM23

mushroom aglio olio, RM21

seafood aglio olio, RM23

smoked duck quesadilla, RM19

Before leaving, we took a group photo at the entrance.

From myself to the right: Xing Ling, Hong Aun, Chin Eng, Sheng Kai (the guest of honour), Alex, Song Qiang, Kartig, Duan Yeong, Boon Beng (at the back), Iggy

Some Western dishes

A few days ago, we went to try Will Western Delight at Centrio Avenue (a flat at Bukit Gambir). It is open only for dinner, so we went on a weekday to avoid the crowd.

When we walked in, the waitress came to us and told us there was no lamb or beef that day. That made us hesitate a bit because we usually like to order those. However we went through the menu and found some other items that we could try (they had pork chops and also smoked duck). And when we wanted to order, we asked what they had in their mixed grill. It comes with chicken, fish, and either pork, beef, or lamb (all grilled). We said, but there's only pork today? However the waitress replied, for mixed grill, the lamb and beef pieces are smaller, so we have those.

That is how we ended up with a lamb mixed grill (RM25.50). (the beef option is RM1 cheaper, not sure about the pork option) We chose to have black pepper sauce.

The second dish we ordered was pork chops with garlic sauce (RM10.50). The strange thing is that plain pork chops cost RM10, with either garlic sauce or another sauce it was RM10.50, and with black pepper sauce or yet another sauce, it was RM11. I really wonder whether the RM10 pork chops would be really "au naturel"... just seasoned with salt and pepper maybe?

I liked the garlic sauce better than the black pepper sauce. The garlic sauce had garlic and herb taste, but the black pepper sauce didn't have enough black pepper taste, it seemed...

The last dish was smoked duck. It wasn't in the regular menu, only on the "today's special" board. It comes with spaghetti (bolognese, I think).

The photo above looks better as a whole, but the one below shows the duck meat more clearly.

The food was good in general, but nothing very special. The shop is very simple, which I guess helps keep the price down.

Blue twilight

This week's theme is twilight. It's hard for me to find the proper time to take a photo of twilight. One morning I woke up to this bluish sky, and quickly snapped a few photos before going back to sleep.

I think it was too early for the sky to have a red hue. The next morning, I woke up to a sky with a reddish tinge on the horizon, but this time it was too bright.

So which one looks more like twilight? I would still prefer the first photo...the second one is more like sunrise or daybreak.