Yellow yellow on yellow

I am sure you can guess the theme for this week's Photo Friday: yellow!

So I present you a yellow "YELLOW" on a yellow sticky note (it hasn't been torn off the pad yet), and placed on a yellow sheet of paper (the base for those small adhesive labels). I wasn't really going to put anything yellow below the sticky note, but I wanted a uniform background for my photo, and found something yellow (otherwise I would have settled on a white sheet of paper).

This is inspired by a short text that was in my French textbook (if I remember correctly), which spoke of a white painting which had white lines on it. Art, it was!

Decorated trees

Olive Tree Hotel always prepares decorations in front of its entrance when a festive season comes along. This week's theme is trees, so here are the decorated trees!

We actually went to Syed (beside Olive Tree) for dinner, and after dinner I took these photos.

The photo below was taken facing towards Arang Coffee (Arang is blocked by the trees). The trees in front of Arang is the different kind that you can see beyond these green ones.

And in the other direction, facing towards Syed:

I took these two photos first, then when driving out via Olive Tree, I decided to take the first photo above. It definitely looks nicer! I probably didn't even get the best angle because I stopped my car by the roadside (there weren't many cars passing by at that hour) and just snapped the photo from the car window.

Note: Last year there was a tree theme too. I thought of taking a photo of that tree too, this time... but I didn't want a repeat.

Stories

I recently read The Patriot Threat by Steve Berry. Previously I had read The Romanov Prophecy by this author, and I remember that it was good. The Patriot Threat is not bad, but somehow less good. (however please bear in mind that I cannot remember The Romanov Prophecy very well any more)

I didn't appreciate the writing style in this book (Patriot Threat). Every chapter starts with a person, and somehow in the whole chapter, "he" or "she" usually refers to that person. However that is not apparent at the beginning... I had to go through some confusing he/she references before I figured out that that was how it worked.

The story and characters were actually not bad (quite good, even), but the book contains a certain plot point that I highly dislike. It's about how American "heroes" can do no wrong. I've written about something similar before, about the NCIS TV series (even though I didn't mention which series it was in that post) This book is basically about how American "heroes" go all out to protect America's "greatness". They even refer to themselves as the "good guys"; however from my point of view, they aren't really that "good".

As you can see, the title says "stories", in plural. The second one that I wanted to write about is Dot 2 Dot. It is a Hong Kong film that I discovered by accident on dimsum. The film is categorized as drama/romance, but I think it is more drama and practically no romance. (I'm not complaining)

The review that I linked sums it up quite nicely. The film's main purpose is to show you how Hong Kong has changed throughout the years. They use a unique plot to show this: connect-the-dots drawings. Even though there's not much action, and the story moves forward slowly, somehow I enjoyed the film. The characters were believable and relationship between them too. I don't mean just the two main characters, but the relationship between the main characters and the supporting ones as well.

The review says that the romance was badly done, but I personally would just classify it as drama and not romance. In that sense it makes it highly believable, like I said above. I'm actually quite happy that no romance was developed; otherwise the story would have become unbelievable. I liked the ending too (spoiler alert!), that the characters discover each other and they just leave it at that. We do not know how their relationship develops, whether there is just friendship or more.

This story reminded me of the short videos that I liked from Wong Fu Productions. They don't do videos like that any more... I partly blame their "new generation" (Wong Fu has expanded to have more members).

There is only one small thing that I wasn't quite satisfied with; a loose end, if you will. At one point, the headmistress of the language school says of the main male character, "I fought for his life." I thought that point would be clarified some time later in the film, but it wasn't. I'm not sure whether it was an error in translation, though, because I was using English subtitles.

A face in the fog

Because this week's photo theme is fog. Since I couldn't find a natural fog, I needed a self-made fog.

After fogging up the glass with hot water, I drew a smiley. 'Nuff said.

Good morning~~~

It's hard to take a selfie when you have short arms and a big head.

But since the theme is selfie, this scholar bear is gonna try!

I took this photo in the early morning light, hence the title. I tried taking the photo with flash too, but since the camera is too close to the subject's face, the flash ruins the photo.

Painted house

A Painted House by John Grisham seems to have received a lot of praise. It is a more literature-style fiction rather than his usual novels. To me, it was draggy and not interesting enough. It reminds me of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations (the one book of Charles Dickens' that I have read), where there were interesting parts, but others were long-winded and nothing much seemed to happen.

This book is not as long-winded as Dickens', probably because the book is shorter (and it was written in a time when books are no longer as long). So the story did move along. But a recurring feeling that I had while reading was, "When is something going to happen?"

I felt like it was more of a coming-of-age story, like "the summer where I grew up". There was no single driving force behind the plot; instead the book was made up of scattered incidents.

If you want to get an idea of how I felt while reading it, the plot went something like this (spoilers ahead):

People come to the cotton farm to work (I think, okay this starts slowly)
Some people prove difficult (I think, now things are heating up)
Someone is killed in a fight (I think, it's kicking off)
Police comes to look for witnesses (and suddenly the story dies down)
More confrontations between the characters (but nothing escalates)
An illegitimate baby is born, someone is accused as the father (and this is kept quiet)
Someone is murdered, and only our protagonist knows about it (and he keeps quiet after being threatened)
A couple run away together (and nothing can be done about it)
The floods come and ruins the cotton (again nothing can be done)


I went through some online reviews to see whether anyone felt the same, and this reader more or less echoed my thoughts. There were a lot of glowing reviews on the same website.

Another review mentions something else that I didn't think to say: The first-person narrator is a seven-year old boy. But he doesn't sound seven years old... he sound too mature when recounting the events around him. Once in a while he will say things like "because mother said...", but in general he just knows too much.

The shortcut

This week's theme is street. (okay, so I'm a bit late posting it, but I took the photo before the new theme came out yesterday)

I take a little shortcut on the way to work, and this is the shortcut street. There are Malay stalls along the road selling breakfast, fresh fish, and this nasi lemak stall which is open for breakfast and closes before lunch, but I buy it for lunch because the portion is a lunch portion (i.e. big portion).

This photo was taken on Thursday, which was the first day of fasting this year. So the stall is empty. I bought it just before Ramadan started, and they said they might open in the evening during the fasting month. So I might drop by!

Still working together ten years later

Ten years ago, I posted about a presentation that we did in INSA. I had posted the photo collage on Facebook as well, and Facebook reminded me of it on the ten-year anniversary.

Then the guessing game began... because we couldn't remember what was happening at the time. The folder on my computer was called "présentation finale PRDCE" (PRDCE final presentation). However I couldn't recall what PRDCE stood for!

Here Romain came to the rescue: It is Projet de Recherche Documentaire et de Création d'Entreprise. Translated to "Project of Document Research and Enterprise Creation". Not that I remember much about what we actually did for that. But after the group effort (okay, slightly exaggerated) taken to figure that out, I think I'd better keep the precious information here so that we won't have to play the guessing game again in another ten years!

Improved and less-safe koay chiap

Towards the end of last year, I posted about a "safe" koay chiap in Pisa Corner.

Later on, the stall disappeared and another one (probably the same one) popped up a few stalls down (still in Pisa Corner).

I have tried it before with my parents, and it was not bad. The soup was good, however they also lack internal organs. However, it's a lot better than the one before.

I think this is the same seller who moved her stall, because a number of things are the same. Today I ordered a pack for take-away, and when I asked her for cut chillies instead of the chilli sauce, she cut the chillies on the spot for me and added soy sauce. I remember the other stall doing that too (just can't remember the person's face).

This might be the improved version... it costs RM6 (versus RM5 from last time), and the portion is double (double the "koay", and almost double the "liaw" as well). Since there is more "koay", you can see the "liaw" better as well because they're not drowned in the soup! (oh, and actually I didn't pour all the soup, there was a lot!)

The egg, pig skin, roast pork, and beancurd look exactly the same as my photo from last time. There was quite a large number of pork slices (the meat, not the roast pork), meatballs, and a number of pieces of tongue! This last one makes me the happiest. Like I said in that post, when I eat koay chiap I want internal organs. Not sure whether tongue qualifies as an internal organ, but it's definitely better than nothing. And tongue is usually harder to find than intestines or stomach.

Although this is one ringgit costlier than the previous version, the extra "liaw" makes it worth it, together with the normal portion of "koay". The "koay" is still soft though...but I don't mind so much as long as the soup is good.

Introducing Coderchu

While searching for something, I found Coderchu!

Now why didn't I think of this name... lol

(I found this while searching for the definition of dead code)