Lots of nasi kerabu

When I went back to Kuantan, my parents were going to take me to eat a good nasi kerabu. Coincidentally, the Firefly in-flight magazine recommended a nasi kerabu too. So we ended up going to both.

First up, Nasi Kerabu Mekla.

with beef slices

with ikan keli (catfish)

kambing bakar (grilled? mutton)

The one recommended by the Firefly magazine was Nasi Kerabu Kemira. This turned out to be a place where my mother's friend had recommended her the nasi dagang (but not nasi kerabu).

with chicken... I think it is ayam panggang madu (honey roasted chicken)

with sliced beef

nasi dagang

After trying both, I feel that Mekla's nasi kerabu is better. The veggies are very important! Kemira's didn't have much on it. Kemira also did not have fried catfish. However the chicken is very yummy! (and Mekla doesn't have that) It was so good, we went back to get another piece. We saw most people taking the chicken too.

As for the nasi dagang, it was good as well.

Poke bowl

Some time ago I tried my first poke bowl at Tummy Bowl.

I had ordered it for takeaway, and it came in a paper bowl (above). My mother said it looked good, and I really liked the taste too.

As for my mother, she has tried and liked the poke bowl at Arabica. So when I was in Kuantan, my parents brought me there to try it.

smoked duck with sesame sauce

teriyaki chicken

I felt it was good, but I preferred the one that I had at Tummy Bowl.

So when my mother came to Penang, I took her there.

We ordered the same salmon bowl, and a tuna bowl.

shoyu salmon bowl

spicy tuna bowl

Both were signature bowls; you can see the list of ingredients below:

photo courtesy of Crisp of Life, because I'm too lazy to snap my own photo :P

But my mother said it didn't look very good when it arrived...taste was only so-so as well.

As for myself, I prefer the salmon bowl to the tuna one, probably because of the side ingredients. If I'm ever taking tuna again, I will customize the sides myself!

More from Lay

Because he's worth it. :P

I just discovered two other songs from him. Older ones, from 2016 and 2017 (What? I was watching (and kutuk-ing) him on Go Fighting! without knowing he had these songs?!). They are sort of a "set"; one is a question and the other is an answer.

The question is What U Need?



The answer? I Need U



The videos are good too... especially the second one! It's sweet when you realize what is going on. According to Wikipedia, the second song was dedicated to his grandparents and they are the ones in the video :O

Discovering a new Kitchen

Recently I went to a new eatery called Nenda's Kitchen. First I went with Doris. It was good, so I went again when meeting up with Lai Shin.

Here's what we had:

chicken patty

signature fried rice with ayam percik

I liked my fried rice. It was very flavourful indeed! The ayam percik was taken from the breast meat, but luckily it was not tough, and the flavour was good as well.

Doris's chicken patty was too dry for my liking, but she liked it very much (since she dislikes oily parts anyway). She also took the lunch set which included mushroom soup and ice-cream, and she said both were very good (specifically coffee ice-cream...not sure what other flavours there were).

Then when I went with Lai Shin, I tried the chicken chop while she took the fish and chips.

black pepper chicken chop

fish and chips

Both dishes were good! Each of the dishes we've had cost around RM15. There were more expensive options, but we didn't choose those. :P

With Lai Shin, we took a photo (we had realized that we had hardly any photos together from our previous meet-ups, so now we're catching up) :

(This restaurant is by the same management as David Brown's on Penang Hill. Is that why the quality is good? Minus the cost of taking the ingredients up the hill? lol)

Analysis of the proposal

I just want to write down what happened in that proposal video that I shared in my last post (a blow-by-blow account, if you will), because it is just too awesome and I want to remember it even if the video gets deleted or something. :P Lay's expressions are priceless. The MC and the girl are probably on cahoots in this one, everything went so well!

So it was a live stage, and at first when the MC told Lay that someone wanted to ask him to marry her, Lay already looked surprised and was looking around a bit, probably wondering what he was going to do.

Then the girl steps up with her cardboard proposal. At the top is written "LAY ZHANG", then there is a marriage licence (not sure how that works, maybe once they both sign it, they're legally married?), and below it, "WILL YOU MARRY ME", followed by two checkboxes, the first one with "YES" written next to it, and the second one with "YES" as well, except that on the next line there are opening and closing brackets with some space in between.

I didn't manage to read that whole cardboard properly the first time I watched the video. Neither did I manage to catch all of Lay's reactions. That is why I watched it again, and then again till I figured out what was going on... and why waste all my effort? So I'm transcribing it :P

So we have the girl standing there, the MC talking to her and joking a bit (doing an MC's job basically), and while they are talking you can see Lay leaning forward in his chair, trying to read the words on the cardboard, and he goes "Are you serious?" (I expect that is when he has finished reading)

The girl then introduces herself as Yasmin and says "I know we've just met, but I'm your future wife."

Here we can see Lay's eyes and mouth opening wider and wider... then the girl goes on to say that the options are "yes" and "yes" (referring to the cardboard), but that she is open to suggestions, which is what the space between the brackets are for. (she even gives an example of a suggestion: "get married later")

Here Lay goes "oh my gosh" and starts laughing (uncomfortably?) a bit, and then the girl says "I also brought you a ring," then Lay's eyes go wide again.

Another awed "oh my gosh" from Lay, and he gets up as the girl walks up to him, but the girl actually goes down on one knee to give him the ring (which is a tacky green ring with a huge red "diamond" that she has just taken off her finger).

Here I think Lay was feeling extremely uncomfortable, not knowing whether to stand or sit. I really feel sorry for him, this is a difficult situation!

Then Lay was actually stretching out his hand to take the ring (after some hesitation... I think he was probably worried about being rude if he ignored the girl giving the ring to him :P ), and was luckily rescued by the MC who helped him take the ring and said he would hold on to it while Lay makes up his mind.

After that the girl is walking away when the MC asks her where she's from. She says she's from Kenya, and says that "hakuna matata" is from Swahili, which is spoken in Kenya. The MC then says "That can be the first dance at your wedding" LOL

During that exchange between the MC and the girl, from Lay's face he seems to be trying to figure out what to do next. When the MC thanks the girl, Lay also thanks her, then hesitantly asks the MC, "How do I answer this question?"

The MC (he's so kind, thank goodness) tells Lay to think about it over the weekend because it's a big decision. Then Lay turns to the girl and says (here's the gem), "I want to be a responsibility (sic) man, you know, so let me think about this question seriously." Hahaha so this is how to respond to a proposal!

Little sheep has grown up

I wouldn't have expected it a few years back, but I have become a fan of Lay (from EXO).

I first heard of him through Adeline who's a crazy K-pop fan... she was a big fan of EXO. After Luhan left the group, she said that her favourite member was Lay.

And then I saw him on Go Fighting!. He was such a fool at that time... so I didn't like him very much. As WW put it, in Go Fighting! there were five cunning people and one idiot. :P (and that idiot was Lay, in case you haven't figured it out)

But in the most recent season of Go Fighting! (Season 5), I felt that Lay had improved a lot. So I liked him better than before.

They had this awesome concert at the end of the season. I really liked the performances of Jia NaiLiang and Dilraba. They aren't singers, but since they are actors, I think that's why they exuded extreme confidence when performing on stage. Here is that episode, starting from the beginning of the concert.



I also really like Huang Bo's performance at the end, where he pulls in all the other members at different parts of his performance. (the subtitles help...otherwise I wouldn't appreciate it as much)

Lay performed his song Honey, but he changed it a bit with some classical music. So I searched up the actual song to see what the original was like. And the video left me mesmerized...



The innocent sheep Lay has grown up :O

There is another song, NAMANANA, which is also very good. The music is really catchy and upbeat.



While reading up on these, I found that he had English and Chinese versions for all the songs in his album NAMANANA :O And that he composed all his solo songs himself! :O And that he had composed songs (or was it lyrics) even for EXO's songs earlier! :O

And here I thought he was just an idiot who knew how to sing and dance :P My respect for him has gone up a lot with these discoveries.

What's more, some time ago there was an episode in Go Fighting! (season 2, maybe? Which means it was 3 years ago) where the members had to speak English for some reason. I remember that his English was pretty awful. So several months back (or was it last year?) I was already a bit surprised when I came across a Youtube video of him answering questions (he was going into the US market at the time) in English. (the highlight of that video, to me, was when he said his first pet was a cat, and then when they asked him what was the cat's name, he stops short, looks blank for a while, and then says, "I just called it cat." The cat didn't have a name!) Anyway all that to say that I realized at that time that he had been working on his English to break into the US market.


On a separate note, there is this video where he receives a proposal live on stage.



Hahahaha his reaction is really priceless! I feel kinda sorry for him, because he was put on the spot and he couldn't just say no, it would be bad for his image, but he couldn't say yes, since everyone was watching... luckily the MC helped him out quite a bit. He was going to take the ring and I'm quite glad the MC helped take the ring away...otherwise it would be awkward to keep the ring and also awkward NOT to keep it!

I did feel that the moment was staged, and a comment of the video more or less confirmed that. The commenter said that the girl was a friend's sister, and she had been setting that up.

But it was still great to see the shocked (and rather panicked) look on Lay's face. Hahaha I keep wanting to laugh when I think of that. *rotfl*

It's a wrap!

Last month I took up the #comictober2019 challenge. There's a theme for every day in October, and we are supposed to draw a comic for that theme. However I am bad at drawing, so I decided to do a silly sketch for each day instead. To keep expectations low, I used one of AnnyStudio's calendars. With one month in one A4 sheet of paper, that meant that each of the thirty-one drawings could be really small!

And here's the result:

I don't like some of them, but in general I am pretty pleased with the result. I posted each drawing separately on Facebook every day, with some comments sometimes. For the record, here are some of the comments I had for some of the drawings.

1st - It could have been better...
2nd - There’s a bad squiggle at the face, but it’s okay, zombies aren’t supposed to look good.
3rd - Because ghosts should be friendly.
4th - I wanted to give her a broomstick, but I didn’t know how.
5th - Dang I thought that pen was blue! (Note: because they were leaves and I didn't have a green pen, I thought that blue would be closer to green...but turned out I picked the wrong pen :P )
6th - Well, you knew this was coming...
7th - This is too difficult!
9th - Okay this one is plain ugly. The thought was to make it shine on the kitty in the previous square...
10th - Ghosts should be friendly. But sometimes they need to be spooky too...
12th - Too simple?
13th - If you’re wondering why it looks like a patchwork, that’s because it is...the first attempt was too awful. Even though the final one doesn’t look too good either, it is already a lot better :P
14th - Ugly pumpkin
15th - Ugly one again
16th - Shadow from the campfire!
17th - Kinda lame, but what else can I do? :P
18th - Inspired by the comic I just shared! (Note: 4am Shower had a comic where they drew a vampire costume that looked simply like that upside-down triangle)
19th - Well, they didn’t say the scarves needed to be whole...
20th - Really, only rain. And it’s been raining every day recently too!
21st - "Greetings Earthling, why are your arms so short?"
23rd - This is silly, but I don’t have a better idea :P
24th -  I’m not really sure what to think about this one :P
26th - Well, what did you expect dark water to look like?
28th - The simplest snake.
29th - Out of ideas.
31st - Trick or treat?

Montage, second round

I just watched Montage for the second time, since it was showing on Unifi TV. I had given it high praise three years ago. It was the first Korean movie that I really liked.

Watching it the second time round was a different experience compared to the first time, but just as awesome. Knowing the ending meant I could focus on what each character was doing and why, instead of wondering "Why? What's going on?" the whole way.

I seriously appreciate the way the writer planned the plot. Any other way, and the watching experience would have been hugely different!

A classier ugly omelette

I tried making frittata for the first time. It is like an omelette, but with milk/cream and cheese in it. I read up a few articles and recipes on it before deciding to go ahead and make it.

A lot of the recipes use cream, but they say whole milk is fine too, so I decided to use whole milk. I also decided to take a risk and skip the cheese. They say the proportions are
6 eggs
a quarter-cup milk (or other dairy)
one cup cheese
two cups vegetables/meat

I got these proportions from The Kitchn but everything I've read gives roughly these quantities. Especially the egg-to-dairy ratio, so I didn't dare to mess with that!

I had read somewhere else that we need to put loads and loads of veggies into a frittata to make it good. So I decided to start with veggies, and omit the meat altogether.

An actual frittata is made by first cooking the eggs on the stove, and then transferring it to an oven to bake the top. I didn't want to move it to an oven (I didn't have a proper cooking vessel for that), so I searched up whether we could make a frittata using only a stove. They say that we can flip the frittata. Er...well, that will make an ugly omelette then!

And that's exactly what happened.

I tried my best to make the eggs cook all the way to the top, by covering my pan with a cover. But the only cover big enough for that pan was a glass cover, so it didn't work so well. (I have had oven-like results by using a steel cover over a pan before) In the end, since it didn't look like the eggs on top were going to get cooked however much I waited, I surrendered to the task of flipping my frittata.

As expected, the frittata broke just like all my ugly omelettes. After that, I transferred the pieces to two plates:

Six eggs would make three meals for me!

As you can see, the top of the frittata is just cooked. The bottom, however, is fully browned. Here is where I am extremely grateful to Tefal for their non-stick pans: With my other frying pan, the bottom would have turned black, especially since I was waiting for the top to cook through!

The inside of the frittata seemed all right...they say it should be creamy and custardy, mine was solid but not hard. I think it was probably slightly overcooked, but what can I do? At least it's still edible. However, the seasoning needs a lot of improvement. I had to sprinkle black pepper on it to make it palatable (well, I have a grinder, otherwise I might have just sprinkled salt).

I'm not sure whether I will makea frittata again, but if I do, I think I will add meat. Meat will probably help even when the seasoning is not good enough!

Another thing I had read from my prior research was that we should use fully cooked vegetables when making a frittata. So I used roasted vegetables. Where did those roasted vegetables come from? Here's the story...

Last weekend I made roast chicken, and also roast vegetables to go with it. I roasted the chicken on Saturday night, eating it with salad, and then the veggies on Sunday morning (to eat with reheated chicken). I planned it this way so that I wouldn't have one dish going cold while the other one was in the oven.

I bought a whole lot of vegetables (broccoli, carrot, French beans, and capsicum) to roast. I also bought some mushrooms, and planned to put in some onions that I still had at home. However, it seemed that I was overly ambitious. After cutting up the vegetables, I found that they could not fit into one tray! Even with two trays, the vegetables couldn't be placed in a single layer, so they had to be more or less stacked on each other (which leads to less efficient roasting and less browning, I suppose?) And that was without putting in the capsicum and the onions! (I had not cut those up yet...luckily!)

But here's the thing: The amount of vegetables turned out to be just nice. Because after eating here, Snorlax took three portions of the roast chicken home, together with two portions of vegetables (and some cucumber to go with that third portion of chicken). The remaining vegetables was just about two cups, just nice for my frittata.

And just because I've mentioned my roast chicken, here's a photo of it!

I actually planned to take a photo of the roast vegetables when they were done...but I forgot. :P It's okay, they didn't look especially good anyway!

Deliveryman read my mind!

I just received a delivery. The package was delivered by Ninja Van. This morning, I received an SMS informing me that the package would arrive today. I knew I wouldn't be at home when it arrived, so I thought that I would ask the deliveryman to stick it into the letter box, and if it couldn't fit, he could toss it into the front porch. (Other deliverypeople have done it before!)

There is a pile of smooth pebbles (large pebbles though) at one side of my porch, and I thought that it would be good to ask him to try tossing the package there. (The package contained nuts, so it would be better if it didn't end up on the ground.) But when he called, I first told him to try passing it to my neighbour. He siad there was no one home, and he suggested tossing it beside the car. Of course I agreed, but I felt embarrassed to ask for such precision to throw the package on the pebbles (it was a good 1-2 metres in from the gate too!)

And when I reached home, lo and behold, the package was sitting perfectly in the middle of that pile of pebbles, exactly where I would have wanted it to be. There was a long hose looped up on the pebbles, and the box even made it into the middle of that. Bulls-eye!