Man to Man

I just watched a silly action-romantic-comedy Man to Man.

Silly as it is, it was quite enjoyable. They even have those cartoonish sound effects, like when someone is stunned by unexpected happenings, they might have a reaction with their eyes, and that is accompanied by the sound effect.

The story is about an NIS agent (what is NIS? National Intelligence "something"...) who goes undercover as an actor's bodyguard for a mission. He first needs to stick to the actor for the mission, then he needs to seduce the actor's manager for another mission, and in the process he falls for the manager... And hence you have both action and romance (and also comedy, of course).

It reminded me a bit of Johnny English, especially at the beginning. Because the agent's handler will simply bring him information which we have to accept, without any explanation of where the information came from. We only focus on this agent and what he is supposed to do with the information he is given. Later on, some parts of the plot do get better...but for this show, I feel that we just have to sit back and enjoy the comedy.

The male lead here is Park Hae Jin... he was also in Doctor Stranger, which I wrote about before. I didn't mention him in that post, but his role there was also pretty good (he was the second male lead). Not being a fan of romance, especially silly romance, I don't like the romantic comedy scenes in Man to Man that much, instead I prefer the scenes of the agent/bodyguard (Park Hae Jin's character) with the second male lead who is the actor he is guarding. The actor has a spoilt, arrogant personality, and initially doesn't want a bodyguard, but becomes awed with his bodyguard after a while and wants to be best buddies (after some time he starts calling his bodyguard "brother" (yes, in English)). The actor is played by Park Sung Woong, whom I have seen in a number of other shows, but in smaller roles, so small that I can't even recall which shows they were! Looking at his profile, I see that I've seen him in at least three movies... the most notable of which is The Swindlers. But even though his role in The Swindlers was big enough to end up in the synopsis (still not first or second male lead, though), I have totally no recollection of his role. :P However his role in this drama is good and very entertaining, so I shall remember him now.

Then there is an actress I would like to mention, Chae Jung An. I saw her first in Suits, where I already liked her a lot, and here I also like her a lot! Besides the fact that she is pretty, I think I just really like her facial expressions. (I don't like her photo in AsianWiki so much though...)

Oh... and I should mention that there's quite a lot of English being used in this drama, because the agent works internationally, the bad guy is an international businessman (and the actor is a Hollywood actor who has a Russian fan). They have scenes in Hungary and Russia, and Park Hae Jin's character and the main villain (played by Yeon Jeong Hun, whom I've never seen before) speak English in the international scenes. Both speak very well!

Another thing to mention is that I discovered that Korea's KFC sells beer! In this drama, they keep talking about getting chicken and beer, just like in other dramas. But the difference is that this one is sponsored by KFC, so we keep seeing them carry that KFC take-away bag. They kept saying "chicken and beer", but the bag was always only KFC (without another bag of beer), so I got curious and looked it up. I found this article detailing the special items we can find in Korea's KFC. They even have chicken gizzards!

Word game

I was watching an episode of Running Man yesterday (yes, I've started watching on and off, because they've become better again. And I was extremely awed by their fan-meet concert last year), and they played a rather interesting game.

They were split up into teams of two, and in this game, the question would be a word with two syllables. The first player needs to give another word with two syllables, starting with the same letters as the word from the question (for example, the question is b-- c--, the answer needs to be another word b-- c--). Then the second player needs to give another two-syllable word, this time with the beginning letters inverted (c-- b--).

It's actually a very simple game, but since there is a time limit for coming up with the words, so many mistakes were made under pressure! They came up with a lot of non-existent words :P

I felt that this game could also be played in Malay, since there are well-defined syllables (unlike English). I tried out a few:

Question: paku: Answer 1: peka, answer 2: kapal
baca: beca, cabar
ada: adu, dua

These are the ones that worked... for the first few words that I tried, I actually had the same problems that they had while playing; I blanked out and took ages to find a word! And then there was ayah... the first word was easy (ayam), but flip it around and I cannot find an answer at all! (y-- a--; maybe there is really no such word?)

It occurs to me that it could be a rather fun game for children to improve their vocabulary!

Mango cupcakes

The other day, I received some overripe mangoes from my veggie delivery. The pulp in the middle was so soft that I could scrape it off the seed with a spoon! After looking for a recipe that uses a suitable amount of mango, I kept the softer pulp in the freezer for the cake, and yesterday I made the cake.

I used this recipe that basically replaces eggs with mango pulp. It also doesn't use any butter; instead it seems to have replaced butter with oil and milk (I think).

It's not bad...though the mango taste was less strong than I had expected. More like a regular cake with a tinge of mango? Maybe it was the variety of mango that I used (those were Golden Dragon mangoes...supposedly a good variety. There were two mangoes in 1.5kg, each one bigger than my hand!)

The cupcakes are not very oily (the recipe used only 1/3 cup of oil). So clean up was easy, the cupcake moulds were also practically clean when I took out the cupcakes.

Indoor Geographic

On this rainy night, flying ants are making their way indoors again. I can probably film a short segment of National Geographic if I put my mind to it; earlier I saw a lizard darting up to an ant and snapping it up in its jaws, and then I saw one (either the same lizard or a different one, I can't tell) sitting on a wall, seemingly chomping on its snack.

Crêpes à l'orange

After the previous post on baking new things, today I am making old things...

I finally made crêpes again! It must have been at least 5 years... there were a number of times I wanted to make it, but always discarded the idea because I was too lazy to slave over a hot stove, making slice after slice of crêpe.

In a way, I'm making this because I made scones. I had already bought a one-litre box of milk earlier, with the thought that I would make crêpes (and then I put it off...) Then I opened that milk to make scones, and with a one-litre pack, there's so much left, so I decided I should really make my crêpes!

This time I added in some orange zest. Smells heavenly! I'm not sure whether the extra-golden colour came from the orange, or the butter (I melted it in the pan before frying, so it might have "goldened" the butter a bit), or the eggs that had extra-orange yolks this time.

Anyway, this second photo is to show the top of the crêpes. The first photo showed how thin they were!

Now I'm having this thought of freezing crêpe batter...then I could make fresh crêpes whenever I want them. On the plus side, I wouldn't need to spend so long making a batch of crêpes. But then I would need to make more effort each time (instead of just microwaving leftover crêpes). But those crêpes would be freshly made! Hmm...

Baking new things

The other day I tried baking hasselback potatoes.

I have already tried baking whole potatoes before, but they take so long that I don't want to do it again. When researching baked potatoes, I had come across hasselback potatoes, which are whole potatoes sliced almost through (but without breaking the potato) and then baked. I hoped that this slicing would shorten the baking time, but unfortunately it didn't. So I gave up on it.

But that day I had two potatoes that were starting to grow shoots, and I had no idea what to cook with them. So I thought of this, together with some roast meat.

I didn't want to make roast chicken because I had made it twice (or more?) since MCO started, and I was getting a bit sick of it (I don't have too many different seasonings...) So I decided to try roasting my pork belly.

I didn't want to put in too much effort to make the skin crispy, so I just scored the skin a bit and sprinkled some salt (based on online research). Anyway, it was definitely not enough... the skin was rather hard, only a small part was crispy enough to eat.

The potatoes, however, turned out great. I parboiled them first before slicing, and I basted them with the pig fat from roasting.

before roasting
(There was one larger potato, so I cut it in half before boiling)

after!

I really liked the potatoes. The inside was nice and soft. The outside probably wasn't browned enough, and the slices didn't spread out at all. But it was good enough anyway. The bottom "crust" was slightly crispy, slightly hard, but was just nice when eaten with the rest of the potato. I might do this again!

As for the pork, the meat was fine, but the skin was not. :P It seems that the easiest way to make the skin crispy is to put lots of salt on it, to draw out the moisture while roasting, and then throw the salt crust away. I didn't want to use that much salt...so I guess I can't complain about the results. For this one, I'm not sure whether there'll be a next time.

And then today I tried making scones. I've never eaten scones before, so I'm not sure how they're supposed to be. But from online photos, it seems like this is more or less fine. I would have preferred it to be fluffier...maybe next time.

breaking off a bite at the end of the triangle

breaking off another bite, to see whether the photo will look better

I took a number of photos of the interior of the scone...but in the end I think the first photo was the best. But I decided to just keep one more photo anyway... (and discarded four or five :P )

Tiger stripes with wings

It would seem like there are lots of moths around my house lately. My previous post featured the plume moth. This one shall feature a tiger moth!

I initially thought it was a butterfly, so I searched online for a "butterfly with black and orange stripes". At first I found a lot of butterflies with stripes on their wings, but after I specified that the stripes were on its body, I managed to find a photo of the exact same kind of insect. However, there was no name for it.

After I posted it on Facebook, a friend suggested that I search for "moth" instead. And I immediately found that it is called a tiger moth! I guess this name will be easy to remember. :D

It's a bird! It's a plane!

It's a plume moth!

I saw this strange insect on the wall the other day. It was just sitting there, not moving, so I managed to get a few pictures (though none are very clear, because I couldn't zoom that well...I was afraid that if I get too close the flash might scare it away). I searched for "T-shaped bug" online, and the Internet tells me it's a plume moth!

Doctors without borders

I just watched Doctor Stranger. It's good! It's been a while since I found one that I could hardly stop watching (no, I don't exactly prefer those...it's interesting and fun, but it's also quite a torture :P ).

Doctor Prisoner (which I mentioned before) was interesting, but I didn't feel so much like watching non-stop... maybe because the characters were all pretty nasty :P Here the characters are better people...so I guess I care more about what happens to them.

The plot of Doctor Stranger is about a boy who was sent to North Korea as a child. When he is grown up, he comes back to South Korea, but he is considered a refugee. What's more, he is trying to find his girlfriend who is in North Korea. Then he meets a doctor who looks exactly the same as his girlfriend...

The drama has us guessing whether the girl is really his girlfriend or not. And it also had me guessing who the main character was going to end up with...the girlfriend? Another doctor? Another girl who helped him way before he managed to get a job at a hospital in South Korea? There are also several other interesting plot points, all intertwined together. That's why I found it so interesting.

I still wouldn't say the drama is great, because the guy jokes around a bit too much for someone in such a dangerous situation. (he has North Koreans hunting him!) But it is Lee Jong Suk after all...I feel like every one of his characters have this wacky streak in them. It does get annoying sometimes.

By the way, just a mention on the lead actress Jin Se Yun... I was surprised to find out that she was also the lead actress in Item. I couldn't recognize her at all!

Caught the culprit!

I often find some tiny eggs in a row, stuck to a flat surface somewhere around the house. It has been on the door before, and I've seen it twice on my windowpane! I always wondered what insect laid those eggs. Once I saw some tiny bugs nearby those eggs, with the number of bugs similar to the number of eggs. I expected that those eggs had just hatched, but I had never seen that kind of bug around, so I also wondered whether those could be the mother bugs instead...

After that, I saw the bugs another time, on my floor instead! (not sure where the eggs were) I smacked them with paper, if I remember correctly...and somehow they oozed something blue. Eeww...

It wasn't until today that I saw the actual mother bug!

I first saw the bug there and was going to flick it away with an umbrella tip. But as I approached, I noticed that it was laying those eggs! So I quickly grabbed my camera and snapped a photo. (and then flicked the mother away and got rid of those eggs!) I have seen this bug around a number of times...but never knew that it was the one laying these eggs. It never bothered me much since it goes away easily, but now that I know, I will no longer look at it as kindly!

This post reminds me of the bug that I caught and reared into a moth. After the experiment, I now notice those moths around the house sometimes. I guess we really can't make the connecton between the babies and the adults!