Musings on Scrabulous

I'm playing a few Scrabulous games on Facebook at the moment, and one of them is in French. For some reason it's much harder thinking of French words to place on the board. One of the reasons is lack of practice, of course (if we don't take the words I don't know into consideration) But I think another reason is the way French verbs are conjugated.

You see, in English you think of a verb. And most of the time, only one letter changes when the verb is put in another form (most often, we add an "s") But in French the conjugated verb can be so different from the root form that when we (or I, in this case) think of the root form, we don't think of the other forms at all.

But then, that could also be due to lack of practice :P

So, anyone want to play? ;)

Edit: Argh...no more Scrabulous! (on Facebook at least)

Seeing old and not-so-old friends

When I was in Penang, I met up with Hai Liang. He taught me how to roller-skate. (um, no, actually he didn't...he tried, but I was too lousy :P)

Then I went to KL...the problem was that most people were studying or working, not on holiday like me...so it wasn't that easy finding a moment to meet up.

So first I met Alvin, who was on holiday, like me. Seeing as there are quite a few Alvins, here's a photo to rid you of any doubts ;P

We had lunch together...

...and this is my plate, sans me :P
(you might recognise the dish from Nando's)

Then meeting with two of my Form 5 classmates...the last time we saw each other was when we were still classmates :| (five years ago!!)

with Xin Hui

with Cheng Fong (or David, as he calls himself now...I keep flitting between the two)

I ordered a drink and a waffle in the restaurant we went into...it was nothing special but the presentation was nice, so here are photos:

my drink...chocolate "something" (as you can see)

waffles with ice-cream

I'm still hoping to see some other people...mostly in Kuantan now, since I'm not sure whether I'll be going anywhere until I go back to France in September. So, anyone else want to meet up? :)

Variety, the spice of life...and fritters

My time in Penang was mostly spent eating :P Amongst others, there was the famous goreng pisang (banana fritters) only found in Penang.

the packet of banana (and other) fritters

On the East Coast, we are used to the banana fritters using slices of bananas, costing 10 sen each. This goreng pisang, on the other hand, uses one whole banana (pisang raja, so I was told). And of course, it costs several times more.

whole banana fritter

after biting in

And then there are cempedak (jackfruit) fritters, which are basically the same as what we find on the East Coast, except for the fried batter.

yum...the cempedak is a nice golden colour, a sign of ripeness (and sweetness)

Then a green bean fritter (the green beans are mashed into a paste):

Don't ask me why the filling is not green but yellow, it's a mystery to me too! :P

We find green bean fritters (let me know if there's a better name for it) in Kuantan (on the East Coast) as well, but they're really different; for one thing the paste is more "packed" and less fluffy, the paste is also more green-grey, which lives up to the name "green beans". And of course, again, the batter is different (I shall stop mentioning that!)

Now lastly, this is something we don't find on the East Coast. Ti kuey fritters (I believe ti kuey is called kuih bakul in Malay)

the whole fritter

In fact, the ti kuey is sliced and sandwiched between a slice of sweet potato and a slice of yam. Then the whole thing is dipped into batter and fried. However, if you get unlucky (or lucky, depending on your tastes) you can stumble upon a piece with the ti kuey between two slices of yam and no potato (or two slices of potato and no yam). I guess that happens when there are more slices of yam than potato or vice versa...

There you go...from top to bottom: sweet potato, ti kuey and yam.
Sorry about the photo quality, the colours aren't that clear...

Just to end this post, here's a "signboard" outside my uncle's car repair shop, where we took the fritters to eat them. (they're sold by a roadside stall)

Oops...I did it again!

Last night we went to Parkson in Megamall. I didn't even see it at first, it was WW who told me "There's a Winnie the Pooh!" So I went to take a look.

love at first sight :P

It's soooo cute and good to hug! (even WW said so, when I asked him to hold it while I took out my phone for the photo) Unfortunately it was priced at RM140 :/ (and WW said he was too poor to buy it for me lol) *sigh* Well, at least I have a photo.

I just came back from a visit to Penang and KL, I'll write a little about that later.