Birthday decorations

Some time back I wrote about a birthday calendar in the office. What I didn't mention was that they were going around decorating the cubicles of those whose birthday it was.

They were recycling a row of triangular flags spelling out "Happy Birthday", a cardboard sign saying "It's My Birthday!" and some balloons (they probably had some extra stock of balloons... since those shrink or pop :P ). Some more hardworking people would do some extra stuff.

Before my birthday, I sketched out a couple of prohibition signs.

Those "triangular flags" that I mentioned are pictured on the right... each triangle holds a letter of the greeting.

Because I have no wish to have a bunch of banners and balloons at my cubicle... trop criard! Too eye-catching... More subtle decorations I wouldn't mind.

And what's more, a few weeks earlier a neighbour's cubicle had been decorated... and he was told later that he was supposed to do the decorations for the next person. Er... I don't really want to have that obligation...

But on the day itself, all the banners and balloons still came.

I actually like how my pets are all around; it's like they came out to play! :P

My Jigglypuff and Totoro were on my docking station, you can see Cowboy clearly, and Amy Rose is on my Frodo (the black thingy, which is actually a radio, the kind police cars have). Even the koalas are hanging around! (literally)

It's just a little unfortunate how my Pikachu's arms got "broken" in the process. You can't really see it in the picture, but one arm is gone and the other got longer instead. But no matter, it could be easily put back into place.

(The banners are not in the photo because they were higher up.)

It seems that my sketches were noticed after all... there was a little note appended.

I guess those balloons do look like scissors... Sorry, I can't draw!

Just to clarify though... I do appreciate the decorations... and I did thank the person who did them (I found from someone else who was "responsible"). But I do have mixed feelings about this "obligatory" stuff. Oh well...

A "hot" story

Today I had yong tau foo in the Technoplex cafeteria. After getting my yong tau foo, I went to the condiments area to get chillies (they have cut chilli padi there, and soy sauce too, besides chilli sauce and sambal). There was none. I asked one of the cafeteria workers nearby, are there no more chillies? She said no, but then later she called to me and brought out a bowl. After she had scooped me a spoonful, she told me "this is chargeable". I went "What? How much?" I didn't really catch her reply but I think she said fifty sen. Then she asked me whether I wanted more.

I didn't think that the quantity she had given me would be enough, so I said yes (surely I wouldn't be charged based on number of pieces of chilli, right?). Then I went to the counter to pay. But turns out I wasn't charged for the chilli padi after all. I just passed the slip of paper with the yong tau foo price on it to the cashier, and he keyed in the same price. No addition for the chilli. I'm not sure whether the cashier knew that he should charge for the chilli. I'm not even sure whether the lady who gave me the chilli was pulling my leg. I kind of believed her because usually the chilli is already there, swimming in soy sauce... and usually if it runs out, the bowl containing the soy sauce would still be there. Today I was given dry chillies and I added my own soy sauce.

At first I was thinking maybe too many people took the chillies and they felt they were making a loss or something... Now I wonder. I will need to see whether they have chillies next time...

The cake, the photo, and the flash

Yesterday WW bought me a slice of cake. He activated the camera on his phone and passed it to me so that I could take a photo to send to the parents.

I asked, is the flash on?

He said "Let me do for you" and took the phone from me. After fiddling with the settings a bit, he passed it back to me.

It turned out he had just turned the flash off. But I wanted it to be on!

I said as much, and he groaned, what exactly do you want?

But I hadn't asked him to switch the flash on or off, I had merely asked whether the flash was on!

And this, folks, is a classic example of people making assumptions too early, causing them to hear what they thought was said, instead of hearing what was actually said. -_-

Poached egg

When I was still in France, a friend told me how to make poached egg. She said, just crack an egg into very hot boiling water, and it's done! I tried it out, but wasn't successful... I can't remember how it turned out, but the egg definitely did not manage to stick together.

Today I wanted to make grilled orange fish (or fish à l'orange if you want it to sound more classy). I had a wholemeal loaf too, so I thought, let's try making poached egg again. I searched online for tips, and found this video by Jamie Oliver.

The tips I got were:

1. Crack the egg into a bowl first.
I guess this makes it easier to put the egg into water in one go.

2. Make a whirlpool!
I saw this tip in several other recipes. Jamie Oliver says that poached eggs should be made with fresh eggs, and that the whirlpool method is only necessary for less-than-absolutely-fresh eggs. Anyway, my eggs are definitely in the latter category, so whirlpool it is! The swirling water created by the whirlpool is supposed to help push the egg white to wrap around the yolk. Though in my case, the water didn't seem to swirl for a long enough time after the egg got into it. (I'm thinking maybe my pot wasn't big - read: wide - enough) So the egg white didn't really wrap around the yolk... as you will see.

He also said that the water should be simmering, not boiling... but I don't think I got that temperature right. Maybe next time...

Now for photos!

Like I said, my egg white didn't really wrap around the yolk. It sort of fell off.

The second one fared even worse on the egg-white-loves-and-protects-egg-yolk part.

They are actually still stuck together... but by only a small amount of white. :P

But when we cut the yolk...

Lovely. And so is the second one!

So, I consider it a pass. Not with flying colours, since presentation fails. But the taste is what's important! And... I also hope to lose less egg white in future... some were left in the pot. :(

Rudolph the red-nosed... Viva?

This morning I saw a Viva with antlers. Yes... brown antlers coming out the side of the car, somewhere between the front and back doors. Close to the roof.

My Viva wants antlers too!! :P

Teddy in TeddyVille

Now does that sound like the title of a children's book?

This would be the illustration, if it were actually a children's book:

(The bright white light is the sunlight reflecting off the floor)

It seems that TeddyVille Museum is opening soon in Gurney Paragon. So there is a contest ongoing - we need to take a photo with the teddy bears below, then post it on the TeddyVille Museum Facebook page. I didn't take a photo with them...I doubt my luck (again :P ).

They wrote "Do not touch" on the stage (can you see the signs?). That is so unfortunate (albeit expected)... I would have loved to touch those bears! :D

Something's a-going on...

In Innoplex, I mean. My office.


I don't think I've mentioned it here before, but several months ago, they painted the floor at the bottom of the stairwell green. A bright green, resembling the bubbling pots of toxic waste that you often see in cartoons. Yes, that shade of green exactly.

I remember when I reached work the first day after they painted it. I opened the door to the stairwell, was lifting my foot to step in... and abruptly stopped when I saw that green "goo" on the floor. It's like those cartoon characters slamming on the brakes while walking. (Yes, cartoon reference again :P ) I wasn't sure whether the paint was dry yet... but someone passed by and told me it was.

They painted the stairwell floor on every floor the same green colour... but a light grey on the every half-floor. I feel the grey looks better... it's the cement-like grey. (And I can't for the life of me recall what the floor looked like before it was painted.)

So... after a while we got used to it. But recently, they painted the bottom of the stairwell BLACK. B-L-A-C-K. Like tar. Again, the first time I saw it I got a shock... but with no "wet paint" sign anywhere, I decided it was safe to step in. (It was.) The other floors were untouched though.

That's when I started calling the office the Innoplex horror house. Because, besides walking down the stairs and seeing a pool of green goop or a black pool of nothingness, there were also the lift incidents.

I've only heard of it happening to other people, but it was enough to make me swear off the lift (I already take the stairs most of the time anyway). Once, earlier, one lift had dropped a few floors before stopping. The people in the lift were shaken but not hurt. A few months later, there were lots of stories of the lifts going rogue - ignoring button presses, closing the door and going up to the topmost floor or bottom floor, then opening the doors. It seemed to happen randomly. With some people unluckier than others... one of my friends had it happen to him three or four times. So we joked that we shouldn't take the lift with him. :P

Back to the stairwell floor. Not two weeks after becoming black, it had changed back to the previous green colour. That was a few weeks ago, and to this day I have no idea why...

Anyway, all this led to the latest drawing. I had no idea what to draw... and my one-month deadline was approaching. So, here you go: The making of... the Innohouse of Horrors!

Sorry, some things are still top secret... they wouldn't give away the secrets of their trade! (I also wanted to draw a lift but I wasn't sure it would be recognizable as such :P )

Nasi 7 benua

There is a small Malay restaurant nearby, which became famous sometime last year for its nasi 7 benua (literally: 7-continent rice). I had noticed the restaurant before, but didn't know what it was selling. After seeing people posting this colourful dish on Facebook, I thought I would go and give it a try... but postponed it after hearing that the queue was very long.

Basically this just got postponed again and again... until last Tuesday (it was Deepavali) when we finally decided to go there for lunch.

When we reached the shop, it was around 1pm. The shop was almost full, and the queue extended to the entrance. (That would make around 20+ people in the queue.) We had a half-hour wait before it was our turn. By that time, some people had left, so there was definitely enough places to sit.

So what's so special about this restaurant? It serves seven kinds of rice on a same plate:

The lettuce came with the rice; the other dishes are self-served, economy rice style.

And the seven mounds of rice is what makes the wait long... each plate of rice needs to be scooped seven times instead of once! There were three people working together to prepare the plates of rice... they would check which types of rice were still missing and put it on the plate. We could also opt for only one kind of rice... which is what I would probably do next time, because the taste of the different kinds of rice sort of got mixed up after putting the sauce/gravy on it.

In case you're wondering, each of our plates above cost RM6.70. The restaurant also serves free drinks... if you choose syrup, iced tea, or plain water. Other drinks are charged for as usual.

Of polite wishes

Maybe I've written about this before. Or maybe I haven't. I really don't know.

When in INSA (ASINSA, to be more precise), some of the students started organizing monthly birthday celebrations. At first it was only for their class, but later on they extended it to all the classes in our year. Somehow I never felt excited about those celebrations... I didn't even attend when they started including everyone. It was a while before I figured out why I felt something was "off".

I guess to me, holding a monthly birthday celebration defeats the purpose of the celebration. It is as if you don't care about the individual person, and instead decide to hold a celebration at fixed intervals so that no one can blame you for forgetting.

It's like taking the easy way out.

Recently in the office, they decided to start a fund for a quarterly birthday celebration. I wasn't really into it either... but since people seemed to like it, fine. Let's each contribute a few ringgit a month for this celebration. (I think it's 2 or 3 ringgit a month... but they collect it by quarter. Somehow. They just started, so there's no fixed system in place). For me, it just feels like chipping in for a quarterly team party. Who cares that it's your birthday this quarter anyway?

Why did I think of this today? Because someone shared a Google calendar with people's birthdays. My birthday wasn't on the calendar... and jokingly I asked the person who sent it out, "Hey, my birthday isn't in there! How could you use an outdated calendar?" (Just a few months ago, I remember being asked to update my birthday in a spreadsheet... when they were starting to talk about doing the quarterly celebration)

He replied that the calendar had been created some time ago... and he wasn't going to add newer additions to the birthday list. He told me that we were supposed to add our own birthdays.

Erm... no, thanks. That sounds to me too much like reminding people to wish you a happy birthday. I've even removed my birthday from Facebook so that I wouldn't get flooded with insincere messages... so no way I'm going to, of my own accord, create another way to get insincere messages.

Not sure what I would do if someone added it for me. Should I remove it? I would be tempted... but then again, it wouldn't be very nice to remove someone else's reminder.

The thing is, with a blatant reminder... some people would feel obliged to offer their wishes. And being unable to tell the difference between sincere and forced wishes... it's hard to appreciate any of them.

KIK!

One day, in a group chat, one of my friends suddenly wrote "kik". When there was no clarification, I ignored it. A little later, she wrote "KIK". And then again, "kik".

So I asked, what is "kik"?

Another person replied, it is lol!

LOL - laughing out loud.

Take a look at your keyboard. If you have the US layout, then you can see that KIK is just left of LOL.

I really laughed at that one! :D

What's surprising is, she didn't even correct her typo. Which means... kik is universally accepted as lol now?

Deceived by a cover...again

I recently read When the Devil Holds the Candle by Karin Fossum. The synopsis at the back of the book sounded interesting, and Inspector Sejer seemed like a famous detective that I had yet to discover.

Unfortunately, all is not as promised. The book's focus is not on Inspector Sejer, but on another character. To be fair, the book is not uninteresting, and is well-written in its own way. But... it was not what I expected from the back cover. In the end, I found Inspector Sejer a simple government officer with no exceptional qualities whatsoever. What great addition to a detectives' league is that?

I would have preferred this book to be advertised with simply "the police", instead of singling out the policemen as important characters. Then I wouldn't have felt tricked. As it was, upon finishing the book I was thinking, "What on earth...? What use are the police here?"

(I have written before about another book which does not deliver on its promises, here.)

Troubleshooting

We use these two-way radios at work. I mean we work on them, not that we use them for communication. A few days ago, I upgraded one of mine, and suddenly the screen went blank a few seconds after powering on. I tried a few times and it was still the same... Needing to use that particular software version, I asked around for a solution. I didn't find one, but someone found that I could plug the radio into the computer USB port and the screen would switch on (albeit with a "warning" colour), and I could use it as normal.

So that was what I did... until today when someone came to my cubicle to discuss another issue. I happened to mention this problem, and showed her how it happened (by powering up the radio, letting her see the screen turn on, and then turn blank). When she saw that, she pressed a button on the radio. As if by magic, the screen turned on.

What did she do?!

She adjusted the screen brightness.

Turns out that the screen brightness can be adjusted with a button...gradually becoming dimmer until total blackness. Something must have been set wrongly in this software version... making the screen black by default. I didn't really check it out... it was enough that it was working!

This is what happens when you work on something that has so many features, you don't know half of them!

Oh, and she said she had encountered the same problem before. That was how she knew. Well, I'm sure glad I showed her the problem!

Drain or save?

Blood is life.

Do you drain it or save it?

(That's supposed to be a blood bag, by the way.)

Of retribution and caring

When someone does something that makes you hopping mad and you tell that person off in a way that makes them hopping mad... now that is retribution for you.

Not that I set out to do that. I wouldn't.

But humans are so complicated, so different... anything is possible.

Sometimes I wish there was an on/off button for caring. Then you could flip the switch whenever you want. A mixture of human caring and robotic efficiency. Would make for a less stressful life.

Royally pissed

Almost lost my temper at work the other day. I had scheduled two separate meetings, but with essentially the same people. The first one was right after lunch, at 1:30pm. I had asked whether everyone was okay to attend at that time, because it was a Friday, and sometimes people get back really late from lunch on a Friday. They all said it was okay.

I reached the meeting room, and no one was there. No matter, I waited for a while. I had seen some of the people before going to the meeting room, so I knew they were back from lunch and thought they would be there soon. I thought wrong. After waiting for a while and no one had showed up, I started to get annoyed. I think I IM'ed them on Hangouts (we're using Google at work) to remind them of the meeting. In the end, we started at least 10 minutes late (can't remember the exact time).

The second meeting was at 3:30pm (the first one had ended earlier). With almost the same people, plus a few others if not mistaken. Same story, I go to the meeting room, and no one is there, even five minutes later. Even after a Hangouts reminder. Only one online attendee (again, via Hangouts) was there on time. One person arrived a bit late and hovered outside the meeting room, because "no one is there yet, why should I go in?" I had to go and search for the others. Having found them and reminded them of the meeting, it still took some of them ages to arrive. We started with a few people short because I didn't want to wait half an hour for people to arrive.

What is wrong with people these days? You think your time is more important than everyone else's? You think that people have nothing to do than to wait for you?

A lot of people use their calendar's reminder to go for meetings. Sometimes their excuse is, "I wasn't at my computer, so I didn't see my reminder." Well, guess what? It isn't a valid excuse. If you know you're going to be away from your computer, you need to have another way to remember your meeting. Like using your brain and your watch (or phone, these days), for example. (Your brain to remember when you have a meeting, and your watch to tell you the time. In case some people don't get it.)

Royally pissed is how I felt that day. Seriously. It probably wouldn't have been so bad if it had not been an empty meeting room, TWICE in a single day. One or two people being late for meetings, I can understand. I can even accept that people will not arrive on the dot, and I would be willing to wait 5 minutes. But if you are not there by that time... something is wrong. With you. You are a highly selfish and disrespectful person.

And even if you are late with a valid reason, most of the time you can still let people know. So at least, they can decide properly whether to wait, to postpone, or to start without you.

Common courtesy is on the brink of extinction.

All about apom

Some time back, I went to a food court with some friends. We bought the Indian apom (apom manis - I will go into more detail below), followed by the crispy apom (aka ban chean kuih). The crispy apom's name became a topic of discussion: One person said it was apom, I said I actually call it ban chean kuih instead of apom, and the Malays declared that it is always called apom balik in Malay. But to me apom balik is something else...

We laid the matter to rest by agreeing that anything resembling a pancake seemed to be called apom, and that was that. Good food is not meant to be argued upon. :P

A few days ago, this topic suddenly came to mind (triggered by the sight of one of the kinds of apom). So I decided to do some research.

I discovered not two, not three, but four different kinds of apom. Though I wouldn't call the last one apom...

1. Apom manis

This article gives you practically all the information you need to know about apom manis. It is the Indian apom I mentioned at the beginning of the post, though you can also find Chinese (or others, who knows?) selling it. Basically it is a simple pancake, but cooked in a mini-wok, so instead of being flat, the middle is thicker (and fluffy), whereas the sides are thin and crispy.

I don't know the stall that is recommended in the article, but I already get very good apom manis from the food court near my place, so I doubt I will go looking for it.


2. Apom balik

Next up we have the - I would like to say real - apom balik.

Now this article will tell you all about the two most famous apom balik stalls in Penang (at least I think they're the most famous... I actually haven't heard of any other stalls :P ) I myself have blogged about one of the stalls before, complete with photos of the apom-making process.

3. Ban chean kuih

Now for the crispy ban chean kuih. For this one, you can see a photo and a description here. Another page calls it apom balik (it's no. 4 on the snack list).

This one is fully crispy (instead of only crispy at the edges like the apom manis). It is cooked in a flat pan with straight edges (you can see that from its shape), so there is no fluffy centre. But that makes it just right! :)

By the way, ban chean kuih comes in two types, one thin and crispy like this one that I'm talking about, and the second one thick and... filling. I don't like the thick one much, because I prefer crispiness. And the thick one also fills me up way too quickly... since this is supposed to be a snack, I should be able to keep some space in my stomach for other things!

4. Apom berkuah

While doing my apom research, I stumbled upon this new kind of apom that I had never heard of. (From the same website, there is also a guide on how to make it, complete with pictures.) Turns out that it is a nyonya kuih, similar to kuih serabai which I had discovered only earlier this year, and blogged about. Not as good as the ones above, I would say.

So... I'm curious. Which kinds of apom have you tried? Do you call them by any other name? :)

A dream come true

I think practically everyone (and especially those who read my blog) know that I love Pikachu. So what better than finding Pikachu sitting on my desk waiting for me?

I happened to be away playing ping pong. Adeline was staying late that day, and she was bored... so she printed out a Pikachu cube and left it on my desk after making it!

Here's another photo at another angle so that the tail is visible:

Actually this cube Pokemon craze started from the Tech Expo in Motorola. On that day, there was a games booth that gave out printouts for people to make cube characters. (there were no Pokemon on that day) If you completed one, they would give you a brown bag (containing a few snacks). I didn't actually visit the booth until the end of the day, when they were already closing down (they had run out of brown bags), but I took a printout anyway. They only had the most difficult one left... which no one wanted to take.

So I picked up the challenge and slowly (over the next few days) figured out what went where. At first I had no idea how the end product was even supposed to look like. But then I managed to make the head... and Louis figured out who it was supposed to be. "It's the character from Sonic the hedgehog!" he exclaimed.

And so a Google search yielded some results: It was Amy Rose, Sonic's girlfriend (kinda... because it says that she considers herself Sonic's girlfriend, but I'm not sure whether Sonic agrees :P ) But with the name of the character, I was able to search for pictures of it to know how it was supposed to look in the end.

I found that the printout was not that complete... it didn't have hands! So I made white hands with simple white paper cutouts.

There were two pieces of "hair" left over... if you check the actual character's pictures, you will see that the hair is actually short. But the hair pieces that I had were so long... I felt they weren't drawn correctly. But no matter, I gave my Amy Rose long hair. And then... at least she can stand a bit more easily!

I believe that more Pokemon are in the works...because we found some more cutouts online. I'm also planning to re-make my old Jigglypuff in colour...

Good morning butterfly!

This morning there was a lovely butterfly sitting outside my kitchen window. I was afraid I would scare it away if I opened the window, so I snapped a few pics before opening the window. But it was still there... unmoving. I guess it was sleeping. So I got even better photos!

Pretty, right?

After some time it started fluttering its wings, slowly... a few times... and then it took off.

Good morning and a good day to you, butterfly!

Edit (13 Oct): Thanks to Wei Ping, I found out the name of this butterfly. It is a blue pansy!

Firefighting

I've got a few things I want to blog about, but let's start off with a short one. As I've mentioned a few times (I believe), I like it when people inject a bit of humour into the serious (supposedly) world of work. Anyway, one of my e-mails received the following auto-reply:

Dear Sender,

I'm OOO on external firefighter training Oct-5, Oct-6, Oct-7 .

If you notice any fire in console - call my mobile.

If you notice any fire anywhere else  - call 998

OOO stands for "out of office", in case you're wondering. This e-mail comes from Poland, so I guess 998 is the emergency number for the fire brigade there. And as for console... I suppose that's their job!

What I like about this e-mail is the references to firefighting throughout. Very consistent. :D

Creating a solar system

At work we have a scrum board to keep track of our team's activities. We recently received our new metal/whiteboard boards. Before this we were using a softboard, so we used pins to stick papers onto the board. Now we can use magnets, so I came up with these avatars for our team members! (no one had much ideas on how to decorate our scrum board, so somehow the task fell to me (because I more or less designed the old one))

Unfortunately I didn't pay enough attention and the positions of Uranus and Neptune got switched... I didn't realize until I was halfway through removing the magnets and I was too lazy to rearrange them again.
(The icons come from Zairaam at DeviantArt; you can check out the original images there.)

I printed out the images and cut them out... then we found out that the paper would definitely tear if we stuck it on magnets to use (our magnets are smaller than the icons...about the size of a 10-sen coin). One of my team members thought of sticking the paper onto something harder first... and we found cardboard! So there we have paper on cardboard, stuck onto magnets.

As I was making them, I stuck them onto my metal cabinet of drawers (you can see the top drawer slightly open on the left). And why not arrange the solar system?

Besides all the planets (including Pluto), there are the Sun, the Moon and even an asteroid. There is also a black hole, which I placed far away (bottom left), so that it won't swallow up the planets! The supernova is also far away (top right) for about the same reason... so that it's explosive power will not destroy the planets. As for Thanos... at first I thought it was one of Jupiter's moons, but turns out it isn't... my friends told me it was a Marvel character - an evil one. So the evil Thanos is not too near to the other planets, but trying to approach... stealthily. lol

You can touch if...

Just thought of this funny incident at work. It happened quite some time ago. F was at his desk, and L was walking around... and then for some reason (which I can't remember), L went over to kacau F by lightly touching the hair at the back of his head. (both L and F are guys, by the way)

F jumped and said, Hey, need to charge one you know...

I laughed and said, He will charge... then you can touch!

As soon as the words left my mouth I knew something was "wrong". L also immediately burst out laughing. He asked F, Did you hear what she said? Fortunately F hadn't heard. :P

So maybe I shouldn't be posting about it here... but then again, I'm not naming anyone so it's okay right? :D

And the thing is... I like how it rhymes. :P

Sugar's running out

Because when you keep giving out sweetness without getting any back... sugar runs out.

And when there's none left... you use the others.

You want sweetness? Give me refills...

World Championship - the aftermath

Well... as I mentioned in my previous post, I participated in the 2015 Minesweeper World Championship - online. I managed to attain my goal (5 intermediates under 25 and 5 experts under 90) within the first hour, so I next tried to get all my experts under 85. I still had two expert games at 86 and 87 when I scored a 76. I was so happy because it has been ages since I got a sub-80 in expert (sad but true). (Oh, and there's a 79 in the scoreboard that I scored earlier, but that doesn't really count because these scores are "realtime" so that is actually an 80, yadda yadda) I didn't even realise when I scored the 83 that bumped my 86 off the scoreboard... which is weird because I was waiting for a sub-85. How could I not notice? Maybe I saw it as 88 instead? Anyway, I checked the time (we can see the details of the uploaded scores) and it turns out that 83 was scored about 15 minutes before the end of the tournament. Just in time...

All in all, my scores this time round are better than the previous tournament, if you look at the intermediate and expert times (it's a slightly different format, so we can't go by total score alone). But then we played for three hours (as opposed to one hour last time) so that might have contributed as well.

I certainly hope to participate in more mini-tournaments in future... they held quite a few but I hadn't been keeping up with the news. Then at least I can play a little... even though my scores aren't as good as before. Got to keep moving and keep those reflexes sharp!

By the way, the world record for intermediate is an 8 since 2012. (I'm rounding up because I don't like "real time") It was still in the double digits the last I remember. And the expert record is 32 since 2010... I do believe I had heard of this, briefly... but it must have slipped my mind. (both records by Kamil Muranski) I still remember when getting sub-40 was such a big deal. And somehow those times are what I remember. Lasse Nyholm, the first Minesweeper legend that I heard of, is now at number 30 on the world rankings. Times have certainly changed!

Participating in a World Championship

A few days ago I found out that there was going to be another Minesweeper World Championship in Vienna, this weekend. I was like, I want to get my ticketttssss!!! But unfortunately, I can't. So I guess I will be joining online instead. My game has gotten worse anyway... so I'm sure my scores will not be that good. I will just aim for finishing enough games (5 intermediates and 5 experts - it should be possible, within three hours), and my goal (a realistic one) would be to get the intermediates under 25 and the experts under 90. That would make my total score less than 575 (5×25 + 5×90).

Anyway, I found that the last online tournament I joined was in 2011, and I even posted about it here.

I also went back to check the country rankings for Malaysia... there's a new player at number 2 since I last checked, but I'm still at number 1. Yay! The new number-two had his last record in 2012 (see the date beside his expert record). Not sure whether he's still playing and will beat me one day... :s But that's what you have to expect when you "retire".

A carrot story

Recently I bought some Australian carrots. Usually I don't care what carrots I buy, but at the time they were on promotion, so I bought a few. I've been using them to make juice (with oranges) and today in stir-fry vegetables, and WW said that they were distinctly sweeter than normal carrots (I can't really taste the difference). So I asked him whether he wanted carrot sticks as a snack. (He said no.)

That made me recall something that happened when I was in France. I had just arrived in INSA, and it was during our summer class. Foreign students had to start extra classes earlier before official term started, to catch up on French and all that. Having been in France for two years at that point, I was placed in an advanced class with mostly European students (mostly European because Europeans are the ones who have more chances of speaking French before reaching France, I guess). One day when I visited one of my classmates (an Estonian, by the way... she was the first Estonian I met and remains the only one I have met till today) in her room, she was munching on a carrot. She asked me, Do you want a carrot? Then she clarified: Not this one... (indicating the one in her hand) One of these. And she showed me a bagful of carrots she had just bought. (Not being a fan of carrots, I declined)

A while later, another friend arrived, and she said the exact same thing. You want a carrot? Not this one... I have lots more over there. Haha... It was just so funny how she felt the need to clarify that she wasn't offering us the carrot she was eating halfway... I'm not feeding you leftovers... You can have a brand new carrot! :D

Differences

A friend shared a picture on Facebook. On it was an adult asking a child, "Are there any foreigners in your school?" The child replies, "No, in my school there are only children."

This is yet another illustration of how children are colour blind. However, it is not to say that we are all alike...

Let's not deny differences.
Let's not shun differences.
Let's accept differences.
Let's embrace differences.

Because we are not mass-produced. The world would be a boring place if we were all the same.

Just letting some thoughts flow... on a sunny cum cloudy day when the sun seems to be playing hide-and-seek. For a moment, it hides... a while later, it will come out where you can see it... and then the next round starts and it goes into hiding again.

Battle and escape

Now for an overdue post... but luckily not that much overdue. Last week (not this week that just ended but the past one) we had a teambuilding event for the whole of Tetra software team. It was a half-day event; we had a buffet lunch at Eastin Hotel (which I think everyone agreed did not taste that good) and then proceeded to Queensbay Mall (which is walking distance from Eastin) for games of laser tag and escape mission.

We were split up into eight teams, with four teams going for laser tag first, and the other four going for the escape mission first (the places in question could not fit everyone in at the same time...)

My team ended up playing laser tag first. This seems to be quite a new "thing", as I first heard of one opening at 1st Avenue recently, then at Gurney (not sure whether it's the Plaza or Paragon), and now at Queensbay. It is basically a game of paintball (because everyone knows paintball by now, right?) without the pain(t). (It's been a long time since I made a pun... hehe) Players wear a vest which has a few targets on it. By shooting at different targets, you gain different amounts of points.

So this was our team! (the one wearing white is my manager, by the way... we happened to be in the same team. Err...no comment. :| )

You can see the targets on the vests... the ones on the shoulder are worth 50 points if not mistaken, and those on the torso are 200 points (I remember this because those are the highest points). There is also a target on the top of the gun (actually they call the gun a phasor; I know that because when we get shot, there's a display on the top of the gun that tells us where we've been shot. I took a while to figure that out though, because at first you just look around you rather than at the display) which is worth 100 points I think (or 50, I can't remember), and another big one on your back which is worth 100 points. And every time you are shot, you sort of "freeze" for six seconds, as in you cannot shoot and cannot be shot during that time.

From the photo you can see that the targets on our vests are flashing red (you can only see the shoulder targets flashing, but when the game starts, the other targets start flashing properly as well). There are blue and green for the other teams, but we only had two teams playing at a time, so we never used the green ones.

So... we go inside and it is rather dark (I suppose it's so you can see the targets flashing), and the place is quite a maze actually. There are so many walls that you can't really see people unless if you run into them. I guess this is their way of making the game fun... but some of those who had played it before, somewhere else - they said that playing in an open space was more fun (it was an open space, but had some obstacles or things that you could hide behind. So they said... since I've never played elsewhere before).

There is also a small "viewing deck" above the game area, where we can go and watch people playing. But you can't really see much going on... it's just fun to look at your friends running around shouting :P

We played three games of laser tag, with each game lasting 10 minutes. Since there were four teams playing at a time, we played against every other team. (there was only one game area, so we had to take turns) The first game was just counting points, seeing how many times we could hit the opposing team. No friendly fire, meaning that there was no effect if you shoot your own teammate.

In the second game, it was similar to the first except that each player had only ten lives. After those lives were used up, you couldn't shoot any more and had to go out of the game area. I don't know how they count the lives though... not sure whether each life was counted by a certain number of points or if you could get shot a hundred times in the shoulder and not lose any lives :P

And the third game... suddenly friendly fire counts! (just when I had gotten used to shooting anyone I saw...) The colours of the targets all change to yellow when the game starts, so you have to recognise your own teammates instead of relying on the colour. Life was unlimited, but you got points deducted for shooting your own teammate. (and your teammate freezes... so double penalty for your team there) Most teams received negative points in this round... only one team ended up with positive points... and they won the teambuilding event. (the points from the escape mission were added to the laser tag ones)

After the three games we went for the escape mission...which was just a few doors down from the laser tag in the mall. The escape mission has been around for some time in Georgetown... I think there are already two places doing that. The one in Queensbay is called Mission Q, and I think it opened rather recently.

They had five different rooms, so we drew lots to select our room. There were puzzles in the room that we had to solve... being a puzzle-lover it was quite fun for me. They laid down the rules to count the points (I think these rules are specially for teambuilding activities, not for when you go there yourself to play): You had a certain number of points to begin with (60, I think), and with every minute earlier than the hour that you managed to escape from the room, you received an extra point. If you didn't manage to escape within the hour, they would deduct ten points for every puzzle that was left unsolved in the room. And they gave you hints that you could request whenever you wanted (the number of hints depends on the difficulty of the room; 3-star difficulty means you get 3 hints, and 4-star means 4 hints). Unused hints would translate to extra points (10 points per hint, if not mistaken).

We got a 4-star room, and managed to escape in 53 minutes. Which was quite good I guess, because we had time to have fun. (coming out too soon would have been kinda a waste, in that sense) The only thing I didn't like was that we were constrained to an hour (not by the escape mission itself, because the teambuilding event couldn't last that long... people wanted to go home!), so sometimes we had to ask for a hint instead of spending more time to think about the puzzle. (we used up all four hints, by the way)

One funny thing happened when we were doing the escape mission. While working on the first puzzle, we suddenly discovered that we could push the room wall. When we pushed, the room would move to one side. The person in charge told us to push it back because that wasn't the solution to our puzzle! But later on we found that pushing the wall was supposed to be done after solving yet another puzzle... So basically, we went ahead of ourselves. If we hadn't gone back to the first puzzle and solved each one properly, we would have missed something along the way and gotten stuck later on. They have cameras in the room, so I guess someone will monitor what you are doing and come to let you know if you're doing something you shouldn't, like solving something in the wrong order!

When everyone was done, we gathered at the laser tag location again for announcement of the results and an obligatory team photo (though some people had already gone home... :/ )

We even received certificates for our "outstanding achievement" in corporate laser battle... I guess simply participating (and not leaving after lunch, like some people did) is an outstanding achievement in itself! I would take a photo of the cert and post it here... but I left it in the office (and don't really plan on bringing it back home :P )

Selagi logik

Last night we had dinner at a seafood place in Teluk Tempoyak. The place is called D'Seafood Paradise, in case you want to find it. They have an ikan bakar counter where they display all the different kinds of fish and seafood that are available. Besides the usual seafood like prawn and squid, they also have crab, cockles, clams, and even soft-shell crabs.

And the soft-shell crabs are the purpose of this post. Because I saw the following poster on a wall:

This poster advertises the soft-shell crabs. I won't be translating it (because it's kinda hard to get the actual tone across), but basically it just says the soft-shell crabs are really good and you would want more. And at the bottom they put three methods of preparing the soft-shell crabs. Plus a fourth: As you wish... "selagi logik" (as long as it's logical) It was that last part that cracked me up and made me take a photo.

It's like a disclaimer... saying hey, we can prepare it however you want... just don't ask us for some outlandish methods. Haha.

We did order some soft-shell crabs... and they recommended "goreng tepung" (deep-fried with batter). We initially wanted to get the squid "goreng tepung", but it seems that it is better to have the crabs deep-fried (the seller was very firm on that), so in the end we had the squid cooked another way. (goreng kunyit, if you're interested)

And of course, we ordered a fish to be bakar-ed... (grilled) It was actually pretty good but I felt there wasn't quite enough sambal on the fish. A pity.

We also ordered some chicken (and other stuff, but chicken is the one I want to talk about). One thing I don't quite understand is why in Malay restaurants, when we order chicken, they will always use the chicken breast. I don't think I have ever had other parts of chicken in a Malay restaurant where we order dishes to eat with rice. For example, at economy rice stalls, if we see ayam masak merah we can see the different parts of chicken and we select a piece. But at a restaurant, if we order ayam masak merah, we get small (boneless) pieces of chicken breast in a red sauce, and even the sauce is most often inferior to the one at economy rice stalls. Why....???

I'm thinking that this has something to do with them wanting to prepare the dishes quickly and serve it. Whereas at economy rice stalls they can take their time preparing the dish in advance, so they do the "actual" preparation to make sure the dish looks good and people will take some! Well, just my theory.

Assumptions

When people assume they know you so well. That they even predict what you will do. But turns out they are wrong.

It stinks.

It's how you play the game

Sometimes losing can be a happy thing.

If you remember my post from a few months back, I have been playing ping pong again lately. And my ping pong buddy's game has gotten loads better. He is now smashing left and right and left again... and every so often making those smashes that land halfway along the side edge of the table... meaning it does not even reach the end of the table. So I have to run forward to get it. The smashes aren't too hard and fast yet... but it's only a matter of time if we continue playing.

Still, it's helping me improve my game too. I still manage to win most of the games (he insists on keeping score), but sometimes he takes the lead and I have to play hard to get back...like today when he took a lead of two sets (two sets, for goodness' sake, that has never happened before! Usually after losing one set I manage to concentrate and win the next one) and I was worried I was going to lose the rest. But then, it's not whether you win or lose... (see title :P )

He still can't play spin balls that well, but most of the time I don't play those either, because I still want to improve on my fast balls. When my fast balls can't help me win any more, I'll have to bring out the spins... (and maybe end up playing a few suicide balls in the process... I haven't been practising, you see...)

May the force be with you

Just watched Running Man episode 264 (yep, that's the latest; I'm a fan, remember?). For some reason HaHa started singing his old school song (okay, the reason is because they were doing something related to school), so his teammates Jae Suk and Kwang Soo started singing theirs too. Then Jae Suk was like, did you receive vital force from somewhere? And it turns out that all Korean school songs have something to do with receiving vital force from a mountain (or most, to be technically correct, because this is just from the three of them). They will sing something like "We received vital force from xx mountain" with the xx being the mountain's name. Only the mountain's name changes... probably each school receives their force from the nearest mountain!

I found this really funny. :D Why? I dunno... Maybe because it's similar to the ubiquitous torch that we find on school logos in Malaysia? I wonder whether other countries have those too. From darkness to light... (that was my primary school slogan, by the way)

Where am I?

Some people baffle me. I just don't know where I stand with them. Sometimes I feel that we are friends... and then some time later they just act like they do not want to be friends after all. Some are on-off-on-off, only acting friendly when they feel like it (somehow this makes me think of the song Hot and Cold by Katy Perry).

Maybe I am bad at reading signals. Maybe I interpret people's actions all wrong. Maybe I have a different definition of friendship. Maybe I just don't understand how humankind works.

All I know is, my English is supposed to be correct. I have acquaintances, and I have friends. A person needs to be an acquaintance before they can be a friend. And as for colleagues... well, some I don't know, some become acquaintances, and some become friends.

But which ones? Which ones are where? I think I know... and then I find out that I was wrong.

So since I'm stupid... why don't you tell me?

Where would you like to be?

Where would you like me to be?

So that we are clear on this. It would make things a lot easier for both of us.

Smile. Or not.

Some time ago, some people were sharing a picture of Heath Ledger as the Joker on Facebook. On it were the words: "Smile. Because it confuses people. Because it is easier than explaining what's killing you inside. -Joker"

BUT. These people were sharing the picture with the caption "Smile :)" How can they believe that the message these words send is to smile? That it is positive?

Did they even read what was written on it? Did they stop reading after the first two sentences?

You people need to wake up. That smile? Sometimes it is painted on. That's what the Joker has on his face. A painted smile. Not genuine, not happy. Just a smile to hide the sadness within.

Not saying that all smiles are fake. Which brings me to my drawing.

There are all kinds. Even more than these four. But I don't have enough space for the rest. Or maybe... there are too many of the rest to be able to represent in drawings.

Kena saman

We were having dinner at the Sg Pinang food court. When going back to our car, our heart sank (yeah, it's a collective heart) as we saw a traffic summons on the windshield.

(click to see larger version)

So... MyTeksi says that we are guilty of not using it. Hehe. I guess this is a pretty good marketing gimmick, as you are sure to look at a "traffic summons" you get!

(MyTeksi is an app to book a taxi. Some friends told me about it; it seems that you input your current location and your destination, and different taxis will bid for the job. Something like that... since I've never used it myself.)

How to be a good daughter

Keep calm and let your brother kill you. That is how to be a good Asian daughter.

Keeping safe

My previous post on secrets made me think of this quote that I shared several years back. (wow, eight years!)

Si le talent suprême est de faire croire qu'on en a, la meilleure façon de garder un secret est de faire croire qu'on en a pas.

Donc la meilleure méthode de ne pas se faire voler son argent serait de faire croire qu'on en a pas. Ça explique alors, pourquoi tout le monde se dit pauvre ces jours-ci.

Not sure whether I've written about how people these days love saying that they're poor, while putting everyone else on a pedestal saying "rich". Looks like I've been slow on the uptake on this one.

(Short translation: From the previous quote, I guess I can conclude that these days people are trying to keep their money safe by pretending that they have none.)

Secrets

People really amaze me sometimes.

The other day, a few of us were eating together when the topic of a mutual friend came up. Three of us had heard about a recent happening in this mutual friend's personal life. The fourth hadn't. I can't remember who brought up the topic, but suddenly Number 1 and Number 2 were discussing it openly. As I held my tongue and tried not to give too much away... Number 4 (who didn't know anything about the story) suddenly reprimanded Number 1, "That person trusted you with this secret, you shouldn't tell people about it!" Probably because Number 4 thought that Number 1 was telling us stuff that we didn't already know.

And Number 1 justifies it by saying, "We all already know about it." I was like, "But we shouldn't be talking about it in front of Number 4!"

Number 1 agrees. "Yeah, yeah, we can't tell you about it." (said to Number 4)

Not a minute later, Number 1 continues talking about the same topic. *smacks head in own mind* I can't remember how it transpired, but Number 1's justification this time was that "Number 4 won't tell anyone about it right?" *almost faints*

That is NOT how you treat confidences. (though in this case, it seemed to be a rather open secret, so... I don't know how much it mattered)

This reminded me of something another friend posted on Facebook some time back. He was lamenting the fact that he had been told a huge secret which he had a great urge to share. (but then he added that he wouldn't share it... not sure whether he managed to do that in the end :P ) And another friend commented that maybe one day he would find that actually everyone knew the secret but was just keeping it "secret".

That observation actually hits the nail on the head. If everyone were to act like Number 1 above, telling anyone about something just because "they wouldn't tell other people", and the ones who are told go ahead and tell others because "they wouldn't tell other people"... in the end the whole world would know. Hello, secret that everybody knows!

Really hard to trust people these days, huh?

Two farewells in a week

This past week I attended two farewell gatherings. One was for a Polish colleague who was leaving for home after a short business trip here. The second was for a new colleague who was leaving us just after three months!

For the first farewell, we went to Zi Wei Yuan Steamboat in Raja Uda for dinner. This place is especially famous because of its milky fish soup. It was really tasty, and I liked it that they refilled the soup with actual soup instead of just water. But... we all felt really thirsty afterwards. :s

Photo taken when the food had just arrived; unfortunately two people hadn't arrived yet!

The second farewell was lunch at Mizi Bistro at Krystal Point. This one was not that good... some of the others said only a few dishes are really good; the others are just so-so. I must have picked a so-so dish...

Photo taken at the end of the meal

Hehe, what a coincidence; on both days I was sitting next to the guest of honour! :P Anyway, I'll pass on listing out the names this time.

I didn't take any photos myself, so thanks to those who passed me the photos!

Chicken chopping

Sometimes I wonder, do those people who sell chicken actually cook chicken themselves?

I usually ask them to chop the chicken into smaller pieces for me, and it rarely turns out well...

For example, today I bought half a chicken. I asked the seller to potong empat (cut into four) for me. And... he cut out three pieces (on the left, in the photo below), then asked me whether I wanted to cut the remaining (huge!) piece into two. I said, err...better cut it into three.

How do they expect me to cook one dish with a whole leg and half a wing? -_-

Though actually, after chopping it like this, he made to take the leg and chop it again... but I said never mind. Where there are joints, I can handle... it's just the hard bones that I'm lazy to battle with. :P

I keep things

And this is proof.

This is from about 20 years ago. I can't remember exactly how it was, but I think we were going to visit my uncle and aunt around my birthday, and my cousin sent this gift voucher to me beforehand.

Now this is how you do things! 

The gift in question was a Garfield bag (hence the clue). The bag is no longer around; I think it was thrown out after it got old and moldy. (unless if my mother still has it stashed in a cupboard somewhere... but I don't think so)

Edit (26 Aug 2015):
My mother found the bag!

Still looking new. Garfield doesn't look a day older! Haha...

Reason to not have a browser home page

The other day at work, I opened up Firefox and saw this red panda winking at me.

 So cute!! ♥

Firefox has these ads on its home page each time I open it. Sometimes it is nothing much, but once in a while something interesting pops up. Like this one!

At home I have my Firefox configured to re-open all my tabs from my previous session, so I never see its home page. I wonder what I have missed! :P

Who's the best driver?

The other day we went to Kimberley Street for the koay chiap. Afterwards, we went to Chulia Street just to see what food they were selling there, since we seldom go to Georgetown at night.

On Love Lane (at the junction from Chulia Street), we spotted this car:

Those are some huge Garfield and Winnie the Pooh!

Some friends in the back seat as well

And a yellow duck in the back!

A little behind the car there was a trishaw (can we call this a trishaw?).

World's Best Driver

Extraordinary vehicles in Georgetown

After having the duck in the previous post, we happened to pass by the Esplanade and saw the Transformers on display. I knew they were there but hadn't taken the time to come and see them. So we stopped a while for photos.

The trees in the background get a little in the way of taking good photos.

After that we happened to see an interesting pedal-car on the road.

We were in the car and they were going the other way. I thought I wasn't going to get my camera out in time to get a photo, but then they suddenly stopped. Turned out they wanted a photo too!

And I managed to snap a photo of the back of the pedal-car. Umbrella bicycle rental, anyone?

Duck in Penang

When my parents were here, we went to try a restaurant called What The Duck. I guess you know why they chose that name!

Anyway this restaurant specializes in duck dishes, so every one of us ordered duck. They also had other dishes though, for those who don't like duck.

duck confit

white wine braised duck

Indonesian crispy bek-bek (something like that)

duck à l'orange

What we ordered were basically French dishes, except for the Indonesian crispy duck with its spicy sauce (sambal?) and rice. The duck confit (confit de canard) was cooked using vegetable oil instead of duck fat (I saw this online), so maybe that was why the duck taste was less strong (makes it much healthier though). Probably because of that, I preferred the canned confit de canard I had tried in France (in which the space not filled with duck was filled with solid duck fat!). The dish still tasted good, just not my idea of confit de canard. The sauce that came with it was a light brown sauce, rather mild I felt.

The white wine braised duck had a really crispy skin and a white wine sauce that we all agreed was the best. It came with a side dish of ratatouille! (partly hidden under the duck)

The duck à l'orange (basically orange flavoured duck) took 20 minutes to prepare (we were asked whether the wait was okay). It was duck breast with an orange sauce. Three of us declared the sauce horrible (it had a certain smell; I'm not sure what was the ingredient that contributed to it), but my father declared it delicious. I found the duck meat good; reminded me of the magret de canard that I had in France. The duck breast was cooked medium rare; when we ordered, the waitress asked us whether that was okay. The medium-rareness was probably why my brother didn't like it so much. (On a side note, a few friends had been to this shop as well, and one of them told me that he didn't like the duck à l'orange, but it was because he liked the sauce and didn't like the duck. So... I guess this dish brings out the most mixed reactions!)

Back to the Indonesian duck dish. The duck was crispy, as the name promised. Sprinkled on top were some veggies and fruits, I think, probably capsicum and green apple and others; I didn't take the time to figure it out. The sambal-like sauce was rather nice too, I can't describe the taste but it wasn't very spicy.

Overall I liked the dishes (maybe because I like duck in general?). The price was around RM20 per dish. The good thing is, if you don't order drinks they will give you plain water for free. We didn't know that so we ordered a couple of drinks to share, and they brought us water for the remaining two people.