Sunlight on a balcony garden

Recently, my neighbour has been setting up plants on his balcony. He already had some behind the house, with some kind of rack and netting over it. Since last week's theme was sunlight, it is the perfect occasion to show you what the new "garden" looks like, with sunlight streaming onto it.

Seven Days

I watched Seven Days last night. It popped up in my YouTube sidebar as a recommendation.

I had never heard of Seven Days before this. When I saw the recommended video, I looked up the movie. It turned out that the movie was based off a Japanese manga of the same name. The video was tagged as a "BL Live Action". I knew what "live action" meant; it is when they use actors to act in a manga/anime adaptation, as opposed to an animated movie/series. But it was my first time hearing of BL. And it turned out it means "boys' love".

You see, the story of Seven Days is about a boy who dates the first girl who confesses to him on a Monday, but always ends up breaking with her on Sunday. He is so popular that girls are lining up to confess to him on Monday. (Reaction: bleargh...what lousy guy is this?) So what happens here is that another boy confesses to him jokingly one Monday, and they go out for a week. And guess what? They end up developing feelings for each other.

I don't know what I was expecting from this movie. Having watched the anime Lovely Complex, which is about a tall girl (with normal boys' height) and a short guy (with normal girls' height) falling for each other (I was practically forced to watch it by my anime-crazy friend in France, after I rejected her recommendations of "long" animes and animes that have not ended), I think I expected something similar. That one was pretty silly and quite funny at times, so I guess I expected comedic moments. But instead I ended up being rather mesmerized by the heavy emotional acting in Seven Days.

Would I recommend this movie? I wouldn't say so. It isn't really that good. I liked the way they built up the story at the beginning (more on that in the spoilers below), but the last few days were rather a drag. Ending-wise, I think it wasn't too bad either. So, my complaint would be on how it felt like they were forced to drag out the movie to make seven days.

Okay, spoilers start here! (If you skipped all the above and jumped straight to the spoilers, don't blame me for not being warned!)

Like I said above, I like how it started. You have Shino Yuzuru (called Yuzuru, his given name, below - you'll know why if you watch the movie, but it's not important) who is a pretty boy with an attitude that does not match his face, as his childhood friend tells him. So girls like him... until they date him and find out what he is really like. Haha. Then there is Seryou Touji (called Seryou, his family name, below), who is the famous "seven days" date. The movie goes through each day from Monday to Sunday. On Monday, Yuzuru hears about the Seryou rumour (well, not actually a rumour, but a fact), and when he bumps into him, he jokingly asks him to date. Seryou is actually pining for a girl who dumped him, and that is the reason why he accepts any girl who confesses to him on Monday; he is trying to find someone to help him get over his previous girlfriend (not counting the ones he dated for seven days). But by Sunday he will find that he has not developed any feelings for the girl, so he gives up after seven days of trying. (Aww... he doesn't sound like such a jerk after all.)

Seryou is not against dating Yuzuru; he thinks, who knows, maybe this time he would get over his ex. So he goes to Yuzuru's class to get his contact number. Yuzuru is rather clueless at first, and thinks that Seryou just wants to hang out. But he is curious about what kind of person Seryou is, so even when he finds out on Tuesday that Seryou is actually expecting them to be dating, he goes along with it.

And then you get the feelings coming... they both have rather pretty-boy, "beautiful" faces, so they will look at each other and think how beautiful the other one is. You have Seryou who realizes his feeling pretty quickly, but Yuzuru is pretty clueless, and he will find himself getting mad at Seryou (read: he gets jealous) but he won't know why he is overreacting.

Up till Thursday I liked how the story unfolded; the hanging out after school, meeting each other in the morning... it was pretty natural. But on Friday we have a confrontation where Yuzuru sees Seryou being rather close with his ex, and he gets terribly upset and runs off. Seryou chases him and catches up, but we don't see what happened after that. The next scene is already Saturday... and somehow they have made up, and are dating again, and Yuzuru seems to know something a bit more about the story of Seryou's ex.... but not completely? (Huh?)

So here is where it gets me frustrated, because there is no reason why Seryou wouldn't tell Yuzuru everything after Friday's events. So Saturday had some pretty weird developments, with them even kissing (yeah, Yuzuru finally realizes what his feelings are), but later Yuzuru runs off (for no apparent reason) and gets mad at Seryou for dating people for only seven days (not sure whether that is for no apparent reason or because he doesn't want to break up). So Yuzuru walks away on Saturday, leaving Seryou heartbroken, and at archery practice on Sunday (that's where they knew each other from sight, before the events in the movie), Seryou is so shaken that he cannot concentrate and misses the archery target completely. Yuzuru, on the other hand, is very stable... bulls-eye for him as usual.

After that they somehow hang out again, with awkward silences... I am not even sure whether that was considered dating (I was rather lost at that point), but Yuzuru asks Seryou when they relationship ends. When Seryou says it's up to him, he looks at the time, which is just before 5pm, and he says to end it at five. So once it is 5pm, they have officially broken up, and Yuzuru suddenly asks Seryou to be his boyfriend. And that, messieurs-dames, is how it ends. (of course, they stay together)

In the end it seems that Yuzuru is more of a jerk than Seryou. It's like their faces are the total opposite of their personalities; Yuzuru has a nice-guy face but he speaks and acts without thinking of others' feelings, and Seryou looks more like the insensitive type, but instead is really sensitive.

So you see... I don't get the use of Saturday. I felt like they could have developed things better, because the transition from Friday to Saturday was hardly smooth, you don't get how they got here from there! I'm half-wondering whether I should read the manga (that's the original), because sometimes things get lost in film adaptations. But that might take up too much time... I'll have to see how long it is first!

A two-year-old tiger

This week's theme is red. Just as I saw the theme, I looked up from my computer screen and my eyes fell on this red tiger.

red tiger with red pins

It is pinned on the softboard of my cubicle, just above where my screen is placed. Cute, eh? My teammate SQ drew this for Chinese New Year two years ago, when our department organized a cubicle-decorating contest. The contest was held in teams, with a few rows of cubicles assigned as one team. SQ drew more than just this tiger... he drew a few animals of the Chinese zodiac (but not all twelve of them, if I remember correctly). After that, as we were taking down the decorations, he went around asking us to each take one. I think I was the first one he asked... and when I selected the tiger, he said that I had chosen the nicest. Hehe... I can appreciate art! Especially cute art. :P

The cow that SQ drew also made its way to my cube... I think he gave it to SJ (S.Jin, since there were two SJs in our team) and SJ didn't know what to do with it, so he asked me whether I wanted it. Yes, I will rescue the unwanted animals... (as long as there is no risk of them dying, ie. they are not alive :P ) You can see it here, in one of my posts on the whiteboard drawings, because I placed it at the bottom of the whiteboard, just above the desk (so that it looks like it's standing on the desk). And I just recalled, I also wrote about it, together with the tiger, in another post about my cubicle being "attacked". Looking back at the old post, I just realized how badly the colour has faded!

By the way, the cow didn't make it... I think it got left behind when I moved upstairs to the sixth floor, probably because it was already torn.

January's bread

I have been meaning to write a post about my bread-making attempts. The first one was when I first bought the machine last December. Since then I have made another five loaves... and here's how it went.

My second loaf turned out pretty much the same as the first. At that time, I had already bought a kitchen scale, so I could measure my flour properly. I tried using Japanese flour only (as opposed to a mix of Japanese bread flour and normal bread flour as indicated by the recipe) but the bread turned out to be practically the same as the first time.

I stared a lot at this photo, and the photo of the first loaf, to try and see the difference. I couldn't find any, be it in looks or in taste.

For my third attempt, I bought some pumpkin seeds to add to the bread. I also tried using all-purpose flour, because I had seen online that we can use all-purpose flour, it just gives you softer bread. I got another similar-sized loaf, and it was softer... but only while it was warm. Even though it tasted like bread, its texture was more like cake than like bread, which is definitely due to the flour. I didn't like the texture too much...it didn't feel like I was eating bread!

On the other hand, the pumpkin seeds did give a bit of flavour to the bread, albeit just a light flavour.

All this while, I had been substituting water and milk powder for the full cream fresh milk that was in my cousin's recipe. After more research, I found a tip saying that we can make bread fluffier if we add milk powder. They said to add a few tablespoons (two or three, I can't remember) of milk powder to the recipe. I was already using milk powder, but maybe I didn't use enough.

In the next loaf, I added three tablespoons of milk powder (while still using water instead of fresh milk) to the recipe. And I tried adding chocolate chips to make chocolate chip bread. The fruit and nuts are supposed to be added at the last stirring cycle, which lasts for ten minutes. I wasn't sure whether the chocolate chips would melt away in the stirring, but decided that the worst that could happen was that I would end up with chocolate bread. And end up with chocolate bread I did.

However, compared to my previous loaves of bread, this one was definitely taller, even with the same amount of flour.

And softer too. The following photo was taken just to show you the dent that was made in the loaf when I dropped it out of the pan. That never happened with the previous loaves!

Cutting it open...

And this photo was taken just because it looks nicer... the cut in the above picture was a bit jagged.

And then, after varying results with the nuts and chocolate, I tried adding fruit. This loaf is the one my mother dreams of when thinking of homemade bread. Colourful bread with red cherries, green cherries, and raisins. (traffic light bread, I would say...) The fruit was maybe cut too small... and the green cherries almost completely lost their colour (we could only see a slight green tinge at a few places).

We made this bread one morning when everyone was here for Chinese New Year, and had it immediately for lunch. It was very soft and fluffy, thanks to the three tablespoons of milk powder and its freshness. When they were leaving to go back to Kuantan, we made a second fruit loaf for them to take home, with the fruits cut to bigger pieces this time. We could see the fruit better, but the green cherries still lost their colour. Hmm... I guess cherries are just not meant to be green. :P

The bakso battle

It seems that I have never mentioned bakso on this blog. In Penang there are two good stalls that I know of. One is in Relau, close to my place. The other one is in Sunshine Market food court.

This is the one from the Relau stall. (I don't have a photo of the other one) [Edit: The photo is in this post.]

It's hard to say which stall I like better. I feel the Relau one has better beef taste in its soup. But they don't give actual beef pieces, only beef meatballs. The Sunshine one gives actual beef pieces (quite a lot too, of I remember correctly), in addition to some beef meatballs. The Sunshine one also has some chilli paste/sambal mixed into the soup, which tastes pretty good, but I am not sure whether it would taste even better without. As for the Relau stall, they give two types of sauces, one red and one green, when we order their bakso to take away. But I have tried the sauces for dipping and I don't like them. I'm not sure whether they are meant to be poured into the soup!

Oh yeah, and at the Relau stall, you can choose yellow noodles, beehoon, or kueyteow (and maybe something else?). I don't think the choice exists at the Sunshine stall... (bakso comes generally with beehoon)

Sweet and savoury

I made palmiers! :D

Okay, they don't look too good, do they... Actually I was making sausage rolls, and I made palmiers with the leftover pastry. The different sizes are due to not planning the shape of my leftovers properly. :P And somehow the sugar that I sprinkled on top got burned too quickly, so I had to take the palmiers out of the oven earlier. The recipe called for 20 minutes but the sugar started burning at 10 minutes...so my pastry probably didn't puff up enough. :/ In addition, the four pieces that are separated from the others actually have some paper stuck to the bottom, because the sugar burned and got stuck to the paper that I used to line the baking tray. Now I wonder how I'm going to get it off...

But I still consider it a successful attempt, since it tastes like palmiers! :D

It wasn't until recently that I discovered how palmiers were made...when my mother told me about a recipe she had seen on TV. She was describing it to me, and I said, it sounds like palmiers! So today when I was expecting to have some leftover pastry, I searched for it online. it is surprisingly easy (if you do not have to make the pastry yourself). There's a recipe here if you want to try it out. They were one of my favourite cookies in France, ever since I discovered them in the supermarket early in my stay. It wasn't until much later that I saw it in a pastry shop, much larger! (the ones in supermarkets are about 2 inches wide, and in the pastry shop, 4-5 inches, maybe?)
Anyway, here's a photo of the sausage rolls, just for the sake of it. I saw a recipe that asked us to score the pastry, but my mother never scored hers... so I decided to make both types and see whether there was a difference. I didn't brush the pastry with egg, so it doesn't have much colour... I'm not sure whether letting it bake longer would colour it or burn it!

Tall buildings and a huge signboard

This week's theme is city. I racked my brains pretty hard for this one. In the end I decided to try getting photos of tall buildings... and after snapping a bunch on the way home from work yesterday, I selected this one. With a signboard thrown in... only big cities have huge signboards like that, right? :P (I'm trying to convince myself here...)

Another reason why I like this photo is that I snapped it without looking... I was looking to the front of the car to see whether the traffic had started moving (there was a bit of a traffic jam) but didn't want to miss the opportunity for a photo either. The first no-looking shot didn't frame the tall building well enough (the top of it was cut off), but the second one did, and so here it is.

A disappointing conspiracy

I just read The Doomsday Conspiracy by Sidney Sheldon. I had bought it for RM10 recently, and I was looking forward to reading it because it had been some time since I had read Sidney Sheldon, and I had never been disappointed. I guess the saying that there's a first time for everything came true here, because I was sorely disappointed by this book.

(Spoilers ahead... You've been warned!)

The premise of the book is that the main character is asked to track down ten witnesses of an incident, but he is not told the whole truth. And in the end he is, as usual, running for his life...

Just a few chapters into the book, and I was thinking, "Oh no, don't let this be about aliens..." But it turned out it was about aliens. A little. But that in itself is not so bad, because the main story was still about the human beings pitting themselves against each other.

So take away my complaint about the aliens, and the story was building itself up properly... the way the main character tracked down the witnesses was interesting enough, and even the story of how he met his wife and how they ended up separating. But towards the end, they built up several suspenseful items. Like how a ruthless person who "liked killing" was in the doomsday operation. Like how the hero's ex-wife was coming to help him, but with her new husband, whom we already know is with the bad guys. Like how the hero boards his ex-wife's husband's yacht and feels a "tension" in the air. And none of those were explained away properly. The person who liked killing suddenly turned out to be a good guy (a spy). The most trusted mentor suddenly became the number one bad guy. And when the bad guys came to capture the hero, together with the ex-wife's husband (who had no reason to come), for some reason they brought the ex-wife along (even lesser reason for her to come), and the ex-wife was fearing for her ex-husband's life (huh?). Really, why bring her along? The only reason I could see is that the new husband had to go away so that the ex-wife could get back with the hero. And they all needed to be together in this final scene because there was not enough time left (was there a constraint on the number of pages or something?). Even the new husband's business partner, who was mentioned earlier in the book, suddenly disappeared without any further mention.

Basically the big problem here is that the story had a patched-together ending. It was like the author had built up a proper story and then was told to finish it NOW! Immediately! So... very disappointing indeed. I feel cheated...

I have another bone to pick with Sidney Sheldon, which is his choice of book covers. Every book of his that I had read, had the picture of a beautiful woman on the cover. But fine, the books all had a beautiful woman as the main character, so why not?

But this one... the main character is a man. There were only two beautiful ladies worth mentioning in the book, and none of them had a good enough role to warrant their face monopolizing the cover. And yet...

So... pretty face on the cover sells?

A stop at Victoria Station

Yesterday WW treated us to a meal at Victoria Station. I had heard about it before, but none of us had ever been there. We ordered three dishes to share among the five of us.

mixed platter, RM61.90
From left: sausage wrapped with ham, chicken pâté, lamb, chicken, and beef smothered in sauce

salmon and lamb (also one of the mixed platters), RM52.90
Tartar sauce and mint sauce were given later; a waiter came with sauce bowls and spooned some onto our plate

I asked for the mint sauce to be given separately so that it wouldn't flood the plate, which was lucky, because it wasn't very good (not much mint taste). The tartar sauce, on the other hand, was pretty good.

We asked for the beef to be done medium well, and it was better than the lamb. It seems that Victoria Station is better-known for its steak than its lamb. In the restaurant, there was a sign proclaiming its steak, and even its chilli sauce bottle (with a specially printed Victoria Station label) said that it had the best steak in town (but everyone says they have the best in town...)

Victoria Station fish and chips, RM29.90
Tartar sauce given later, like for the salmon

We were each given a soft bun at the beginning of the meal, before the main dishes arrived. That came together with a roll of butter for each of us (by rolls, I mean the curls that you get when you use a knife to scrape from a block of butter).

To keep within budget, we ordered plain water at 90 sen each (other drinks were crazy expensive, as is common in this kind of places). That made the bill come up to just under RM150.

Today's special

The theme from last Friday was today. When I saw it on Sunday, my first thought was, what a pity I didn't see it before or on Saturday! Then it would have been easy to just snap a photo for Chinese New Year (that was Saturday). But it was a bit late for that, so I had to scout about for something else that was snap-worthy.

Today I came home from work and found that something:

Chai boey! (that's leftover stew, in case you don't know) My mother was making it with Chinese New Year leftovers (and some not-really-leftovers :P ). Anyway, it is a huge dish that is worth a shot. (Author's note: More than half was devoured for dinner)