Five-digit speed

 Where can you get such a high speed? The answer is, on an Internet speed test website, and by changing the unit from Mbps to kbps!

behind the scenes

The theme was actually fast. I initially thought of snapping the speedometer of a car, but unfortunately I have not been a passenger in any car in the past week. I also thought of a spinning washing machine, but I got the idea only after my weekly laundry was done!

But in the end, this looks quite good as well, so I'm still happy with the final photo.

Mixed feelings

A delivery arrived today when I was out. I knew that it might arrive today, and I had already decided that I would just ask them to toss it over the gate, since the package only contained some dried herbs to make herbal tea with.

I missed the call from the delivery people, but when I got home, the package was in the compound, just as I would have asked them to leave it.

I was glad that they had decided to deliver it this way...until I saw that the package had a "fragile" sticker on it.

I wasn't worried about my items, because I know that they cannot be hurt by the fall. But I was thinking, what if the items were really fragile? Would they have still tossed it in? In this case, probably by pressing lightly on the package, they could have figured out that it wasn't fragile...so maybe that was why they decided to throw it in.

Anyway, these are my herbs, safe and sound!

Blade of light

Last week's theme was light. 

Unfortunately I only thought of taking this photo early this morning...so I couldn't get a photo in a dark night, where the contrast between the light and the surroundings would be better!

In case you don't know what that light is, it is from the refrigerator!

A glowing green bug

Also yesterday, I spotted this bug on my porch.

It may not look like it in the photo, but the colour was a bright shining green! It made me think of electronic bugs from a sci-fi movie.

a closer look

I posted it on Facebook, and a Penangite friend said that they saw a lot of these when they were in school! Seems that there are less of them nowadays. If it's so rare, I should have caught it to keep as a pet! :P

Note: He said that it's a kind of Ischiopsopha bifasciata, in case anyone is interested.

A neighbour's blooming flowers

My neighbour has some lovely plants behind his house. His pandan grow so well! (as opposed to mine that already died :( )

Yesterday I took photos of his blooming flowers (I think they're lilies...but of course I'm not sure :P )

The focus is on the flowers in the middle...but look at the pandan on the right!

a heavy zoom

Unfortunately I do not know this neighbour at all...since it's the backs of our houses that share a road, we don't see each other outside (I hardly go out the back...). I often see him outside tending to the plants, but he has probably never seen me!

The not-a-kitten

In my previous post, I wrote about a family of cats. Today I got photos of the young cat I mentioned!

After I took these photos, it kept lolling about up and down the steps... it was so cute! I had to stop myself from grabbing my camera and taking a lot more useless photos...

Does its cuteness mean that it is a kitten after all? :P

A tale of cats, Vol. 2

Recently I posted pictures of a cat that is often behind the house.

This morning I saw a young cat (I think it's not small enough to be called a kitten), which I didn't manage to get a photo of, and (presumably) its mother sitting on the top of the stairs. And its father (again, I presume) showed up too!

The smaller cat was exactly the same colouring as the orange cat here, which is why I assume they are related.

As for why I say the orange one is the mother... it's simply because I haven't seen the white one pregnant. But who knows? It did disappear for a while...

And also, all these cats might not be related at all!

Orange chicken in milk

I had only a piece of chicken breast left, and I had oranges but no lemons. So I decided to just try making chicken in milk with orange zest instead of lemon zest.

I expected the orange zest to be maybe not acidic enough to split the milk, but surprisingly it split it just as well as the lemon zest!

However, I reduced the cooking time because there was only one small piece of chicken, and the effect is that the chicken is not as tender as usual (though it is not tough at all!), and the flavour of the garlic probably didn't have enough time to get into the sauce.

But it was still good, and this means that I don't have to go searching for lemons to make chicken in milk!

Lots and lots of leaves

I was just thinking, "hey it's Thursday, let me post my Photo Friday pic since I'm pretty sure I won't get a better one by tomorrow".

Then I realized that this challenge runs for two weeks.

Anyhow, I'll post this all the same...

Lots and lots of green leaves!

This is a plant near the market; I snapped the photo when I went to the market last weekend.

It seems to be a few plants growing together...there are a few different kinds of leaves. I can't identify any of them, though.

Landscape of keys

This week's theme was landscape. So difficult!

So as usual, I made do with a different kind of landscape. Presenting... a keyboard landscape! 

A tale of cats

This week's photo theme is cat. 

I have so many cats that I can take a photo of, including the cat that I bought recently to scare birds away.

But I decided that I would try taking a photo of a real cat instead. There is one that used to lie down on top of the stairs of my neighbour's backyard. I would often see it basking in the sun, and once I even saw it shivering in the rain! I hadn't seen it recently though... and as the week went by, I was almost giving up and even took a photo of my new fake cat one day, just in case.

And then I saw the cat!

It didn't sit at the top of the stairs though...it went right into the garden as I watched.

More photos (though the first one is still the best shot because it doesn't only show the cat's back!) :

As for my fake cat, here's how it looks like when doing its job!

It actually seemed to be doing quite a good job of keeping the birds away... but since I started using it, I’ve found two cats coming in. Usually I hardly see cats coming in, but it's been twice in a week! Is my fake cat too attractive? Did they feel like making friends with it?

I don't leave the cat out all the time...I only put it out once in a while, and I do feel that birds stop coming for a while after I put it out there. But if it's attracting cats, that's not an option!

As good as I remember!

Mir's Kitchen was having an 11% off promotion for 11/11. So I took the opportunity to order a mee kuah tulang!

For some time now, I had been feeling that the taste of the mee kuah tulang was not as good as before. The meat was also not as tender. Then I realized that recently I had been ordering it for lunch, whereas in the early days, I frequented the shop at dinnertime too.

So today I decided to make the order for dinner. And just as I hoped, the meat is again very tender, and the soup seems more flavourful too! (or maybe not...it might be psychological :P ) Today's soup was also very spicy...or was it because it was still very hot? The dish was in an insulated container on its way here, after all...

It is unfortunate that there is a charge of RM4 for delivery...otherwise I would probably order a variety of dishes from them, one at a time!

Morning jigsaw puzzle

This morning, I started my day with a jigsaw puzzle.

It's a frozen eggette! It's supposed to be a whole piece, but it got broken, so the smaller pieces fell all over the place.

I only discovered the existence of frozen eggette recently, when Snorlax bought me this.

The eggette was already a little darker than the one in the picture. After reheating, it became even darker. The outside was crispy, but somehow it didn't feel fluffy, and there was less fragrant aroma... either because it wasn't freshly made, or because it was overcooked after reheating.

But it's not bad for a quick breakfast!

A grassy beach

Last week's photo theme was beach.

I don't care what you think; I shall call this a beach! :P

Last Sunday I "luckily" went to D'Residence, which is along Pantai Jerejak, for badminton. I couldn't get proper photos from inside the residence's compound itself, so I made a quick stop at Penang World City (luckily it was closed at the time, so there was no one to stare at my antics), and snapped this photo.

Autumn decorations

Because this week's theme was autumn!

These were the decorations at Queensbay Mall. The leaves have fallen off rather quickly, huh? :P

This war is getting serious

There have always been a lot of birds hanging around my porch area. I have hung CDs on my laundry rack to keep them away, but they still go to the other areas of the porch.

I had been putting up with them, but some time ago, two birds came into my kitchen. Even though that isn't directly related to having birds on the porch, I was afraid that the ones from the porch would one day come in as well (they have already come as far as the front door grille), and this triggered me to take action!

I have seen these at Daiso before, and now I bought them! One is a cat that you hang 5cm from the ground, so that birds (and other cats) would see it and not approach. The other one is plastic spikes, mean to stop cats and birds from walking around in your garden.

I bought these on Tuesday, and upon reaching home, I put the spikes on the roof of my car (where birds like to land), and hung the cat out for a while.

Then I took the cat in (yep it's my pet cat now), because the instructions said not to use it in strong winds, and I had read online that we need to move it around so that the birds don't get desensitized to it.

The next day I only saw one bird on my porch wall (shared with next door, so I didn't put my spikes there) and chased it away. After that I didn't see any more. Now I have removed the spikes from my car, and up till now I haven't seen any more birds. I hope they have spread the news that this porch is no longer comfortable!

But I do wonder, which deterrent was more successful?

Kledang Saiong Forest Eco Park

I have been wanting to visit this park for a long time, since it is just nearby our place in Meru. However, we always had something or other to do in the evening, and did not have the time to go and explore it.

During our last trip to Ipoh in June, the park was closed, probably due to MCO. This trip, the park was open, albeit with limited hours. So I finally managed to visit it!

The entrance fee is RM2 for Malaysians, and free for senior citizens. My ticket had the date stamped on it, so I expect I could have left the park and returned later, using the same ticket.

Note: We visited the park in the morning at 8:30am when it opened, but I didn't take this photo until we were on our way out, which explains why it is so sunny in this photo!

a playground, closed at the moment

a description of the plant called "lemba", which I have never heard of before!

the aforementioned plant

They have a nepenthes park, which was closed as well.
(I would never have known that it was the pitcher plant without the numerous fake pitchers around the park!)

this area was also cordoned off

and then, the river!

The river is probably the main attraction of the park. The day before our visit, we had driven to the park in the afternoon to check whether it was open. There were so many cars there! (it was a Sunday) Most likely they had all come to picnic at the river.

Looks like a bathroom for the workers at the entrance office?

There is a 1.8km-long forest trail. What's more, it is a digital forest trail, with an app that allows you to identify trees along the trail!

the rules
(not allowed to hike in bad weather, only allowed to start the hike before 1pm, need to report back to the office upon returning, etc)

what the trail looks like (not for the faint-hearted!)
There are yellow strings on the trees to mark the path.

Zooming in, you can see the sign marked 1750m in the bottom-right corner.
Did you notice the first sign that said 1800m, right at the foot of the signboard indicating the forest trail? I guess this was 50 metres in!

Fake downtown

Last week's photo theme was downtown.

What? You expect me to go downtown when there's a red zone there? (not that I would have made the trip especially for a photo, even if there were no red zone :P )

So I took a photo of something that we would probably see downtown: Traffic.

The idea was also to get the shops on both sides of the road, but it was a little difficult from my angle. And I didn't have much choice of where to stop at a traffic light!

I do like how the sun is shining from behind the leaves, though.

More food from Ipoh

Quite by accident, we discovered good Japanese food in Ipoh!

We were in Starbucks Tasek Jaya, and while searching for nearby food, we found Gozen House (Tasek KS Food Court) on Google Maps.

unagi don, RM17.90 (it cost RM15 when we were there...a special offer?)

tori karaage don, RM8.50

Both dishes were extremely yummy. The unagi was good, and the egg that came with the dish meant that we had enough to go with the white rice. The karaage was very well-seasoned and well-fried too! Only the miso soup that came with the dishes was not so good. However, it did come with quite a generous quantity of tofu pieces and seaweed!

We also went to Tong Sui Kai. We meant to try some of the food there, but it was raining heavily on the day we went, so we changed our mind and went to Ipoh Parade instead (where there is an indoor car-park!) We had Boat Noodles at Ipoh Parade (my first time trying it), though I did not take any photos because it didn't look that special.

After our dinner in Ipoh Parade, the rain was less heavy, so we went back to Tong Sui Kai and had dessert there. This is one of the most famous desserts: fruit ice with ice cream. (the photos are of the same bowl, from different sides)

At the back, you can see another bowl, of hot leng chi kang. it tasted good too, and was probably the better choice for a rainy day, but it was nowhere near as spectacular as the fruit ice. :P

Taste-wise, the fruit ice is pretty good... since the fruits were at room temperature, the whole dish was not too icy. But it was hard to eat...we had to be careful not to knock the fruits off! But then it would look less spectacular in a bigger bowl. :P