In the same room as the uncles in the kopitiam, there was also a teh tarik uncle and a trishaw!
We didn’t miss the chance to take a ride on the trishaw!
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| Doris wanted to help the uncle push the trishaw, but the uncle told her to sit down instead. :P |
In the next room, we found Ernest Zacharevic with some of his art.
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| A tourist posing with one of the wall paintings. |
There was also a cendol stall! We didn’t try any though. :P
When a country can fit in Pikachu's cheek sac, you know the country is very small! (Or the Pikachu is very big...)
When I received this photo theme, I seemed to recall having a similar idea before. But I decided to NOT check my old photos or posts until I was done with the current one!
And now that I'm done, I found my previous photo for country. I'm glad I chose a different key-chain this time. :P
I have never been to the real Toh Soon Cafe (never even heard of it), but I visited the one in TeddyVille!
When we reached the cafe, we were greeted by the owner and two customers.
The owner was a little busy, but the two customers asked us to join them.
This is what they were eating:
The uncle's newspaper looked interesting, so I took a peek.
You might be wondering, what’s special about this kopitiam? Here’s what TeddyVille says:
This week's theme is black.
One side of the road near the market was paved recently. So the road is still a dark black!
It looks blacker when I looked at it though, compared to this photo :P
TeddyVille has its own Unesco heritage site too!
Now how about some close-ups?
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| A bear and its bicycle |
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| A drinks cart! |
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| A street vendor |
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| The world heritage buildings |
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| A cendol seller! |
To follow up on my previous post on China snacks, here are some other snacks that I tried. These I did not buy; a friend gave them to me.
Top left is some sort of meat jerky. The taste is so-so. (the green packet is the same as the thing above it...I just flipped half the packets over so that we can see both sides)
Top right is chicken feet in some sort of lemony spicy sauce (quite an oily sauce!). This one I could hardly eat... it didn't taste good when cold, then I tried heating it up, and felt that it was even worse when warm :P I guess I just can't appreciate this kind of taste...
The Harbin sausage, on the other hand, is yummy! It was quite salty though, leading my friend to say that it is impossible to eat as a snack! It needs to be taken with rice...
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| the two packets feature different landmarks of Harbin (I presume) |
The last item is a mixture of beef pieces, pig's ear, and mushrooms (and maybe other stuff). I was surprised to find 5 small packets inside. (one was already eaten when I took this photo)
I like this one too...probably because I like this kind of ingredients.
Quite a long time ago, I bought some China snacks online. Each packet cost about 60-80 sen. I thought that it would be quite useful as an add-on in case I was missing just a little something to go with my rice.
It took months try them all, mainly because I only used them when "needed". Most are vegetarian meat, and the ones in transparent packets on the left are sausages and fishballs.
Now there is only one left, which is one of the long sausages. It's just a different flavour from its twin of a different colour, so I think I already know how it will taste!
Flavour-wise, there was nothing special about any of them...they were all pretty similar. The ones on the top row and the last two on the bottom row were almost the same. These were too chewy for my liking; it was hard to bite/cut through.
The pink packet on the bottom row was softer (fish tofu), but didn't taste that good. The four coloured packets in the middle row were something like the ones on the top row, except that they were not as chewy (easier to bite)/ They were like beancurd skin with something rolled up inside. And that is probably what makes them better.
I didn't like the green and pink ones so much, but the yellow one had pieces
of "lak cheang" inside, and the blue one had anchovies. These two tasted
better. I went back to the shop to buy them again (and maybe try something
else), but they were out of stock, so I bought some other items instead. :P
On the top are boiled eggs, followed by chestnuts and mushrooms on the second row, then scallops and chicken (I'm not so sure why these two things are mixed together; I guess I'll find out after I open the packet).
Maybe I'll write about them again once I've tried them...in another several months?
I was on leave yesterday, and went to Sunshine Square to buy some groceries. Or more particularly, fruits! Fruits are becoming more and more expensive, and Sunshine is still the place with the best price-to-quality ratio that I've found.
Recently I had also heard of a promotion that Baker's Cottage was having for MCO. When I checked their outlets, I found that they had opened a new outlet just outside Sunshine Square. So I decided to try their roast chicken and cakes.
The roast chicken was being sold at RM11.90, which is such a steal. The normal price is RM16.85. There were barbecue and black pepper flavours, and of course I chose black pepper.
The sliced cakes were being sold at RM9.90 for two slices. Without this promotion, there was already a 20% discount at this outlet (from their web page, it looks like they are opening a number of new outlets, and every new outlet will have an opening promo of 20% off a lot of items). The price listed there was RM6 per slice after the 20% discount. Needless to say, I bought two slices.
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| warmest chocolate |
Warmest Chocolate is described on their website as Chocolate sponge cake drizzled with chocolate crumble with layers of creamy cheese mousse.
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| American Chocolate |
On their website, this is described as American chocolate cake filled with layers of chocolate ganache and glazed with creamy L’Opera chocolate ganache.
Both cakes were good, but the American chocolate cake was better, simply because of its chocolatey-ness.
As for the chicken, it is reminiscent of Ayamas chicken, with the rather chewy bite. But taste-wise, Ayamas wins hands down. :P Baker's Cottage chicken is bigger, and it is cheaper too (I can't remember the price of a whole roasted chicken at Ayamas, but I remember it is very expensive!), so I guess it can still easily compete.
Edit: I checked Ayamas's Facebook page, and their promo on the 15th and 30th of every month is one whole roaster for RM24.90 (add RM1 for percik flavour). So I shudder to think of the original price!
The reflection of Pokemon, that's what!
I placed several Pokemon there, and made sure the TV frame is captured in the photo. It wasn't immediate, I tell ya!
Some time after I got my smartphone, Google Lens installed itself on it. When I saw it, I tried it out, and found it quite interesting. It will do an image search with what is captured by the lens, so you can figure out what something is. For example, if I put Pikachu in my lens, it can tell me that it is a Pikachu, and as reference, show me other photos of Pikachu that it has found on the web.
It can also detect text in images, and translate the text using Google Translate.
Today I saw a sign hanging down my neighbour's wall. The words were too small to see (and it was already dusk), and also, they were in Chinese.
After snapping the photo, I zoomed in. I could figure out the word "flower", and on the second line "you can", but I didn't know the last word. That was when I thought of putting it to Google Lens.
Google Lens took the photo, and here's the translation:
After seeing this translation, I went back and snapped the photo that you saw first in the post, with the flower pots. :P Before that, I had only snapped a little of the area surrounding the sign.
A longer time ago (several years back), I had heard of an app that could translate signboards for you in a foreign country. I guess this one can! Whether it's the one I heard of years ago, that I do not know...
In TeddyVille, the answer is yes! (not sure about elsewhere... :P ) Look at those fruits!
TeddyVille also has a durian stall, with two happy customers :D
All Things Cease to Appear by Elizabeth Brundage has lots of good reviews (I picked it up based on the synopsis though, not the reviews), but after one chapter, I already couldn't keep my attention on it. There is one review on GoodReads that sums up how I feel. An excerpt:
This book is 400 pages long. There are no quotation marks used. Ever. Therefore, there is not only no indication from sentence to sentence of what is spoken, but often there is no indication of who is speaking (call me crazy, but I need this information to follow the story)...and there are clunky, abrupt transitions of past and present and points of view. This made for a challenging and somewhat painful reading experience for me. This book was very well-written, just in desperate need of better editing and stylistic methods. Very dark, deeply-detailed and way too long, this meandered to the point that it became confusing. This was an ambitious drama that enticed me to skim.At the second chapter, I started to skim. But none of the content of the chapter enticed me to continue reading, or stop skimming and take in some details at some point. Like this review says, I felt like the flow was meandering and I could see no sense or direction (and definitely nothing interesting!)
Most reviews, including this one that is saying that it is hard to read, say that the storyline is great. But first I would need to be able to actually get through the story. As it is right now, I'm not sure whether I will try it again.
This book reminded me of how I felt when I was reading A Painted House. Maybe because of that experience, I am giving up earlier now?
After discarding that lousy book, I picked up Sandrone Dazieri's Kill the Father. Now this one is extremely good! (except maybe for the eyes; I barrelled through the second half) There were some scattered English mistakes/typos throughout; I wondered about the author and the editor, and saw on the copyright page that the original was in Italian. The English translator is actually credited at the end of the book. The writing style is engaging, and I think the translator did a pretty good job there, so I shall forgive him the minor slip-ups. ;)
The book is the first in a planned series, to take the words from the "about the author" page. I'm quite interested to read the upcoming ones!
This week's theme is stillness, as opposed to "motion" two weeks ago.
I thought of taking a photo of a still coin to match my previous photo, but I couldn't make a coin stand still. :P
So I took a photo of something else being still instead.
To not have a reflection of myself in the photo, I used a timer, and it wasn't easy to get the fan in the middle of the photo!
Another touristic spot in Penang is Penang Hill, or Bukit Bendera (turns out that the name comes from “Flagstaff Hill”).
And of course the bears visited as well!
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| Full of bears! |
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| At the tower |
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| The love locks |
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| The funicular tram |
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| A school trip? |
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| The viewing deck |
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| Look at the little bear in the “O”! |
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| A bear couple; did he just propose? :P |
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