Long Break. Bad.

I took too many days off. I’ve been running around everywhere for the past couple of days. First it was with my sisters. Next it was with my friends for CNY visiting. I practically did nothing for the entire past week. My work is overdue, I don’t seem to be getting enough sleep. Holidays - the time when went routine goes haywire. Not that it’s a bad thing, holidays are welcomed anytime but then again too much of it can be pretty disastrous.

 A few nights ago I went to Clement’s house for his open house day. We reached a little late at night, so there weren’t many people left. Actually, the last visitor was about to leave when we just arrived. So we happily waited for our turns to start munching down on the food. Clement’s mum can cook so good, I wouldn’t doubt it if she had a restaurant of her own.

After we were all stuffed, most of my friends started gambling, as expected.

_{Blackjack minus three.}

So Wei How and I decided to play Saidina. Right. If you didn’t know, Saidina is the Malaysian version of the Monopoly-like board game. Though it sounds corny, having properties with names you actually know makes it a whole lot more fun. Considering how Wei How and I were competing to buy each other’s hometown. Haha… he was trying to buy Kuantan, which he did managed to, but I managed to buy his Pulau Pinang instead, which is a lot more expensive for that matter.

_{My friend’s Saidina board is home to Pokemon characters and prehistoric dinosaurs.} 

I actually enjoy playing Saidina/Monopoly. I used to play it a lot when I was much younger. Most of the time I do pretty well with the monopolosing thing Though I guess it can be attributed to luck as well since the dice decides where we land. We played till all the properties were bought, and was waiting to see who would go bankrupt first but that was hard to come by because none of us had a full set which would allow us to build houses and hotels. So we were just running around the board in circles… and later realised that it’s impossible to go bankrupt that way. I was proposing to Wei How to start swapping properties, but he insisted that he didn’t want to play anymore because he wanted to have a go at Blackjack with the rest. Hah! Coward! (I was doing a lot better than him)

_{I bought Kuching!}

After Wei How ran off, I didn’t have anything else to play. They were still gambling away their money in Blackjack. Then Clement brought me Scrabble instead. When I called out for players, Wei How came back =.=” And this time Chong joined us as well. Chong’s a tough competitor, he’s been in real Scrabble competitions before, while I don’t even know how to count Scrabble points properly….

_{“My Vowels” - This is what I was holding. Seriously.Â} 

All of us ended up with lousy scores which are not even worth mentioning. We packed everything up and was getting ready to go home. Even the trip home would be a long one. Clement’s house isn’t exactly near my place.

Anyway I did get home a bit later and when I was about to end my day and prepare to sleep, something silly happened.

_{ 
No camera tricks here.}

My toothbrush snapped. Don’t ask me how that happened. Even I don’t know how it happened. And to top that, that was a 3-day old toothbrush. It’s practically brand new. It seems as though as I have a knack of breaking brand new things, just like what happened to my badminton racket’s string before.

Let’s just hope the new things I break don’t start to get any bigger than this.

See and Why

Happy Chinese New Year! Yes, I know this is a little late but I was a little busy for the past couple of days. I skipped a class last Friday so I could get home earlier. Haha.. it’s something I rarely do but had to this time because I was following my aunt’s car home, so it wasn’t up to me to decide the time.

I reached home late evening on that Friday, but didn’t do much else because I could barely stay awake. Was too tired after a long day so I went to bed rather early that day. What I do remember is I fought zombies with my grandpa in my dream that night. Seriously.

The next day, I had to start working. Like every other year. Except this year I didn’t curi-tulang as much as before. *innocent face* But actually there weren’t much left for me to do when I got home. Much of the work are already done, and I only had to put up some of the decorations. It’s not that I didn’t want to help, there weren’t anything else left for me to do! *more innocent face*

The major event, however, on the night of CNY eve was the mega-dinner at home. Dinner for 32 people. That’s thirty-two. My entire dining room wouldn’t fit that many people. We had to set up tables in my veranda and yet we still couldn’t all have dinner at the same time because there just weren’t enough seats. I was among the last to get a seat, luckily there were still food for me. Luckily. Otherwise heads will roll. Then again, a dinner this big is not something very common here. The last time there was a dinner as big as this was when the same bunch of uncles and aunts came down from KL. Except this time, the babies and little kids weren’t so little anymore.

The next day was the open house day, as always. People come people go. I eat they eat I eat more. Friends come friends eat I eat friends go. Everybody go we pack clean and pack and clean and pack more and clean even more. End of story. People were everywhere, I don’t even feel comfortable in my own home anymore. I was so tired that night, yet I went out with my friends to watch Norbit at midnight. A reasonable show, if you shut off your brain. The jokes are extremely exaggerated, I know it’s meant to be that way but sometimes I just can’t comprehend them. Anyway I got home at 2, considerably early considering I didn’t follow my friends for a yumcha session afterwards and went straight to bed.

The next thing I know, I was a linesman in a soccer game. Running back and forth across the field. And then I was abducted or something, and was forced to take a quiz.

I’ve lost countless brain cells trying to decipher my dreams. Even Norbit made more sense than them. I might go mad one day with all these insane dreams I have.

Second day of CNY was visiting day, as always again. I went to a relative’s house. I went to another relative’s house. And yet another one. End of story. Even my Chinese New Year celebrations have turned into a routine! I’m so bored and boring.

Today, I visited a few more of my relatives. And then I went to my friend’s house for a while. Played a bit of his PS2. Died a few hundred times in MGS3. Painstakingly finished the…. prologue. And by the time the title screen appeared I had to leave for dinner already because my grandpa is insisting that dinner will not start until I get home. Talk about tension. Dinner was strange. We had leftover Malay food, processed Korean food and more leftover home-cooked food. But my mum made some caramel pudding. Yummmmmmmy. I ate two. I’m going to eat another one tomorrow before I leave.

My Chinese New Year celebration was just like many of the years before. It was good, but it was no different.

Happy Piggy New Year

War With Arrows

Okay. This is going to be a ridiculous post, but due to my insane obsession true love for nga ku chips, I have to make certain things clear. I was wandering the net searching for more stories on nga ku (yes, i’m that crazy) and very soon realised that there was a confusion going on. Some people call it arrowroot. Some people call it arrowhead. I used to call it arrowhead. Then I started calling it arrowroot. Now I’m in doubt myself. So what is nga ku’s real name??? Preliminary research (wahseh, sounds pro) has returned only contradicting results. Looks like there’s no easy way to find out. I’ll have to do it the hard way.

Well, to start things off, we have to start using proper, scientific names for our candidates. I’ve narrowed down the potential names to Sagittaria trifolia and Sagittaria graminea. See, I’m even colour-coding them for readibility purpose

Let’s start off with Sagittaria trifolia. A quick search on Google with this name will most likely point you to a rather professional site with quite a large and believable database on plants - Plants for A Future. This site lists information on plants very concisely, and it clearly shows that Sagittaria trifolia’s common name is Chinese Arrowroot.

 
_{Says its highly edible. Sounds correct.}

_{Sounds yummy. Like nga ku}

BUT, I start to find contradicting information regarding the common name of Sagittaria trifolia. The Global Compendium of Weeds states that Sagittaria trifolia is called arrowhead instead.

The Multilingual Multiscript Plant Name Database also calls it arrowhead.

Another rather convincing info I found is from persimmon’s blog. It’s quite obvious that nga ku’s are called Arrowheads. Unless the packaging is wrong, which is something still possible.

 
_{Almost irrefutable proof. Almost. (Pic taken from persimmon’s blog)}

Okay. What we have established here is that Sagittaria trifolia  is more likely called Arrowhead than Arrowroot. Then again, we cannot confirm that nga ku is called Arrowheads from this picture alone. So we shall move on the the other candidate in question - Sagittaria graminea. The confusing here is started by the Plants for A Future (mentioned above) site. It states that Sagittaria graminea is called Arrowhead instead.

_{Confusing, hor? But doesn’t sound very yummy lar.}

 An easier way to find out what Sagittaria graminea  really is, is by looking for its pictures. So I took the liberty to go hunting for some .

Wet Web Media says that it looks like this:

   
_{Doesn’t look yummy}

Natural Resource Conservation Service says it looks like this:

_{Not at all.}

 The Burke Museum of National History and Culture:

_{Definitely not. No no.}

Now we’re pretty sure that Sagittaria graminea looks nothing like nga ku. Can we now safely assume that nga ku is indeed called Arrowhead?

I really hope so.

Fire From Water

Yup. Fire from water.

That’s what this new gizmo here is supposed to do.

Quoted from the company’s website:

The Aqueon operates by using regular tap water or preferably de-ionized water, which is supplied to the fireplace either through a pipe of from a storage tank within the unit. Using a 220 volt electrical service and a process called electrolysis, the Aqueon passes an electrical current through the water to separate the hydrogen and oxygen. Upon separation, the Aqueon instantly ignites the hydrogen to create the flame. The Aqueon introduces the oxegen as a secondary source to add flame color and brightness, and releases the remainder of the oxygen into the room.

So… basically it means Water + Electric = FIRE! Very interesting. Unfortunately we will never need such a device here in Malaysia. The heat from the Sun alone is pretty much enough to fry keep us all warm and cozy.

But it is interesting to see such a concept being put to use. As hydrogen is ignited, the only byproduct created is water vapor. This supposedly makes it very safe to be used in indoors, even without proper ventilation. And the design looks very sleek. Who’d guess that it’s a fireplace?

Now… if only they could make water out of fire…

Expecting WHAT?

I’ve been rather busy lately. I took up a project recently, so all I’ve been doing the past couple of days were looking at a maze of nonsense-looking text. Well, to most people at least. So I’ve got an excuse for not blogging so often, eh? I have to admit, coding/programming isn’t that fun. It’s a tedious thing. Doing it as a hobby would be cool, but rushing a project with a due date isn’t. That said, nothing in the world is easy, so there’s no point complaining and I should just get back to work. I’ve got to earn a living, somehow.

Anyway, I was crunching some codes the other day when I was prompted with the weirdest error message I’ve ever seen -  Parse error: parse error, unexpected ‘;’, expecting T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM - for a moment I was stupid-fied (no, not stupefied). I was like ‘expecting WHAT?’ Error messages are usually self-explanatory, but that certainly didn’t apply in this case. What in the world is PAAMAYIM NEKUDOTAYIM? I solved the problem without referring to the oh so very helpful error message, but I had to find out what it meant Turns out that it actually means ‘double colon’ -> :: In Hebrew. And how is that supposed to be helpful? =.=”

College started today. Well, classes haven’t actually started yet but I went for the orientation today. This is the fourth orientation that I’ve gone for in my college. They have one every year, and they repeat almost the same thing every time. I kicked off the day with a GAAAHHHH when I opened the folder containing the briefing documents. I got a paper cut. Great. The next thing I found out is that the Final Year Project presentation is going to be held in the week of my birthday. Double great. And I was beginning to feel the true effect of the fact that two of my best buddies are leaving for overseas studies. Grrrrrsssiggggghhhh. Anyhow, I almost fell asleep when I was sitting in for another briefing after lunch. That can be partly attributed to the fact that I had to go for a futsal game last night and I only managed to get home at almost 3 in the morning.

The orientation session finished at 4. So here I am at home, hurrily writing up something so my neglected blog will have some gibberish to show off. No pictures this time Hey, now I’ve got valid excuses for not being able to blog so often!

I have a couple more minutes to rest, and I’ve got to hurry off and do my laundry before dinner time `cause I need to attend my friend’s farewell dinner in some galaxy far far away.

I’ll be back.

I just don’t know when.