Invaded by Chicken Tartlets!

Do you guys watch Astro’s AFC (Asian Food Channel)? My mom does. My mom and all her 5 sisters as well. Not to mention her Al-Quran reading class and her SPPUM club as well. There’s always some kind of verbal cook-off between them every time there’s a kenduri or an open house or... well, senior housewives after all.

Mak’s favourite area of makes-family-fat expertise are pies and tarts. In fact, anything that can be dumped onto a bread/pastry/carbohydrate-swollen base and baked in the microwave is what Mak loves to do.

Something they work and sometimes they don’t *cough*seafood quiche*cough*.

But her chicken tartlets definitely works.

What I woke up to breakfast this morning.

I guess it had something to do with watching that show a few details about making pies, like egg wash instead of butter to coat the pans. So the night before, Mak made some creamy white sauce and fried some chicken mince meat with mixed veggies and then mixed them together to become the pie filling.


Hey, these look great!

Too bad MySis wasn’t around to learn the pie-making, now that AbangHuzir is back from overseas and their family is at their home (my sister needs to be around people, in case her pregnancy get complicated). She would have swiped them to oblivion (me and MySis are like evil witches. Between us, pies disappear like magic! *hehehe!*).


Creamy insides.


The filling consists of minced chicken, mixed veggies, white sauce, tiny cubed potatoes and chopped mushrooms.

Mak really goes free with the white sauce this time. When eaten hot, it’s like biting into a pastry cupcake of thick chicken and mushroom soup. I hope she remembers to re-heat it before she serves them to her reading class but it’s nice when eaten cold as well. Kind of like a picnic food.

Speaking of picnics, I hope Mak doesn’t mind me sneaking a couple of these for my lunch! *hehehe!*


Aiyo, better remember not to open my bag during class. Their nicely-baked smell is kind of strong.

Repentant Cyber Café Sneak Returned My Purse

Hello readers.

The embers of my incensed rage had finally died away today, leaving me feeling between RM$62.50 poorer but 100 times wiser.

Yesterday, I posted a blog entry about some guy that stole my purse. I was at cyber café and the purse had fallen out of my pocket and onto the floor. Granted, I was too busy being online to have noticed it but I’m no less guilty on the adjective ‘careless’.

So what’s it be? Good news? Bad news?

Well the entry title says it all of course. Like I’ve mention, the act of outright thievery was all caught on the café’s CCTV camera. The video caught the moment I entered the building to when the purse dropped out from my pocket without me noticing to the kid standing, looking very mild-mannered, to from being mild-mannered to being Gremlin’s little helper.

I had a few inconsistencies with the incident as I’ve described. It wasn’t a Chinese guy but a Malay boy. I couldn’t see the video properly at the time. A tall, skinny, light-skinned, very young Malay kid (still with ugly shirt and pinchy fingers however). The 14-year-old kid thought of a get-rich-quick by stealing. Too bad he didn’t have better friends.

I was so mad the other day that I badly wanted to get at the unknown thief with my TeakwonDo right hook (didn’t win silver medal at school championship for nothing). But instead, I turn like the Wicked Witch and semi-publicly steamed at the mamak guys who manned the counter. Them and their laid back approach to security.

I know these mamak fellas by sight for over 6 months now and they’re not always reliable (all disappeared at more than the twice the times I wanted to pay my fee; any kid worth his fingers can simply clean out the cash counter). But I supposed the words ‘police report’ was intimidating enough.

So while I was at Mutiara D’sara and meeting SargeH for the first time, the internet cafe staff managed to grab hold of a friend of the thief, namely the regular customers who played the games in the café’. The guy was shown the CCTV video and as a very good friend he was, identified the name, address and phone number of the thief.

Yeah, duuuuh the thief denied it. But his face on the video was too clear. He can either fess-up and come clean... or he can wait until I get my hands on the CCTV video and let me scream his misdeeds online every day until SargeH catches him in a full blazing civil charge. In fact, my mom was so warmed-up on her anger on what happened (her temper is more volatile); she was ready to get the kid a bus ticket to Henry Gurney’s School (Malaysia’s juvenile penitentiary).

Here's the best part.

His parents didn't know he was caught stealing.

I betcha the stupid teen didn't think I would go through the trouble of actually lodging a police report or that SargeH had an empty week (told me he had another internet cafe theft in D'sara Utama and was hoping the two cases connected). Then again, the thief didn't think internet cafes had CCTVs either.

Ayah says that I don’t need to meet him (which are good because my right fist is still itching). What I really want are my IC card and driver’s license back (I really, really, rather not have to go through all that application process, thank you very much).

There's no chance on getting the money back at all. RM$62.50 was gone, accoding to this Amir kid, he spent it on foodstuffs. There was no way to pay me back unless he faced his parents, which was the very last thing he wanted. At least he kept my wallet (maybe he thought he could sell the IC to some illegals).

I believe about as much as a bullsh**. If my dad had allowed he to get him face to face, I'll make him piss flood in his dirty blue jeans. But what's gone is gone and I take my money loss as a minor penance for my carelessness. He couldn't pay me back and he really, really didn't want his parents to find out.

I got my wallet and all the important cards and that's works for me.

I got back to Kt. D'sara police station and withdrew the police report charge. SargeH wasn't there (his day off it seemed) so I was given a re-check by two nice uniformed ladies. They ask me why I withdrew and I told them about the kid and how old he was and that he went to the nearby secondary school. Naturally, both of asked why I didn't demand a refund and I just said that I forgive the kid.

Case closed. So that’s it, drama ends. Part of me felt a bit down actually. I was thiiiiiiiiiiiiis close to being able to have the chance to commit one of Internet’s best kind of evil sin... ripping somebody’s reputation apart.

Slimy Cyber Café Sneak Stole My Purse!

Just as the sign says; doesn’t take an Einstein to figure out how’s my Saturday night. If you value your entire online identity, don’t ask if I’m screwed.

Seriously.

I mean it. Here’s my story.

I always prefer to come here because its got really fast connection.

Once upon a 6:20pm yesterday, in an internet café at Kota D’sara, a Chinese boy, about 5 feet 5 inches, spiky haired and skinny, between his teens and early twenties, wearing striped white and red shirt with blue jeans, saw someone’s purse on the floor.

That someone is obviously the girl with white headscarf and black shirt, immersed in the cyber world, tip-tapping away. She did not realize that her purse had fallen out of her pocket and onto the floor, right beside her chair, so immersed was she in her blog.

That wallet-purse is blue-turquoise with leather exterior, slightly larger than the size of a human palm. It’s a nice fold of 3 sections; it has the Malay girl’s IC card, her driver’s license, her mother’s Bonuslink card (whenever she pumps petrol at Shell station), her Maybank ATM card, her Popular Bookstore card and exactly RM$62.50 money in it.

Being a nice Malaysian as the Chinese boy was, he swiped the purse from the floor and disappeared into happily ever after.

F**k him at his The End.

All this had been captured on full view of CCTV camera. Extra stupid, wasn’t he? At 4:50pm, I checked into my old favourite internet cafe, a Chinese-owned business run by a few mamak-type fellas with no 3 cents in their heads. I’m a very regular customer of that place, due to my lack of home internet connections so believe me when I say those mamak fellas really don’t have much in their heads.


Got the café staff to playback the CCTV. I was there for 2 hours only.

So I was blogging away, uploading pictures of my soon-to-be-nephew but I didn’t realize that my purse had fallen out. Two hours after I checked in, I left the PC No. 5 to pay my RM$4 when it hit me that I couldn’t pay because MY FREAKING PURSE IS G-O-N-E!

I know what you’re probably thinking. Oooh, it’s was my fault in the first place, I shouldn’t have tempted that guy, I’m to blame too because I wasn’t secured enough, such a careless girl, there’s always idiots in the country and I’m just at the top of chain for yadayadayadayadyada, WELL SHADDUP!

If your mentality is that way then you’re just plain sporting yahoo! for the thief. Stop reading and go suck a dog’s cock.

I’m already angry at myself for having had to have something like this happened. It’s the second time in the last 6 years that I lost my wallet through my own negligence and stupidity. My parents are already mad at me and it’s taking every once of my self-control not to slam every door I close in the house, scaring the sh** out of little babies.

Time for a brutally honest fact about Quickening; I’m usually good natured and quite a joker. I don’t often get pissed and I’m hard to get pissed but when I do get pissed, I’m not so easily to turn un-pissed after I start to get really, really pissed.

I’m pissed that I lost both IC and driver’s license. I’m pissed that I lost both big cash and book discount card (I haven’t brought any kind of paperback at all since my photo with my lazy feet up against the ones I have). I’m pissed that I lost my really nice purse (who my sister’s good friend passed it down to me) and most of all, I’m pissed at myself for being careless and idiotic.

There’s no point in being mad at myself if I’m just going to wallow in self-pity. So I directed most of my angry energy to trying to fix things as best as possible.

At the time of writing (which is offline, 1st March, 10:37pm), I’ve just got back from making a police report at Mutiara D’sara’s police station (nice place, clean, but got pictures of Top-Police-Guy Tan Sri Musa in almost every corner). After filling out the paperwork, I was direct to investigator, SargeH, and he gave me his cellphone number for any updates I could give.

My dad managed to contact the owner of the internet café and decided on a noon appointment for tomorrow about the CCTV video. I’m going save a portion of the incriminating video (freaking skinny Chinese kid with ugly shirt and pinchy fingers) and burn it onto a CD before passing it to SargeH.


Police report. I got to carry this around whenever I drive in my car now.

Not to mention my extra busy-ness days. I’ve already contacted Maybank to cancel my ATM card. I plan to get busy on Monday to re-apply my driver’s license and on Tuesday, re-apply my IC card (note2self: Photostat police report and get money to pay fine, just in case). I don’t know if I can vote in the upcoming general elections with temporary IC though but I’ll get to that bridge and cross it.

I had every intention to take screenshots and post them in this here blog too. I’ll let you guys know of any updates but don’t hold your breath yet. I’m not going back into that cyber café until this thing is completely settled. That means future blog entries are disrupted until further notice.

Now that I’ve threw up all that crap... please wish me good luck.

... *siiiiiiiiiiiiiigh*

My Baby Nephew No.2 - In UltraScan

It was raining like bathroom shower this morning; the weather just pours and pours and after that, the sky was still so cloudy and the light was so bright, it made sense for the lazy ones to creep back under the bedclothes, turn on our air-conditioning to 20’C, lullaby-ed by the Astro TV and wait for clear weather by night time so we can jamm and party.

Man, that’s sounds definitely bliss.

I would love to join the slug club but weekends signals the cleaning hour in this household. We don’t have a maid, so it’s vacuum, mop, dust, wipe, wash, scrape, scrub, polish, shine - and that’s just on the havoc made by the 2-year-old midget-demon.

Imagine what it’s like when MySis fully develops BabyNabil 2.0 and weekends will bring forth two brat-boys.

This is... NoNameYet.


Captured from another angle.


This is part of the video. He kept covering his face with his arm (aiyo, kecik-kecik dah camera-shy...).

MySis went to her gynaecologist in TTDI (the near-D’sara-Utama’s TTDI) and had a belly see-through, just to check on NoNameYet, who’s due in May. There’s every indication that he’s going to look like his big brother, possibly even (God forbid!) be something like his brother.

There’s a lot of baby males in clan of AbangHuzir (bro-in-law). His elder brother’s family possessed a pair of identical twin boys and their younger brother. The sister’s family has two boys as well and one very tomboyish little girl.

These babies below age 6 all gather under their Grandma’s roof almost every Saturday or Sunday. Seeing how BabyNabil was being the boss of everything without his cousins, I can only imagine what the scary situation is when 6 Devils vs. 1 Grandma.

I said I can only imagine, because I really, really rather not be around to witness it. MySis tells some pretty scary horror stories; screaming, shouting, barking, running, tugging, fighting, scratching, rolling, kicking, climbing, falling, crying.

Pretty much, what macho baby-boys always do.

Apparently, to keep the peace, Grandma keeps a whipping rotan for every child. I saw those rotans on one visit the other day, which is actually kind of short. I think it was mostly for intimidation as to a kid that short (and naughty), it was as long as his arm.

So MySis is going to give the paternal family another male infantile unit by May.

I can only hope for many, many sunny days in the future because, as seen today, babies have to stay indoors during the wet shower hour.

And I still haven’t cleaned up the slimy horror on the staircase. If you’ll excuse me, I’m off to get a mop.

Image: Angels and a Whole New Slideshow

I don’t usually have a fascination for angels. Yeah, they are part of the Fantasy genre I’m so enamoured about but the anatomical inconsistency of enabling flight and propulsion of having dual bird-like wings ...

I’m just plain rambling, aren’t I?

Angels. Messenger of the divine, tools of miracles, protector of innocents, harbinger of doom, mediator between God and men. See, it’s the abundance of use, immortalization and iconic personas in association with the entity ‘angels’ that any personal bias towards my preference for them is sadly lacking.

They’re just damned overused.

When I want to write a tale, I usually use the most underappreciated themes like science, social doctrine and political turmoil. I don’t use a pegasi as a creature of flight; I use 60+ species of dragons in varying shapes and sizes. In one point, I plan to use eagles as well. There so much about the nature and existing system that splicing and attaching biological body parts to non-related creatures just seem bleh...

Yeeeeeeeaaaah, I can guess ya. The wings of angels are all in the mind and their flight to goodwill and heavens’ work is metaphorical but no less deeply impacted.

Just for that (and the fact that there’s just a good load of artists with damn pretty angels pictures) I’m going to post them here.

The Muse (Google Art)


Armoured Angel by silverlimit


Fallen Angel by kjfaust


Angel by chrono75

By the way, what do you call a lot of angels? A flock of angels? A march? A team? A parade?

I've also updated my Monthly Slideshow. As you know that I'll never place personal pictures of myself or individual family members so I instead present a slideshow of my favourite images that I've collected as I surf online. Check the Slideshow tab for the new one this month (15 images intotal, some you may have seen before).

My Previous 24 Hours

Unlike a few lucky PC-hogs, I don’t often have the chance to hang around in cyberspace as often as I wanted to. Not only would sitting in the LCD-illuminated corner of the bedroom enables me to grow mushrooms in my ear (fungus infection actually, had it before), my ability to communicate with flesh-and-blood people without the aid of a spellchecker or C-programming stipulations would rust and shrivel to awkwardness.

I still want to be a PC-hog though.

But I have a second great love that must be appeased so with the aid of a Kenari car, dual parental units, a Down-Syndrome aunt and a midget under 3 years of age, I was in Ikano Power Centre yesterday for its book fair.

Mak only dragged me along because given the choice, she would rather just take my Popular Discount Card and be done with it. Well you can’t have your 500 tarts and pastries recipes and Popular card too (and I’m not leaving until I get my own paperback).

Popular store book fair will be going on until 9th March, me thinks. I didn’t ask anybody, I just read the big schedule board of events.

After that, the rest of the day was pretty okay. I don’t want to go into wordy detail about my yesterday (as I strayed to do) mainly because today’s February 29 is more than a specially once-in-four-years day.

It’s also my homework deadline (eeep!).

So I’m just going to throw out the photos I’ve taken with my Sony Ericsson about the last 24 hours in sequential order.

7.11am: In the shoplots area next to some big ol’ apartment complex.

I was shaken awake from a very nice dream about me falling asleep and dreaming about me falling asleep and dreaming about falling asleep ... well, you get the idea. But I had to wake up and take the car to the new 7Eleven store because someBABY abhor brown-grain bread and demands white bread.

Anyway, took the opportunity to snap a pretty interesting reverse perspective photo. The mirror reflects what’s behind me but the line of perception looks as if the side view mirror is just a frame instead of a mirror. Lucky shot, me thinks.


9am: At home...

Along the way back from the shoplots area, I’ve learned something today. When you park next to a 24-hour mamak restaurant that always serves yesterday’s rice to a flock of too-heavy-to-fly-anywhere-else fat pigeons, always, ALWAYS make sure that you’re not parking under a freaking tree.

And I already have enough trouble with crows at school. *gerrrrrrram-nya!*


11:30am: An Ikano trip.

From the back, you can tell that they’re both related. This is the 1st-generation male parental unit with the 3rd-generation infantile unit. The minor can’t be told to stand still and the elder can’t scream too loud to command the minor.

But surprisingly enough (actually, it’s not a really big surprise), minor kid did stop to check the girls in front of him (he stood still long enough for the whole escalator trip; Wow, new record!).


2pm: At home...

No major picture here. Mak just brought home a book of making 500 types of pie recipes, of which 99.9999% will never be made according to exactly instructed by the book. Currently, she’s contemplating a radical approach to apple pies. This will be the last time this forbidden fruit shall be witnessed in its natural state before it condemns under extreme pastry mutations.

Actually, it turned out pretty good. Pie was gone before there was any chance to share photo evidence (burp!).


6pm: At Kelana Jaya. Click photo for 800 by 600 pixel image.

Okay, I said I didn’t go to school yesterday. Well, not completely. I didn’t enter the workstation compound, just needed to drop a package of nicely printed paper about the merits of virtual reality into the IT faculty pigeon box. I had parked in the residential area and it was a pain trying to get back to it, mostly because the damn cars kept making U-turns where they aren’t supposed to be making U-turns and I couldn’t cross to the other side.

In irritation, I photographed a row of organized disobedience. Some of them were kind enough to signal their U-turn before they break the law. Click the photo for a bigger picture.


7pm: At home... Again

Previously I’ve mentioned that there’s a shiny new faculty that had opened at school with their shiny new kitchenware. To complete this illusion of grandeur, there’s also a shiny new café, complete with indoor plants and wooden furniture.

The food, however, is better left to the imagination. This is a lasagne set that costs about RM$4.50. It’s a bargain but then again, you stomach what you paid for. It’s nice but it needs Ajinomoto. I’m not going to completely diss my school’s first attempt at the canteen business however. I’m going to try the cheeseburger next, maybe that’ll go down better (with a litre of Coca-Cola maybe).


8pm: At Santai Restaurant in Muatira Damansara...

Hehehe, okay, taking photos of a pregnant lady due in May would probabaly not be under the merits of sisterly love but I just wants to show the person who’s been eating most of the mushroom steak MySis ordered. Just confirmed the gender; a little brother for BabyNabil. No name yet but it’ll probably start with the letter ‘N’.

The family tried the Santai Restaurant yesterday, taking all the western stuff. The portions are big, we’re practically stuffed and our bellies were round. But the next time, I’ll go with the black pepper (mushroom was too tame, me thinks).

So some 15 hours after the last photo was taken, here I am, back at school. My next 24 hours (though with or without pictures is yet uncertain) would be
-finishing up that homework report,
-giving Host Café’s cheeseburger a try,
-checking car for anymore essence of avian menace,
-going back to Ikano to sneak-buy that paperback (Ayah hates me reading storybooks; they’re the bane of my CGPA)
-gather every available coins in all the couches in the house.

Now I really, reeeeeeeaally wish I’m a PC-hog.