The weekend is here.
Category: Daily
Conversations
The signs send subliminal messages
“Very, very little in the style of an airport sign is arbitrary,” writes David Zweig, author of Invisibles: The Power of Anonymous Work in an Age of Relentless Self-Promotion. Take the font, for example. In 75% of all airports, you’ll find one of three typefaces: Helvetica, Frutiger, and Clearview. All three are sans serif because it’s easier to read at a distance. The unofficial rule for size, according to the Transportation Research Board’s guide to wayfinding, is that every inch of letter height adds 40 feet of viewing distance (so a “3 inch tall letter would be legible from 120 feet”). Sometimes different terminals will have their own distinct signature sign design—like rounded edges or a specific color. “If you are ever in an airport or campus or hospital or other complex environment and suddenly something feels off, you sense you are going the wrong way, there’s a good chance it’s not just magic or some brilliant internal directional sense,” Zweig writes, “but rather you may be responding to a subconscious cue like the change of shape from one sign system to another.”
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Everyone including their grandmother knows (and loves) sriracha by now, so naturally we’re all looking for the next it girl. Enter stage left: Sambal oelek.
In my initial cooking and experimenting days, I bought jars, and jars, and jars of different chilli pastes. Different brands of sambal, sambal oelek, you name it. Despite them sounding somewhat similar, they are anything but.
If you prefer the type you get plonked on your nasi lemak, opt for the former. Otherwise, the latter is much more on the watery (and obviously less spicy) side.
Personally from experience, we’ve ended up mixing two different brands of sambal to come up with our frankenstein child. Both of them have their own specific strengths (sweetness vs spiciness) and cons (watery vs volume) so this way you have a win-win situation.
Being malaysians, this is a condiment that we utilise at least twice a week. Eggs? Cucumber? Sauteed onions? All of the above please!
Yes, sambal and cucumbers. Think of it as the malaysian version of hummus and crackers.
OH YEAHHHHHH
I totally dig how they manage to sneak in some Thriller vibe while also being somewhat serious with all the bizarro events that keep happening to Will.
Sleep is going to be somewhat of a scarce commodity when season 2 drops!
That…is an expensive grinder
Surely I’m not the only one who thinks 2 grand is a lot of dough to be dropping on a grinder.
Burning through data like an addict snorting cocaine
4k TV + Kodi + Zen addon = insane couch sessions.
Suffice to say, I’ve got a lot of catching up to do in terms of movies and also TV shows.
One standout though (and this perfectly depicts how backlogged I am with flicks):
Benicio Del Toro carried this all the way.
Denis Villeneuve paced this outstandingly well.
Chuck in top notch cinematography and you have a winner.
The last movie that made me go oh shit oh shit like this was zero dark thirty, and we all know how critically acclaimed that ended up being.
Chilli Pan Mee
We Malaysians love our food. That much is as true as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.
The day I got off that plane and started calling this upside down country my place of residence, that wave of regret just washed over me. Don’t get me wrong, I have been utterly fortunate to been able to travel extensively during my childhood, but knowing that status quo (at least food wise) will return in 2 weeks is one heckuva big security blanket.
It could just boil down to the air, the unsanitary conditions, or even the humidity (hey, all these factors play a major role in how food is perceived e.g. aeroplane junk), but nobody does food like we do. Put a bunch of shy south east asians together and we’ll probably mumble our way through topics of conversation until we get to food. Now that is a topic that truly fuses people of different walks of life together.
I’m digressing.
On my last trip back home right before we popped into a mall to get a new pair of glasses made up for my fiancee, we had lunch at this place called Gerai. Now upon doing more research, this place seems to be a franchised chain of sorts but that shouldn’t take away from how pleasantly surprised I was with what I got served. Serendipitously, I picked their chilli pan mee (yes yes, nothing tastes as good as the O.G but when you’re on a tight schedule, you take what you can get).
T’was a good bowl of noodles, but IMHO a little bit more greens would have been nice (I devour vegetables like no tomorrow). Fast forward to yesterday and on the spur of the moment, I decided that I would give it a go at trying to make my owl iteration of the recipe.
To be fair, I took shortcuts along the way. The weather took a turn for the worse while I was stinking up the neighbourhood with my deep fried anchovies and I barely made it back indoors before it started spitting.
I also noped out of making home-made sambal belacan and purchased a bottle of granny chilli oil and bought fresh kway teow noodles instead of hand making them egg noodles.
It’s quite ironic that in light of my above comments regarding Gerai, I had zero vegetables tonight. To be fair, there really wasn’t much room left to chuck anything in there.
All said, pan mee in 25 minutes tops maybe? I’d say it definitely goes on the weeknight dinner list of recipes!
Note to self: Don’t attempt 3 days of cardio straight
I am totally going to be feeling the effects of this tomorrow. And maybe Friday, perhaps even Saturday.
Without going into too much detail, my eating habits have changed drastically since the family got here. Out goes delicious white rice, hello chewy brown variety.
