Farewell to The King Of Pop

Thank you, Michael, for entertaining so many lives with your songs. And out-of-this-world dance moves.

FLORAL FANCIES

It was a spontaneous decison - to get potted plants, orchids specifically,  for all the mothers in the family (on KOTH's side)  as we had already planned to meet up on Mother's Day (Sunday, May 10).  

We hadn't counted on it being somewhat like a wildgoose chase.  Didn't know orchid plants are not so easily found (at least, reasonably priced ones).  On Saturday, mid-morning, we decided to drive to Sungai Buloh to look for some orchid plants, banking on Sungai Buloh's reputation as the gardening haven.  We got terribly lost in Sungai Buloh, not really knowing which part of the town to head to, but fortunately had the GPS thingy in the car to help us out a bit.  

No orchids in Sungai Buloh, where there were a lot of leafy plants.  Someone at one of the nurseries we stopped at suggested we try the Serendah Orchid Farm.  We drove towards Serendah and after going around in circles found a sign that told us that the "Serendah International Orchid Farm" is "temporarily" closed.  By the look of things, it seemed permanently closed!  So we drove around some more .......

Walked into a few nurseries, where there were also no orchid plants for sale.  Finally, a lady told us to go to Kuala Kubu Baru, and gave us directions to an orchid farm.  Easy, can't miss, as it's just by the main road.

So finally, tummy rumbling and all (we had not had lunch and it was pushing towards tea time) we walked into this vast nursery with thousands of orchid plants, in pots on racks and hanging in pots above our heads.  Finally!!!

Kalai Vaney, the lady who owns the business, was just finishing her lunch and asked us if we had eaten.  No, I told her, not yet because my husband said we won't stop for anything until we get the orchid plants!!   Hahaha, and I thought  I had a late lunch, Vaney said!

Vaney was an accountant who gave up that profession to take up her passion of growing orchids full time.  She has been in the business for 18 years.  No regrets, she said.  I really liked that.

We ended up getting 14 plants, and we got a good price for them.  Really, really good price, actually, because the same plants are being sold in the city for more than twice the price we paid.

So, everyone, next time you're looking for orchids, go to Kuala Kubu Baru!

And by the way, I baked two cakes, and one of them had orchids for decoration, to go with the 'theme'.

Enjoy the pictures!

Credits:  The pictures above are photographed by the husband and the son

..............

ZOO STORY

Kids generally love going to the zoo, and mine are no exception. A few weeks ago when I was at work, KOTH and the kids headed to the Zoo Negara. Another trip for a great excuse to practise their "shooting" - shooting pictures, that is.

Come join the tour!

Eh, cepat!  Cepat!  Don't be such a tortoise.  The Zoo Express ain't gonna wait for you!

The Flamingo, or Phoenicopterus.  Somehow their necks remind me of the pretzel, all twisted like that!

The Giraffa camelopardalis  is  the tallest of all land-living animal species.  Do you know that male giraffes are prone to  "homosexual"  activities?  Yes, I kid you not.   A study found that  at any given time one in twenty males were engaged in non-combative necking behaviour with another male, where two male giraffes caress and court each other, leading up to mounting and climax.  The females are more decent, 99 percent engaging only in heterosexual coupling.  

This is the Equus, better known as the zebra whose name comes from the Old Portuguese word zevra (wild ass).   Is the zebra white with black stripes, or black with white stripes?  The zebra's closest relatives are the horses and the donkeys, but unlike them, the zebra has never been domesticated.  Zebras are highly social animals, and they live in "harems" consisting of a stallion and up to 6 mares and their foals. 

Is this another Flamingo?  

The one-humped  Dromedary  Camelus  (Arabian camel),  is native to the dry desert areas of Western Asia, while the two-humped Bactrian camel comes from the Central and East Asian regions.  Do you know that camels have 74 chromosomes?  (Humans have 22).

Mr Panthera Leo here certainly looks well-fed!!   Panthera means "the yellowish animal" or "whitish-yellow".

Say, is that a new hairdo, mate?  Our native Orang Utans (Pongo).

Proboscidea Elephantidae.  This is the Asian, or Indian Elephant.   The kids got to see the elephant's proboscis, or trunk, up close.

This guy certainly has the best view from his vantage point.

Bye for now.  Come back soon!!

TOP APRIL FOOL'S HOAXES

From www.museumofhoaxes.com



#1: The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest
1957: The respected BBC news show Panorama announced that thanks to a very mild winter and the virtual elimination of the dreaded spaghetti weevil, Swiss farmers were enjoying a bumper spaghetti crop. It accompanied this announcement with footage of Swiss peasants pulling strands of spaghetti down from trees. Huge numbers of viewers were taken in. Many called the BBC wanting to know how they could grow their own spaghetti tree. To this the BBC diplomatically replied, "place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best."


#2: Sidd Finch
1985: Sports Illustrated published a story about a new rookie pitcher who planned to play for the Mets. His name was Sidd Finch, and he could reportedly throw a baseball at 168 mph with pinpoint accuracy. This was 65 mph faster than the previous record. Surprisingly, Sidd Finch had never even played the game before. Instead, he had mastered the "art of the pitch" in a Tibetan monastery under the guidance of the "great poet-saint Lama Milaraspa." Mets fans celebrated their teams' amazing luck at having found such a gifted player, and Sports Illustrated was flooded with requests for more information. In reality this legendary player only existed in the imagination of the author of the article, George Plimpton.


#3: Instant Color TV
1962: In 1962 there was only one tv channel in Sweden, and it broadcast in black and white. The station's technical expert, Kjell Stensson, appeared on the news to announce that, thanks to a new technology, viewers could convert their existing sets to display color reception. All they had to do was pull a nylon stocking over their tv screen. Stensson proceeded to demonstrate the process. Thousands of people were taken in. Regular color broadcasts only commenced in Sweden on April 1, 1970.



#4: The Taco Liberty Bell
1996: The Taco Bell Corporation announced it had bought the Liberty Bell and was renaming it the Taco Liberty Bell. Hundreds of outraged citizens called the National Historic Park in Philadelphia where the bell was housed to express their anger. Their nerves were only calmed when Taco Bell revealed, a few hours later, that it was all a practical joke. The best line of the day came when White House press secretary Mike McCurry was asked about the sale. Thinking on his feet, he responded that the Lincoln Memorial had also been sold. It would now be known, he said, as the Ford Lincoln Mercury Memorial.


#5: San Serriffe
1977: The British newspaper The Guardian published a special seven-page supplement devoted to San Serriffe, a small republic said to consist of several semi-colon-shaped islands located in the Indian Ocean. A series of articles affectionately described the geography and culture of this obscure nation. Its two main islands were named Upper Caisse and Lower Caisse. Its capital was Bodoni, and its leader was General Pica. The Guardian's phones rang all day as readers sought more information about the idyllic holiday spot. Only a few noticed that everything about the island was named after printer's terminology. The success of this hoax is widely credited with launching the enthusiasm for April Foolery that gripped the British tabloids in subsequent decades.


#6: Nixon for President
1992: National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation program announced that Richard Nixon, in a surprise move, was running for President again. His new campaign slogan was, "I didn't do anything wrong, and I won't do it again." Accompanying this announcement were audio clips of Nixon delivering his candidacy speech. Listeners responded viscerally to the announcement, flooding the show with calls expressing shock and outrage. Only during the second half of the show did the host John Hockenberry reveal that the announcement was a practical joke. Nixon's voice was impersonated by comedian Rich Little.



#7: Alabama Changes the Value of Pi
1998: The April 1998 issue of the New Mexicans for Science and Reason newsletter contained an article claiming that the Alabama state legislature had voted to change the value of the mathematical constant pi from 3.14159 to the 'Biblical value' of 3.0. Soon the article made its way onto the internet, and then it rapidly spread around the world, forwarded by email. It only became apparent how far the article had spread when the Alabama legislature began receiving hundreds of calls from people protesting the legislation. The original article, which was intended as a parody of legislative attempts to circumscribe the teaching of evolution, was written by physicist Mark Boslough.


#8: The Left-Handed Whopper
1998: Burger King published a full page advertisement in USA Today announcing the introduction of a new item to their menu: a "Left-Handed Whopper" specially designed for the 32 million left-handed Americans. According to the advertisement, the new whopper included the same ingredients as the original Whopper (lettuce, tomato, hamburger patty, etc.), but all the condiments were rotated 180 degrees for the benefit of their left-handed customers. The following day Burger King issued a follow-up release revealing that although the Left-Handed Whopper was a hoax, thousands of customers had gone into restaurants to request the new sandwich. Simultaneously, according to the press release, "many others requested their own 'right handed' version."



#9: Hotheaded Naked Ice Borers
1995: Discover Magazine reported that the highly respected wildlife biologist Dr. Aprile Pazzo had found a new species in Antarctica: the hotheaded naked ice borer. These fascinating creatures had bony plates on their heads that, fed by numerous blood vessels, could become burning hot, allowing the animals to bore through ice at high speeds. They used this ability to hunt penguins, melting the ice beneath the penguins and causing them to sink downwards into the resulting slush where the hotheads consumed them. After much research, Dr. Pazzo theorized that the hotheads might have been responsible for the mysterious disappearance of noted Antarctic explorer Philippe Poisson in 1837. "To the ice borers, he would have looked like a penguin," the article quoted her as saying. Discover received more mail in response to this article than they had received for any other article in their history.


#10: Planetary Alignment Decreases Gravity
1976: The British astronomer Patrick Moore announced on BBC Radio 2 that at 9:47 AM a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event was going to occur that listeners could experience in their very own homes. The planet Pluto would pass behind Jupiter, temporarily causing a gravitational alignment that would counteract and lessen the Earth's own gravity. Moore told his listeners that if they jumped in the air at the exact moment that this planetary alignment occurred, they would experience a strange floating sensation. When 9:47 AM arrived, BBC2 began to receive hundreds of phone calls from listeners claiming to have felt the sensation. One woman even reported that she and her eleven friends had risen from their chairs and floated around the room.

This is What I Missed

And now I have to wait three more years for the next reunion!!?????

GULAI

Up north, when someone mentions "gulai", it probably means kari (curry) .  Making "gulai" the right way is not for the uninitiated.  It is a time-consuming effort, simply because the spices need to be really cooked through in order to achieve the right consistency and the right taste.  And the right look, of course.  A "gulai" that looks too pale, too thin, too thick, too "undone" runs the risk of turning off the appetite!

In some households, the gulai is a must, a requisite dish to accompany each (rice) meal. Needless to say, the cook of the house would necessarily have mastered the art of making the perfect gulai, be it gulai ikan, gulai daging, gulai ayam, gulai kambing, gulai sotong or gulai udang.  And there are also other less common gulai dishes .... gulai ikan kering, gulai remunggai, gulai rebung, gulai nangka, gulai umbut pisang, ..... each one as delicious as the next!

I wasn't much of a gulai/curry person until I married my husband.  For one thing, I was at boarding school in a southern state for 5 years and did not grow up on a regular diet of the gulai, Kedah-style.  Not having ventured much into the kitchen pre-marriage, I also had no idea how to make a proper gulai dish.  (My first attempt had the spices tasting like .. spices! All grainy and not smooth at all.  The trademark of an undercooked curry). 

I learnt to make 'proper' gulai from watching my mother-in-law in the kitchen.  She makes a mean gulai that is unparalleled.  Still, I do not cook the gulai very often .... maybe because when you cook curry, your whole body (and the whole house too) will end up smelling like curry itself!

So how do you make the gulai/curry, Kedah style?  I made some 'gulai' ikan tenggiri with the fish roe last night (the fish is fresh from KOTH's weekend fishing trip), and this is how I made it:

First, the 'rempah kari" has to be fried (after you fry till brown some onions, garlic, 'biji sawi' (mustard seeds) and curry leaves), until it is 'garing'/crispy, but be careful not to scorch it.  Then you add some tamarind juice and continue cooking, stirring ocassionally, until the oil rises to the surface (pecah minyak).  Only then do you add the santan (coconut milk), water, and salt, and  let it come to a boil until you see oil on the surface.  By now your curry should have a rich red colour.  Then add the fish and other ingredients.  In my case, I added green chillies, tomatoes and eggplant.  If I had had some okra/ladies fingers, I would have added that in, too.  Let the fish cook through, adjust the taste by adding more salt if necessary, let it cook a while more ....... and that's it.  Very easy, no?

Fish and roe cooking in the pot

Add these next

The gulai ikan tenggiri & telur ikan

Ready to eat!

.... (pictures from my mobile, excuse the quality) ...