Just to convince my friend, Wai Ling, that I’m dedicated to learning chinese. Though I doubt I’ll learn it in a flash It took me a long time to find “xin” (card 320).

After enduring years of dim floor lamp lighting in my room*, I finally went ahead to get fluorescent lights. It took me 3 trips to the store to get all the stuff that I needed!

Trip #1:
Bought the reflector light fixture-thing and 2 fluorescent tubes.
Came home and found out that it didn’t come with the screw hooks. Postponed fixing it up till next day.

Trip #2:
Bought the screw-on hooks and a plier.
Came home, measured the length of the cord and realized it was rather short but decided to fix it up anyway. But the light ended up being too low, just slightly above my head…that won’t do.

Trip #3:
Bought an extension cord.

Finally, the light is up! It is bright and cheery in my room now. However, I don’t exactly trust my own handiwork, so I’ve moved the laptop and the chair further away from the light…wouldn’t want the light to fall on my head

* Unlike Malaysia, most houses in the US do not come with permanent fluorescent lights. So, most students end up going to walmart to get one of those cheap floor lamps that uses incandescent light bulbs, or the more environment conscious would get CFL light bulbs. Either way, these floor lamps are usually not bright enough.

I’ve mentioned before that all the kimchi that I’ve made always turned out not so great. So following the advice of my Ampang friend I decided to go back to the basics. No more following elaborate and complicated recipes from the internet and kimchi cookbooks. For this latest ampang-style kimchi, I only used nappa cabbage, diakon radish, green onions, hot pepper powder, ginger, garlic, salt and sugar. I left out:
1. expensive korean pear
2. korean anchovy fish sauce
3. salted tiny shrimp
4. sesame oil and seeds
5. sweet rice flour (starch mixture)

It tasted quite good, sort of fresh tasting.

I finally baked the easter ham that I won in a raffle months ago. I used a pineapple juice and honey glaze on it. Many baked ham recipes use whole cloves (bunga cengkih) but whole cloves cost like $5 for a small bottle so I left it out. I gave away some of the ham, freezed a whole lot, and chopped up some for pineapple fried rice.

My advisor is on her sabbathical. I got permission from her to go through her collection of journals in her office. She even lets me keep the duplicate copies of her journals.

I just read about the Harry Potter war in Malaysia: Bookstore chains vs Hypermarts . So who’s going to come out of this war victorious? Kinokuniya

Nohohon and Jay Chou – The unmistakable influences of Katak (or is it Tiptup now?)

I call this nohohon (sunshine buddy) my “yes-man”…everything also nods head.

I was looking for this all over KL. I saw some at Isetan KLCC but didn’t like those, then found some at Jaya Jusco MidValley and contemplated many minutes (and I mean MANY) before settling on this one. When I went back to Penang, I saw a whole bunch at MPH Gurney Plaza! Haiyah…didn’t even need to go down to KL and spend money on rapidKL just to get one.

This is the newly renovated Linderman library – Lehigh’s humanities library. I was using the computer here but the table is a little too narrow so the monitor is like in your face. Too close, very uncomfortable, so had to move to a different computer somewhere else eventhough the chair was rather comfortable.

It’s summer now so there’s hardly any students around, a very good time to “jom” a computer and a table to do some serious studying in a beautiful air-conditioned place. I should start spending many hours here from now on.

I had the last pong pneah today. No more malaysian biscuits/cookies left. And that’s the two golf balls I picked up few days ago.