The Lalanews in Lalaland with Ila...

On August the first, last week-end; I was in Lalaland with Ila. Both of us were amongst the ones crowding the place and making the owner richer by the tiniest percent. But that was not the point; we were having the summer blast under the shining sun on this land of arising Sun as if no one mind to be broiled alive by the heat. The grandeur of the place with the majestic building signature of Lalaworld with familiar background music playing non-stop sent both of us to the world of cartoon.

Regardless, it was not the only thing that made my heart jump in and out that day.

There were 2 missed called of 15 minutes apart, 2 voice messages from the dearest datuk.

The first voice mail asking me to go to the lab, more discussion on the will be written article; he was pushing the limit of the regulation for my sake but enough to sully the atmosphere of that moment.

I can’t go. I was in the Lalaland.

The heart beats and I was adamant of not going no matter the reason.

Move to his second voice mail, I heard a word, ‘Accepted’. The article that I wrote for a journal was accepted for publication and therefore, no need for me to write another one. No need to meet him!

Out of sudden, he was my life saviour. Two calls of 15 minutes apart.

The day was really the Day, a Lalanews, with Ila in Lalaland.

Kingdom of boredom?

Idle.

That is the best word that I can think of to describe the recent life. It does not go forward or backward, or so to speak. It is like having started the engine of a car, and just that, the car is left to idle.

The idling, however, caused a problem; boredom.

I love living a life without much to think about; just make sure to move your butt to the lab, sit in front of the laptop the whole day, eat, drink, talk and finally go home and sleep. Of course, after working very hard for 42 months, this is very much treasured.

But then again, human is a very complicated species in the animal kingdom. Even if we have had everything, we will still in need of everything.

Boredom vexed me somehow.

Frozen food online

Understanding has to be seek and that's one of my love of life. Besides human, I love to know how things work. Yes! I am full of curiosity.

Because of that, again, I thanks Google for having language translation button which can traslate language of any website and for now, Japanese website is the one that I need to look into.

With that button, many things had been bought. And yes, how can a woman disassociate oneself with shopping but at one time, it's all about purchasing food, online. During one particular week, I experimented with buying frozen foods online, pizzas and curry. It's all started with my curiosity to understand the succesfullness of this kind of services in Japan. It is reasonably easy to figure out on sending purses or clothes by mail, but frozen food? Is the taste really as good as the shop claimed it to be? How about doing it in Malaysia?

After clicking the buy button, I waited for the parcels to reach me at my house on early Saturday morning which I had instructed the shop to do so, simply by fill-in the the form of the website during the buying processes. Both pizzas and curry were from two different shops, and each using different courier service. I chose these two shops because they had offered week end delivery with no shipping cost but moreover, discounted prices - about 1000yen - and the most important thing, those foods do not contained meat or alcohol as described in the ingredient available in their respective websites.

The three small sizes pizzas arrived first, in a box, each wraped carefully with plastic bag, still in frozen condition with cooking instructions. About 10 minutes later, the curry set arrived. It was also in frozen condition as if it just been brought out of the -20 degrees celcius freezer. I was impressed.

These showed that both courier services were very good in handling frozen items. And probably relatively cheap enough that the shops were able to offer free shipping to the customer, especially when both shops were located in Tokyo, about 10 hours bus ride to Tokushima and more than 1 hour by plane.

Three types pizzas just out from box

The curry set

  

Orchids IX

This orchid is known as fu-ran in Japanese where fu is for wind and ran, orchid. Neofinetia falcata, an orchid that is originated from Japan is also called fukiran - orchid of wealth and nobles - which is famous during Shogun era amongst the samurai warriors.

My sensei, however, is a very artistic person when comes to orchid. He simply added another type of orchid in the same pot and if we do not look carefully, it might miss us. On the lower part of the furan root, there is Bulbophyllum japanicum (Makino) or in Japanese, miyamamugi-ran or mountain wheat orchid.

I surely would never noticed the small, red in colour flower if he do not come and asked me to look closely.

Takoyaki & satay party

Unlike the other labs, my lab's members love eating. We can always find a reason or two to have a party. This time, it was about making takoyaki, a grilled ball of tako (octopus), sponsored by Hiroshima-sensei.

Batter prepared from a wheat flour and egg was put into each of the hole of the special cooking plate of takoyaki. Normally, it is cook on a open fire burner but this time we used the electric one.

The small cut boiled octopus was then added into each of the the batter.

Followed with chopped negi or onion leaves and minced cabbages. We also added some corn (maize).

After sometimes, the cook batter turn into ball, and should be turned around so that the upper part would also be cooked, which at the end made it into a ball shape. The hand with the chopsticks (hashi in Japanese) in the picture do not belong to me because besides eating, my chopsticks practise still do not allow me to use them for cooking.

Cooked takoyaki.

But, we should always shared the cultures and for that reason the Chicken Satay was prepared using the halal chicken bought through the net. Thanks again to the net, I found few websites with good instructions to prepare the satay and the satay's peanut sauces; Hanieliza and Mat Gebu's blogspots. Hiroshima-san brought along her newly purchased BBQ's plate (besides the takoyaki plate which her mother won from a BINGO game).

The chefs for the day of takoyaki section, from left, Jakhlan-san from Mongolia and Hiroshima-san.

Satay chef, Akamatsu-sensei on the left. Two girls on the rights, special food tasters; Saikhan, daughter of Jakhlan-san and moi.

See, how happy the chef was!

Later, the datuk and our lab manager/ technician, Matsuo-san joined us. Jakhlan was very impressed with the satay tasted that she requested the recipe; while Matsuo-san wanted to bring home the leftover of the satay sauce. He was thinking about having it with the grilled fishes with his family. 

By the way, Hiroshima-san and I were thinking to have the takoyaki party once again.

p/s Hehehe! I smell something fishy in the air, but in a good way. Is somebody trying to secure someone heart? ;) I wish to hear the good news, soon?

Orchids VIII

Last week, new types of orchids came to the lab and both were of Japan origins; Sediria japonica or know as nagoran in Japanese and Epipactis thunbergii or kakiran.

Nagoran means nago orchid because it was first discovered in Nago city of Okinawa Island while kakiran, persimmon orchid because the colour of it flower is similar to the persimmon colour.

Sediria japonica

Epipactis thunbergii

Hujan (Rain)

Pabila hujan turun aku terkenangkan mu
Berlari-lari anak sekitar rumah kayu
Berkain separas lutut, bersama sebilah cangkul
Dan air laju membelah paritan kecil ciptaan mu

Sampai kini, aku masih terkenang
Pada rambut basah dan kulit sejuk milik mu
Tersenyum menghadap secawan kopi dan ubi rebus
Dan cerita seorang Pak Sako bisa berbicara bahasa haiwan

Pagi ini aku masih terkenangkan mu
Tatkala hujan renyai membasahi bumi asing
Moga hujan ini masih mampu membasahi mu
Biar sekujur tubuh itu diam bersemadi nun di sana, Ayah!

In memory of my late father....