a gentle musing of my day

london 4.33pm 17C it says it is raining, but not really. cloudy though. wednesday 2020

i think it is a lovely day today . though you might not think so. it’s cloudy , with dark rain clouds,  it hasn’t really started raining yet, even though the forecast is that it should be doing so about now.

i have been out earlier today, and am back now and still no hay fever symptoms at all. isn’t that great? how wonderful! so that i hope the forecast of more rain this week is true because it will mean the pollen will be reduced again.

my earlier outing was to the sainsburys to buy chicken and pork (1.7kg @£3.10/kg, cut into 5 portions to freeze) and raw frozen prawns and milkpowder. i used my nectar points  to buy £10 worth, 2000 points, the purchase of the chicken and prawns garnered me 140 points to add to my kitty, and i paid the balance £3.11 in cash. 

however, what i saved i promptly lost because i lost the £15 change that i got for the £20 note i used to pay the cash. the plastic notes are very springy and wont lie flat , and they fell out without my noticing as i was walking to the bus stop. ah well, that is life haha. whoever finds it must be fated to find it,  and i hope it made their day very pleasant. i know i always get a lot of pleasure from finding money on the pavement so i know whoever finds it will get this pleasure too.

it is 4.47pm now and i still have not had my lunch. like i have said before, the porridge oats that i had this morning for breakfast last me a long time so that i dont feel hungry even now.

i intend to stir fry half the chicken i bought,( it is only two chicken legs 500mg for £1), but half of it, ie one chicken leg is enough for a stir fried dish , with celery. and i shall eat that with rice. that will make a meal.

it is so quick and cheap to make a meal, that dish with rice is about 80p.

(added 8.02am fri 5.6.20. that meal  leftover served me for lunch yesterday, so it was actually 40p per meal. )

  i sometimes wonder why people keep saying they cannot afford to eat, or have to forego eating so that they can pay for something else. they cant all be that hopeless with budgetting surely? is there something else that i have missed. what other things they are doing or not doing that makes them run out of money like that. 

i got back in time to see the golden girls on tv. they are repeating this every weekdays, and i really enjoy seeing them. it is all new to me, as i never did catch all the episodes when they first broadcast it in the late 80s and early 90s. this episode today have the girls talking about staying up all night to watch ‘i love lucy’. another show i like too. perhaps if they show it now it might be a bit dated, but the golden girls are still very relevant even now. i realise it is the stories they tell, especially the mother and rose, which makes it so funny that i sometimes end up cant stop  chuckling all the way through the mid point break for the adverts. 

added 5.6.20. saw a episode of golden girls on thursday which showed a young george clooney, looking very handsome and italian. he was not even mentioned in the credits.

another joy i am getting is in the book i am reading now,   ancient evenings by norman mailer. or rather that i am re reading, as i have this book  bought second hand for £2 , the date i wrote on the flyleaf was 19.9.98. its a very good read and i appreciate it more now than when i first read it. its not possible to borrow this book from the library, because of its sexual content, so i am glad i bought it so long ago. i think i am beginning to understand it now more so than when i read it long ago. 

 

KODAK Digital Still Camera

its actually good weather for a barbeque today. i had the last bit of bayette, that cut of beef that i got free yesterday. it was allready halved, seeing that i ate a bit of it yesterday in my steamed celery and rice dish.

london 7.27pm 21C cloudy saturday 2019

today i fried it whole, so the outside was well cooked but the inside was medium rare. it was quite nice and not too tough if i cut it in very thin slices to eat. this piece of meat is definitely much harder to cook than the rib eye i had the day before. 

simon had a piece and he said he cannot taste the meat because of the marinade. which makes me think it is not really necessary to marinade the meat. just salt and pepper is quite good enough. i found it not so interesting to eat it , so i mixed it with  fried rice and cucumber and finished it as a fried rice dish. 

then i was thinking if i were to do a BBQ, i would not use these prime beef cuts really. it would make the whole exercise very expensive. i would most probably go for sausages, and hamburgers, or pork chops maybe if i really want to splash out…they are cheaper and also easier to cook in that you just have to cook them well done.added. i just realise that to a cook at the bbq, beef steak are very convenient because they are v quick to cook, because those who like their steak will want it rare, or medium rare, and that would not take long to cook and you can produce a whole lot of it in quick order and everyone can get to eat in a short time. whereas the other meats, like pork etc do take a long time to cook as they must be well done.

with the beef steaks, you have to time it really right, otherwise you will overcook the meat and it will be very tough. and when u consider all this will be cooked over the uncertain heat of a charcoal fire, which you cannot control, you will be setting yourself up for very unevenly cooked beef. added. re reading the above, i realise if u are a good cook, it should not be difficult to cook the steaks. 

 but in uk i dont think barbeques are a tradition. we dont have parks where there are barbeque areas to cook the meat, unlike in australia. in fact they prohibit you doing any cooking in the park, which is a pity i think, but they are saying the cooking smells may offend people. 

anyway i went to the sainsburys early this morning to buy frozen fish, it is from their basic range, basa fish they call it but i think it is pollock haha, £2.20 for 520mg. i like it. this is because sainsburys are giving us 150 nectar points for every time we spend £1 or more to buy something from them this weekend  to celebrate their 150th anniversary. so everyday i shall go there and buy something for £1 or so. you are allowed 3 purchases a day.  and on my way out there was a lady at the entrance giving away a box of teabags, and ginger biscuits saying have tea on us. they suggest you go and share it  with your neighbours.

added. i just noticed this, sainsburys have a basa fillet pack that costs more , the one i bought they call white fish. so maybe there is another fish called basa, and ‘white fish’ is pollock. to me, they all taste the same. it is how you cook it and what you add to it that gives it flavour and taste.

i am in fact enjoying the ginger biscuits with my tea now. though the tea i have is from tea leaves, as that is what i like. simon can have the tea bags.

sainsburys are the new owners of the nectar card scheme.

london 6.39pm 9.3C dry night tuesday 2018 sunrise 6:35 AM sunset 5:49 PM

 i went today to sainsburys to buy frozen fish £2.20 and then bought crackers at 50p to bring it to above £2.50 which is the minimum amount you can redeem the nectar points. i enjoyed that,haha.

i am getting to like the nectar points system, ever since the daily mail joined and i can get points by just entering the numbers everyday in the daily mail. i can get 80points every week from the daily mail , which is equivalent to £80 worth of shopping in sainsburys. so it is extremely good. and when i gave a spare card to simon, he had bought stuff from sainsburys and pushed up the points i get even more. 

today i read in this article in the scotland sun, that sainsburys had bought the nectar card for £60million in feb 2018.

It bought the loyalty scheme from Canadian marketing firm Aimia, which bought Nectar for £368million in 2007.

the nectar loyalty scheme started in 2002, and sainsburys have been associated with it for that long. its a bargain buy really for sainsburys .

why did Aimia sell it on and at a loss too? recently they recruited daily mail to the stable of businesses, and got a lot of flak from the social media. with people threatening to leave the nectar card scheme … so their reason they gave that there are fewer businesses they can ally with now and that means less chance of expansion is true for them.  but with sainsburys it is a different aim…  to bring in more customers.  it means they get a bigger chance to maximise those who are members to raise their spending in sainsburys or argos. and their targetted incentives are working… it works with me… and if they can do that with me, i think they have got it right… i think they are copying the daily mail. there too, they have lots of stuff and things you can buy with the points, as well as promotions where u can enter the draw …

 i can see that the nectar scheme is much more extensive than the tesco loyalty scheme. you can get points from many businesses and redeem them from many other businesses too. that is a strong point in its favour i think.

sainsburys now can get access to the data from the nectar cards. and it has been asking me to fill up their survey … in exchange for points… and even saying i have been specially selected  that if i upload their app and go to their nine elms store, they can give me special offers when i am there. i have not taken them up on it, partly because i dont have a smart phone so cannot download apps.

and i dont like filling up surveys… not even for the 50 nectar points they try to tempt me with. haha. 

one thing i have noticed… more than one person use my card, so their data on the card will be a composite of 3 people…  that is why i dont think the data is that intrusive of our privacy… it does not target each person using the card but the card itself. so if u give it to a neighbour or a friend to get their points, it does not really show you at all, does it?

i can say though that if it’s aim is to increase spending by using the card, it is working, in that i tend to go to sainsburys if all things are equal… 

weather

london 11.51am sunny 13.4C tuesday 2017

really glorious morning , blue sky and sunny, and yet i just read in this article that there has been fog causing flights to be cancelled in heathrow. i live here and i dont see any fog. yet the news says there is. so who do u think to believe, my own eyes or what others say… now u can see why there are so much fake news about. we dont know what is fake news anymore… we cannot tell the difference. oh wait, maybe we are confusing predictions with fake news. forecasts are like predictions, and are a bit like predicting the outcome of brexit. nobody knows , that is the fact of the matter. we cannot predict the weather 7days ahead with any accuracy and that is true for a lot of things about human activities too. that is why nobody has ever predicted a stockmarket crash with any accuracy. they can warn us, but that is not much use really. stockmarket crashes seem to come in 10yr periods. so since the last one in 2008, we might expect one next year. 

with the weather it is not important, at least to us who are not involved with traffic. fog or not, our lives will be unaffected.

i woke up at about 6am this morning, but forgot to look out the window, haha. even if there is fog outside, i doubt i will notice even if i look out of the window. i am not going anywhere, so it does not matter to me if there is fog out there or not. then i went back to sleep and woke up now. and it is 12pm now. 

fog  is normal around this time. looking at the forecast, esp this website which is my favourite go- to website for predictions of the coming weather, i can see it will be mild over christmas. you can see a plume of warm air engulfing the united kingdom over this christmas period. 

added 4.37pm 8.9C dark now dry.

two supermarkets near me, in pimlico, have undergone drastic renovation. they have both closed the shop completely (losing all that business) to do the work and completely redesigned the premises.

one is sainsburys, a superstore, which have moved their what i call their ‘boots’ section (selling what boots the chemist would be selling) right to the front. they have moved the veg section to the front and enlarged it too. and moved the butchers to the back , got rid of the fishmongers, and added a sushi freshly prepared area, all pushed to the back. where the veg section used to be. they have moved the bakery section right to the back at the far end as far removed from the entrance as u can get. and they have enlarged the lunch time foods, which have been in the front, in a space right next to the entrance. the sandwiches shelf space is reduced,( interestingly they have completely removed their 3 items  -for -one- price lunch time sandwich -with -crisps -and a soft drink offers) but have enlarged the pizzas section with the oven, and even gave this section it’s own checkout tills, self service tills which only accept cards. they have removed the delicatessen area, and the hot food area, where they used to sell roast chicken, and hot curries with rice. 

they have completely removed the electrical goods, plates and pots and pans section. i guess because they have bought argos and it does those better.

also, they have got rid of their drinks section, the wine bottles etc… i would have thought that brings in big profits, so it is curious that they have removed it entirely. unless me not being a drinker, they have it still, but its possible i would not see it. even then, it is very unobtrusive, if i did not see it whilst wandering around the store.

 

the trend to increasing the fast food section is also apparent in the tesco  nearby. that was an express tesco, which used to sell veg, and basic goods, but now it has become smaller, almost half its original size, and sells almost only pre cooked foods. gone are the tesco basics, and the frozen section and the veg section. and their liquour section. it is a drastic change.

interesting if this is the future way they are heading. it looks like they are going to remove the basic range of goods from stock.

perhaps these central london stores are so expensive rent wise, that they want to maximise profits and so fill their shelves with high profit stuff. basic goods will by definition not yield such high profits. 

it will definitely affect the way i shop. for one thing, i wont be going to these stores. i shall go to the nine elms sainsburys and the kennington tesco. then again, i doubt i am their target customer haha. 

added . i just wrote all the above and then i saw in my email, sainsburys has sent me this

Things just got personal.

You’ve been handpicked for our SmartOffers app trial at your local Nine Elms Sainsbury’s.

SmartOffers gives you personalised and exclusive offers with bonus Nectar points* on your favourite products as you browse the aisles. In a nutshell, we are rewarding you for buying the things that you love. Sounds good, right? We think so too. Just follow the simple steps below and you can use SmartOffers in no time.

And, as we are always looking to improve our service, we’ll be asking for your feedback along the way so that we can make your experience second to none.

When you go to your Nine Elms store, turn on Bluetooth and open the app. We’ll send you personalised offers through the app that you can activate as you shop.

they have been always asking me to fill up a satisfaction survey regarding a branch of theirs near where i live; but i never do it, because i dont buy there, it is simon who does it using my nectar card.  now they are sending me this related to another branch, the nine elms one. even if i want to take up the offer i could not as i dont have a smartphone. 

points for shopping

london 12.22pm 11.8C slight rain. thursday 2017

this mild weather continues today, but it will end early tomorrow. so might as well enjoy it while we can.

i just got 200 points given to me as a bonus by the nectar card people. now that my mail points are added to nectar i find i am accumulating points very quickly…also i have given simon a extra card so he can use it when he goes shopping at sainsburys, and he certainly has been using it. there is a sainsburys near us and he goes there often, because it is so convenient. so it looks like nectar joining up with the daily mail points system has brought in a lot more people into their nectar system. in that sense they are better than the tesco points . i got those too , but since the only way of getting points is to shop at tescos, it is quite limited. the tescos points is more generous in that each point is worth 1p, instead of the nectar where it is worth half of that. but nectar can jerk off more spending, by offering double points… a clever marketing ploy actually. somehow when they do that, there is more fun in playing along with it. they certainly know about human psychology…

and now they have a advent calendar. every day you answer a question and get into a draw for points … so really when you think of it, you dont get anything really, because how slim are the chances of winning that draw? but it is still fun to play… those guys really know how to push our buttons, and even though we can see them and know it, we still string along, haha. i find it a bit of fun. and i think plenty of nectar members think so too. and i bet many of us will shop at sainsburys , all else being equal…rather than at other stores. i find i do. so if it has affected how i shop, i can bet plenty of others are roped in too. haha. 

sainsburybymobile is closing shop on 15 jan 2016

london 5.57pm 12.6C wednesday 2015

i was just wondering what to blog when i checked my mobile for messages and found one that sainsburys have sent me telling me ‘we’re sorry to let u know that unfortunately, mobile by sainsburys will no longer be available from 15 jan 2016’.

i only just joined them and now they tell me they are closing it. haha. such is life.

my friends will really get fed up of me because i only just recently told them of my new mobile phone. now i shall have to get a new provider and inform my friends again. unless i get a PAC code to port the number. i guess i should do it before 15jan 2016. and keep this number.

now i shall have to try to find another provider. perhaps i shall try tesco. but they dont have a pay as you go sim card. they have cards linked to smartphones but not to ordinary phones like mine, which just makes and receives calls and text.

it is just as well mine is a pay as i go tariff. imagine all the bother if it were a contract for a fixed amount of money every month. or if it were linked to a smart phone with all those call plans and data plans. sainsburys excuse for shutting down the service is because they could not agree with vodaphone . vodaphone ask for too much money to carry sainsburys service; that is what it means.

they mentioned to say they are sorry for all this they are giving me £5 on my nectar card.

no wonder i had that email i received saying i got 1000 nectar points. i thought it was a scam but that is the reason for suddenly getting these 1000 points.

before they added that 1000points, i only got 100 points in my nectar card.

it seems if i got any credit after 15jan 2016,( i got £17.57 now), in the pay as i go mobile card, they will refund it with nectar points, or a voucher… which i hope is money towards sainsburys supermarket. 

its possible they are finding it unprofitable to cater to people like me, who just want a call and text card. vodaphone charges 30p a minute for calls,14p per text; whereas sainsburys charges 8p a min. 4p per text. you can see such a price difference will mean they are undermining vodaphone, so i guess vodaphone must have woken up to it and realise they should not be supporting them to undercut their business without charging them much more to provide that service. hence what we get now, sainsburys pulling the rug from the whole thing.

will tesco also stop providing such pay as you go sim cards to people like me who just want calls and text? i think so. when i look into tesco, i see only sim cards with data plans and free mins at £10 a month. no pay as you go sim cards at all.

here is a bbc news report of it.

added 15.10.15 thursday. i used to have asda sim card, but they told me it is being discontinued. but i went into their website and found they will do sim cards. so i ordered it online just now and they acknowledged it and say they will be sending me a sim card. i shall see if they really send me one, and if i can get onto their pay as i go tariff. if i can it would mean i have gone full circle and returned to asda. i think if i dont use the card they will kick me out. this time i shall be using the card as my home phone dont have any free calls anymore. 

double top up from sainsburys mobile sim card

double top up.

london monday 2015

follow the link, and this offer of double top up is valid only for top ups made this month, to end of 31st march. it came at just the right time for me.

i asked john, my friend from poole who his mobile provider is, and he said he uses sainsburys. i was surprised that sainsbury do mobile sim cards but i googled them, and sure enough they do and it seems this month they have a promotion, they will double any top up u put in this month. that is great as i have been looking for a new mobile provider ever since lebara cut me off when i had still £1 left of credit. they just deactivated the sim card. it was a nice number too, but it seems i have lost that number.

the lebara txt and call costs are not cheap.

sainsburys are 4p for text and 8p/min for calls which is really good. and is the cheapest in the market i should think.

so i have ordered my sim card from them, you have to do it online. i go to sainsburys supermarket but never seen any such mobile deals there. funny why they dont sell it in their supermarkets. i would like if they do, then i can just top up from them. but it seems to get the double top up promotion i have to order it online.  and lets see how it goes shall we?

advertising

london

i just now saw a tv ad from sainsburys about their chicken fillet (2chicken breasts actually… what is all that about calling it fillet, what rubbish, fillet is used if it is fish) but anyway it is saying usual price is £4.50 reduced to £3.50. it is 460mg, meaning it really costs £7.61 per kg.

and i was thinking but why buy that when u can get a whole 1.8kg chicken from waitrose (during their half price month promotion, where i bought a whole chicken,@1.65/kg, in fact i bought two, for about £3.10 each).

so u are getting not only the two breasts, but drumsticks and wings and back. i cannot imagine how they can even run this advert and on expensive tv too, and spend all that money advertising this … are people so dumb that they can be fooled by it to think it is a bargain??!!

or is it me, am i missing something here? makes you wonder doesn’t it? makes you wonder if you are not seeing the bargain, and it is you that is the silly one, and everyone else is clever. but you know what, no matter if everyone says it is a bargain, i am going to stick to my guns and say it is not! so there!

oh i just realised why they can advertise it on expensive tv, because it is expensive and if only a fraction of people buy it they would have made their money back. 

unknown unknowns

london

i am at the library, on another lovely warm day, and read in the times newspaper that sainsburys will stop offering a refund if what u bought fromthem is more expensive than the similar thing in tesco.

you have to buy more than £10 worth of stuff from sainsburys before the till will find out for you what is more expensive than tesco and give you a voucher of refund.

since i never buy anythng more than £10 at any one time, it is no use to me.

all i can see when i view the prices in sainsburys is the upfront cost and so many of their stuff is more costly than tesco. simple things like milk powder, basic instant coffee, basic spaghetti, etc, even basic bread… oats… practically everything really so much so that i stopped going to sainsburys.

i used to wonder when i was there how come it is so busy with people, when it is obviously more expensive than tesco, and i used to wonder how come i never hear of sainsburys profits being hit , like we hear so much about tesco’s falling profits and market share.

so now i know why. people rely on the refund that the computer will find out for them; maybe not realising that  sainsburys have upped their price knowing that only those who shop for small amounts will pay the increased costs and those customers are not really to be wooed anyway as they buy so little.

now according to today’s news article they say they will stopp the refunds.

so maybe people are realising it is better to go straight to the cheap supermarkets like lidl, aldi, rather than fluff around with buying more expensive stuff and getting a refund back, in vouchers what’s more that means coming back to the store to redeem it and only if u buy more of those higher priced stuff. that might explain why sainsburys is dropping that scheme.

Another unknown unknown i discovered is my cistern in my wc. sometimes it does not flush, because the water does not rush in to fill that gadget which house the plunger .

so i tend to leave it for a bit, and it soon fills up with water. this time something new happened. i can feel the inside of that gadget that cause the flush is full, but the water does not drain down to the bowl. i tried it a few times but it still did not work. so i press hard on the top of the gadget and whatever it did, it made the thing worked. well well, some unknown unknowns i have dislodged there. 

my problem with the washing machine double check valve may be solved. simon managed to fit one all by himself. the water engineer came yesterday to check it and signed it off.

he was the one who recommended this to be fitted to overcome the slight contamination of my water.

my initial suggestion that i disconnect the washing machine and not use it luckily is not needed now. i admit it is nice to be able to use the washing machine.

i guess it is nice to live with other people, who can take the trouble to fix it rather than live on my own where i would take the path of least resistence where it can lead to a bit of inconvenience. i would highly recommend living with others. 

from midday today there is a malaysian food festival in trafalgar square. it is to promote malaysia and malaysian foods sponsored by the malaysian govt. i shall go most probably just to see what is going on.

added later. well i have just been to trafalgar square and bought some malaysian foodstuff from the malaysiakitchen stall. 1kg frozen fish balls £5.50. dried instant noodles pack of 10 , 40mg each for .50p.each pack.  i bought 2packs. and then there is the 3 for £2 malaysian chili sauce.  i was not going to buy them but there was a guy there with samples to taste and i just happen to ask him what is the difference between them and he said one got garlic, the other got ginger, and another is sweet. well that kicked me into buying the garlic and ginger ones. as i must have bought the suger ones last year as it was so sweet and i was put off buying them again . so just goes to show u have to have someone tell you what it is different about them.

the frozen fish balls are really good value. they did not sell them last year.  normally 200mg cost about £2 fresh in the chinese shop in chinatown. these are about half price. i cant imagine how ordinary people will buy them as the fish balls will thaw out by the time they go home. i live nearby so i can go home and put them in the freezer and still be able to get back to trafalgar square later today if i want to. who knows maybe they will reduce everything as the evening approaches and they close shop. haha. they even have frozen roti chenai £1.50 for 6. i did not buy them as i dont know what to do with them or if they taste the same after thawing. i am quite attracted to roti done this way and i see roti king who i hear do quite authentic roti blatha. and was quite tempted to try them. it costs £5 though.

some western guys were buying it, but only the roti, no sauce. i said aren’t you supposed to eat that with curry sauce? one of them said yes, but you can chose how to eat it. i must say even though the customer is king… and we are all supposed to accept it;  but really how are u to get the real experience of eating roti blatha if u dont combine it with the curry sauce?? it is just not the malaysian way.

i glanced at the staff in the stall and i can see the guys in the stall kind of having a glazed look in their face. i guess they have learnt never to correct the english customers. haha. just let them do whatever they like.

i have noticed that about all this ethnic food being sold in uk, esp in london. they mix and match and just adulterate and add stuff that u dont associate with that dish.

that is why i am not surprised if one day an indian restaurant would serve curry and chips… if one had not allready done so. i can understand why some italian restaurants lament at how the british diner will add stuff to the pasta sauces and call it bolognaise, or puttanesce, which in the country of origin would never agree to it.  

I call myself a malaysian but even i am confused with the various names for the roti. i know it as roti blatha, but i have heard it called roti chenai, prata. are they mean all the same thing except for dialect difference?

added. 7pm. i went there again at about 5pm. i cooked a noodle dish with the fish balls and noodles and it was very nice. i bought another of those noodles at 50p after i chatted with a malaysian student who said he was here only 8days having just arrived to do his university degree which will take him 3yrs. he pays £100 a week for a room share with another student. i told him about the noodles as it is quite ideal. i told him he can use a stock cube to get the flavour. and then add whatever he wants like mince beef, or frozen cheap fish, or fish balls, veg etc. and that is a meal allready. he bought 3 packs. 

and i got the address of their shop. it is quite a long way away. chuang lee unit 4 meridientrading estate,28 lombard wal4l, london se7 7sw. nearest station is charlton station. or go to greenwich station and take bus472 or 486towards thamesmead centre and get off at peninsular park road. i think it is too far for me to go considering i only buy a few items. i will just have to wait next year when they come again to trafalgar square. 

I also got to see a chef doing a masterclass of roti chennai making. the dough was already prepared so we dont get to know how it is done. i guess we shall have to buy his cook book, but he demonstrated how to toss it. and then it is fried . alot of oil used. video  

Anyway afterwards i asked him why is there so many names for it? he said roti prata (or blatha) is a singapore invention. the original name is roti chennai, (or they spell it cennai,) from a place in india.

the spelling is all over the place, it is also spelt roti paratha, roti canai.

added.13.10.14 i just read in the metro newspaper today that chennai was formerly known as madras. so the name roti chennai must be new, i think roti prata, blatha, paratha, must be the original name. i know it as roti blatha, a corruption of prata and paratha i think. i wonder whether it exists in madras anymore. if it does maybe they call it a diffrent name.

added again. 14.10.14 found this …(from wikipedia)

‘Changes to the local name of cities in the indigenous languages is less common. However, a change in English may also be a reflection of changes in other Indian languages other than the specific local one. For example the change of Madras (Hindi मद्रास Madras) to Chennai (Hindi चेन्नई Chennai) was reflected in many of India’s languages, as well incidentally in English, while the Tamil endonym Chennai (சென்னை Chennai) had always been Chennai and remained unaffected by the change.’

so perhaps it is an old phrase and means ‘tamil bread’. south indians are the main people who settled in malaysia, and most south indians are tamils.

starting anew

london

I thought i will have to buy a rucksack to replace the one i lost. but i found a spare lying around. it was given to me by london underground.

It says ‘you’re better off by bike’. so it must be one of the boris bike publicity thing when the bikes first began operation. must be 2or 3 yrs ago.

don’t remember what was the occasion when it was given to me. it has a small pocket in front to keep small things so avoid rummaging in the depths of the main space. 

And i dug up a rain coat to replace the one i lost.

i found that along with the other raincoat in the park after prince william’s wedding( i have a commemoration mug dated 29april 2011) so this raincoat is that old. never been used since i found it.

there was no date when the raincoat was bought so not sure how old it is.

I found both of them lying around abandoned in st james park. This was when so many people came to london to see the wedding and left so many things in the park after they have been camping on it overnight.

it was a virgin marathon raincoat. when i wore it to a gay group walk, one of the guys there told me it was sold to people who have applied unsuccessfully to compete in the marathon. it was a sort of consolation price for not being able to run. that is interesting. i wonder if that might deter a person from wearing it, as it would mark them out to those in the know as being losers. wearing something that shows they did not run in the marathon at all… 

The london virgin ( is virgin still sponsoring it? maybe not anymore!googled it and found out it is renamed virgin money now)marathon has just finished a few weeks ago. one chap died after finishing. so it is quite dangerous thing to do.

i knew this knapsack  would come in useful one day, even if it took 3yrs to come to its own. haha. the raincoat took 3yrs too so it must be about the time of the boris bikes.

which surprised me somewhat. i never knew i had it for so long. i was using the other raincoat all that time.

i thought i will have to buy a swimsuit to replace the one i lost, but i found one that i did not realise is a swim wear . i have been using it like it was  a spare pair of shorts , and lucky for me the swim centre allows people to wear shorts to swim ;

unlike in malaysia where they insist u must have speedo style swim wear. shorts are not allowed. i wonder why?  maybe they dont want people using their daily shorts  that they use and wear when they are out and about.

it being very warm, people who wear shorts in malaysia are labourers. when i was visiting there, i was the only one who is malaysian, who is not a labourer who was wearing shorts. The other group of people who wear shorts are the male european tourists.  

so maybe they realise anyone who is malaysian and wears shorts is likely to be a labourer who wears his shorts as workwear. they  dont want to encourage riff raff. that is my guess for them imposing this blanket ban on shorts in the swimming pool.

here in uk, there are no such restrictive rules. people can and do wear any style of swim wear in the pool.

and i found a spare pair of swim goggles too. so it looks like i am hardly inconvenienced at all at the loss of that knapsack which i left at the bus stop. 

I was browsing in the sainsburys this evening, looking for food reductions.

it being the bank holiday bargains may be had. i got 2loaves of organic wholemeal bread 800mg for 29p each. and rump steak 300mg reduced from £3.47 to 89p. there was a lady who bought all of them , she was standing over the sales assistant whilst it was being stamped with the reduced tickets, and when i approach she said  all the packs stacked up on the trolley were hers. sigh. but luckily she missed this one. haha or rather she might not like the look of it. it was two strips of meat instead of one whole slab.

it was just the right one for me as i was kind of craving a good rump steak. this was because the other day i read a newspaper article talking about the angus steak house in london and saying how puzzling  why they are still so profitable and in business when they are just not good at all.

one of the critics was a owner of a upmarket steak restaurant and he said the beef he ordered was inedible.

i really wonder… it shows u must not get a rival to be the critic. he is not likely to praise the beef right?

in the tripadviser, the angus steak house got praise from the customers so they cannot be all that bad.

It is pricey though, £15 for a steak.(that was the price for a rump steak in their website) and nothing else. side dishes, gravy, etc are extra.

added.23.4.14 found the article . read it here. they were charged more because they ordered sirloin.

I think rump steak is a really good steak and is my preferred choice to sirloin or fillet. 

 

but really u can eat the steak with nothing else. Steak is that good, which is what i did when i had the steak. I think to douse it in gravy is a sin. It is no way to treat a steak. 

steak is so easy to cook, a fool can cook it. so it stands to reason that no one can make it bad.

just tell them u want it medium rare… and hope they do know what medium rare is … haha. though I find if ever a restaurant make a hash of it is to overcook it. it is quite easy to do it in a busy restaurant with the chef rushing to fulfill orders.

i like if the middle is still just slightly red, but not oozing with blood. if u cook it at home, u can always cut it through with a knife to see whether it is just right. i had it with a bit of english mustard and spring onions. heavenly. 

The sainsburys tonight were selling off vegetables for 20p. mainly precut salads, which i was not interested in. though i did buy a large bag of satsumas, for 20p from £2.

i have found i can defragment more finely , and this time the computer is doing it by prioritising files. not sure what that means but it sure is taking a long time. almost 2hrs it says. it is still doing it now, about 1hr more to go. it is only 60% done.

Hang on, i just checked and it is done. so it was really not 2hrs after all. it says the duration was about 1hr 30mins. ah well, it is prioritised now.