Another Sunday and another trip to Emart…and this is what we bought:

A kilo of langsat for RM3

This is what a wild durian look like when it is opened up:

And this is a tampoi “exposed”…..and “naked”.

Play around with some of these fruits and you can get interesting “fruity” art!

It’s so frustrating. Streamyx connection in my house has been down since about yesterday. I contacted Streamyx’s hotline today and went through a series of troubleshooting procedures with them via telephone without any luck. They promised to send a technician to my house within 2-3 business days. What the heck!

The Streamyx downtime proved costly for me. I had been planning to bid for an eBay auction closing at about 9.20 am yesterday. The auction was for a huge collection of stamps, coins and sports collectibles weighing about 30 kilos. I had intended to put in a bid of $1,000 for the item 30-40 seconds before its closing but I was unable to do so due to the Streamyx downtime. I later found out that someone won the item for less than $600. Had I been able to place my bid, I would have won that item.

Being unable to surf the Internet, my family and I spent hours shopping yesterday. We first had lunch at Cheng Kee Chicken Rice at Krokop 10. As usual, the place was packed. Try out the steamed tofu…it’s nice. It seems that a lot of chicken rice outlets in Miri are doing a roaring business.

After our lunch, we walked over to the nearby Krokop market where we bought a kilogram of the local olives. I have a soft spot for these olives since young. You just soak these olives in warm water and when they have softened, you can either add some salt or black soya sauce and sugar. If you manage to buy the good quality ones, they taste so yummy!

We then dropped by Ng Sian Hap Pottery where we bought 4 flower pots and some groceries. My wife decided to buy some orchid plants to add to her collection of flowers and plants so we drove to LG Nursery situated just before the Lutong Bridge as you drive from town to Lutong.

LG Nursery has a good variety of flowers and plants. We had a great time looking around the place and what made it even more pleasant was the friendliness of the lady towkay or “towkay neo” and her staff. We ended up buying 2 orchid plants,and 2 other plants plus 2 kilograms of mangoes. One of the plants that we bought have leaves that look like butterflies.I love mangoes!

This looks weird!

This reminds me of a certain part of the male anatomy, haha!

Another new addition to my wife's plant collection

Mangolicious!

Emart was our final destination before we headed home. At the tamu there, we bought another orchid plant and two soursops (locally known as durian belanda). In Hokkien, we call the soursop “ang mo durian” meaning Caucasian durians…..I think it’s probably because of the white flesh of the fruit. By the way, sousop is now known as a fruit with amazing health benefits. Its botanical name is Annonaceae muricata or graviala.

The third orchid plant bought by my wife

Soursop (aka ang mo durian aka graviala)

I am now writing this inside Double Star Restaurant in Pelita Commercial Centre as the place has WIFI access. I really hope Streamyx will send a technician to my house soonest and restore my internet connection. It’s such a pain in the ass to have no access to the internet at home.