Nivea Body Lotion

Recently I finished a bottle of Nivea Body Milk. And I do have a standby, and when arranged side by side, I noticed that the packaging is a bit different. The "intensive moisture body mils (48h)" still the same, but the vitamin E and avocado oil sequence is changed. 

Nivea Body Milk (left is finished, right is newer)

The most important is behind of the bottle, the newer one is 20ml lesser. Shrinkflation here. I bought these for more than 10 years I think, last time I could buy 2 bottles for RM30 in Guardian Pharmacy. Now, normally one bottle would be above RM20. Inflation and shrinkflation, Haiz!

the older is 400ml, the newer is 380ml

packaging behind the older version

The behind of the newer version is cleaner, not too busy. 

packaging on newer version

It's still made in Thailand though, and going through the ingredients list, still the same. And for the newer version, there's an asterisk and mentioned that "test on 33 volunteers by Skin Investigation and Technology, October 2017". I think this is to say I don't use animal testing, maybe?

older version ingredients

newer version ingredients

I had this bad habit of stocking up. Due to the packaging is different, I somehow checked the expiry date for the older bottle, LOL, it expired on 2024, I think I bought too much few years ago. Luckily, my skin can tolerate this. 

expired on 2024, and only finished on March 2026

I think will going to use Nivea Body Lotion for years to come. Unless there's another affordable and ok on my skin body lotion comes out. 

Mushroom Seapro 4 in 1 in Instant Noodle

I am quite picky on fish balls, I don't really take fish balls during the steamboat buffets because normally the fish balls in the buffet were made mostly with wheat? Of course those higher price range buffet provides actual "fish" fish balls, however, most were not really fishy fish balls. I actually spitted out the fish ball I have eaten in a barbeque shop in Tianjin, China, it was so soft, not the hard type we normally have in Malaysia. Anyway, my friends were ok with the soft fish balls, so I just gave all my fish balls to my friend. 

Anyway, today not talking about fish balls, but rather fish produce. Normally, my mom would buy this "Mushroom" brand for fish balls. It's quite good actually. And this year Lunar New Year snack, for the fried crab stick, my mom read in Facebook that "Mushroom" crab stick tasted better than other brands. So, she asked me to search for this in supermarket. Well, for the sake of comparing, I bought few packets of crab stick from "Mushroom", another 1 pack from another brand. In the frozen food shelves, for crabstick, only 2 brands are made in Malaysia, others are cheaper and Made in China. I felt for the Malaysian producers, China brands are everywhere and cheaper. Conclusion, the "Mushroom" crabstick is easier to make this snacks, it is easier to be separated by hand, for the other brand, we have to use a knife to cut it into slices. 

fried crab stick snacks

I saw this Seapro 4 in 1 (Mushroom) when I was in 99 Mart to buy bread for next morning breakfast. When I saw it, I was like, long time no eat fish balls, I don't know what I was thinking, the packaging clearly showed non fish ball items. I bought one. 

Seapro 4 in 1 (厨房四宝)

Well, finally I used this for my plain instant noodle. 

4 types of seafood processed food

I has one packet of Mamee vegetarian flavour instant noodle left that is going to expire soon. So I decided to finish this. 

Mamee vegetarian instant noodle

I defeated the purpose of the vegetarian themed instant noodle. I add the seafood processed items. Hahaha! The Seapro 4 in 1 is for steamboat. So I just added few pieces of the items into the pot and add the instant noodle with the flavouring directly, and boiled it. 

Other than fish balls, I am not really a fan of fish cakes or crabstick, to my surprise, this combination is quite nice, especially the round one with egg at the center. And the brown long fish cake is also not bad, initially i worried that it would be too oily. So, I had instant noodle, orange and instant oat for dinner. The downside is I didn't have vegetables, I hope that the orange make up for the lack of fiber. 

my dinner

Happy eating!

Gardenage Kota Kemuning

Happy Lunar New Year! It's coming to an end though. My friends were quite busy at the start of the new year, so we waited until 12th day to meet up. This time around, we choose a cafe named Gardenage in Kota Kemuning, it's the first for me, while my friends went there before. All mentioned the place environment was very good. 

As per the restaurant name, it is so green. The front part of the restaurant was filled with plants, there's a hanging wisteria like plant (albeit it is green), I couldn't resist the urge to touch it to know whether it's a fake plant or not, well, it feels like true leaves. The plants are so beautiful.

The environment inside the restaurant is very cozy too. We had our lunch besides an aquarium. So calming. 

inside the restaurant

I ordered salted egg pasta, my friend got spaghetti and risotto. All tasted good. I saw kombucha in the menu too, I ordered kombucha pink guava.  

food we ordered

Below is the salted egg pasta with karaage. I like karaage, although it's difficult to get fried chicken that is not tasty in Malaysia, karaage type still one of my favourites. 

salted egg pasta with karaage

I have wanted to try kombucha for a long time. However, not many restaurants carried this and when it's available, normally it's for dinner. I would have sleepless night if I drink tea at night. Kombucha is still tea after all, although it's fermented. Well, I couldn't taste the tea though, not a bad drink, but not so like tea as I had imagined. 

kombucha with pink guava

Well, I could sleep after this kombucha drink at noon, ok, I think the caffeine is fermented away? Maybe, I don't know. Only one of us had caffeine drink. Not so young anymore, cannot drink caffeinated drinks like we are in our 20s. 

latte art

My and my friends had a very nice chats, although we stayed near to each other. With own commitments, it's difficult to meet up. I really appreciate all the meet ups. 

Reading as a hobby

I am a newspaper reader until now, although my family don't buy physical newspaper anymore, I still subscribed (paid) to a Malaysian newspaper online. However, I only read during weekend or holidays nowadays, age caught up with me already, in my 20s to 30s, I could still read before I sleep during workdays. Now, I could even fall asleep while watching youtube on workday night.

When I was small, I stayed in a small town and the local book stores only had school related books, revision books, dictionaries and somehow cookbooks. My primary to secondary school leisure books were mostly from the book rental stores, I read mainly Taiwanese / Hong Kong romance, wuxia (武侠) and science fiction. You have to become a member of the book rental store, then for every book you rent, you have to pay an amount from 50 cents to RM2. 

Of course, there's the school library, but we were only allowed to borrow one book per week, I was a librarian during primary school, so I could borrow three books per week. Most of the books were educational one, the more "interesting" one was not there in school. Anyway, I read a lot of books from the library too, in school, the teacher would dictate what books to read that particular week, normally it would be a rotation, one week Chinese book, the second week Malay book, third week English book and returned to Chinese book on fourth week. 

Normally, the book rental store had racks of books, mostly in Chinese for the novels, some even had manga in Malay. Those that charged 50 cents are mainly older titles and very tattered. I even bought some for less than RM1 when the book stores are clearing out some torn old books. 

I spent a major chunk of my pocket money on the books. I started to read romance when I was in standard five or six, starting with 瓊瑤, that time, TV station started to broadcast Taiwanese dramas from the novelist 瓊瑤. And me and my neighbour found out that the books were available in rental book store, we pooled money and get a membership in a rental book store. And started to read novels. It opened my eyes to not just romance, I was even exposed to wuxia and science fiction. I read a lot of novels from Taiwanese writers, I think I even finished reading all novels written by 瓊瑤. Others are 张小娴, 席绢, 于晴, 楼雨晴, 古灵, 典心, 寄秋, 凌淑芬 and etc. I particularly like 席绢, I think her novel is the first that talk about going back to the past, I really admired her imagination. 

Other romance novelists that I read were from Hong Kong, 亦舒, 梁凤仪 and 岑凯伦. 岑凯伦 is a really productive writer, his/her novels could fill a huge book rack. I read in a forum somewhere that mentioned 岑凯伦 is a collective of novelists because the style was a bit inconsistent. I am not really a fan of 亦舒, 梁凤仪 though.

I feel that I am a very rational person from young. I know that I am not the heroine type in life, I am more like the sidekick. And I couldn't understand the way the second lead behaved in the novel. As I grew older, I found 瓊瑤 earlier novels to be very irrational and unethical too. Now many people quote from 瓊瑤's novel as a form of sarcasm. Like 'you only lost your legs, but she lost the love of her life!', people defended the third party, so horrible!

From the rental book store, I able to explore the wuxia genre too. 金庸, 古龙, 梁羽生 and 温瑞安 were the big four in wuxia genre. I read more on 金庸 and 古龙. For 金庸, I like "鹿鼎记" the most. Other than that, I also got hooked on science fiction series 卫斯理 from 倪匡. My imagination about aliens and galaxy came from 卫斯理. Most of the books from this series showed that it's well read (very tattered). One book around 50 cents to RM1 and I could finished in half day. I really spent a lot on rental books. For context, my monthly allowance during secondary school was RM50. I didn't go to canteen during recess. My school session was half day though. Just eating lunch at home. 

I don't really rent manga though. That's the job of my younger brother. He used his allowances to rent manga and I read the shonen manga that he rent. My favourite is "Hikaru no go ヒカルの碁". However, I also pooled money with my friends to rent shojo manga "Oke no Monsho 王家の紋章", I learnt a lot of Egypt history from this manga, LOL! This manga was very popular among us girls. I once came upon a whole series of "Hikaru no go" in a book store and it's around few hundred Ringgit. I was still studying that time and on a tight budget, so I didn't buy it, still sad thinking about it nowadays. 

I only started to seriously read English books around Form 3 in secondary school. I got the English books from the school or state library, but the books were mostly old titles, like Enid Blyton, considered quite tame compared to the Chinese books I read. I also read serious titles in Malay in secondary school, I read "tulang-tulang berserakan" by Usman Awang in Form 2 I think, it made me very upset. Maybe I was still too young then. 

I stopped going to Rental book store since university days. In university, there're so many libraries. I was in University of Malaysia. I normally frequented my own faculty's library only. However, only engineering related titles were available there, other genres not much. If I wanted to read novels, I would go to the main library. There're also Chinese novels in some other faculty's library, but I never ventured there. One of my university mates told me she found the libraries were the most important asset in the university, she was amazing! She studied economy and took ACCA part time, she got all the references and books for ACCA from the library and studied by her own. By the time she graduated in economy, she also got the certification for ACCA. I admired her so much for this, such determination. 

Back to the topic, nowadays for novels, mainly I read the China web novel series. There are so many genres there. I only read paper based books on non-fiction. I heard the book rental shop I frequented in my younger days was closed. It couldn't survive, one could find novels, manga online for "free" now. It's kind of sad. I once dreamed of opening of a cafe cum book rental shop after I retire. Well life goes on, happy reading everyone!

Citric Acid to Clean Kettle

I followed a Japanese blogger lately. And she cleaned stainless steel items with Citric Acid, it looks so amazing. So I bought one bottle of Citric Acid powder. It's a 500g bottle. First thing first, initially I thought it will smell like vinegar, it is not, it's odourless. Well, a good material property. 

citric acid powder

instruction of usage

Previously, I cleaned my electric kettle by scrubbing. I only did that when I feel like it. I didn't clean my kettle for sometime, and the water stain is building up. So here comes the citric acid. 

stained electric kettle

I boiled full kettle of water and add 2 table spoons of the citric acid powder. There's no bubbles forming. The instruction mentions 30 minutes. After 20 minutes, i checked and noticed the kettle's bottom is already cleaned. So, I removed the water. 

Well, The result is positive. Although some stains still visible, overall it's much cleaner than before. Yes, Citric Acid is useful cleaning agent. 

after 20 minutes of soaking