Instant Noodle with Ingredients from Neighbourhood Mini Mart

I was staying on my own during weekdays. Normally, kopitiam was my choice for meals. Last Wednesday (public holiday), I felt that I needed more fresh vegetables in my diet. So after my breakfast (very late breakfast, hahaha, almost 10am) at kopitiam, I went to the Econsave to buy vegetables, I was lazy to go supermarket, if possible, I settled all my grocery shopping at the place near me. There are multiple mini marts near my place, but Econsave was the place with the most vegetables, other than Kedai Aceh. But I felt that sometimes Kedai Aceh was not that cheap.

Anyway, I bought tomatoes, eggplant and cucumber. I was worry at first whether I could finish it or not. Well, I finished all within 2 days with 2 dinners. When I as younger, after STPM, I worked temporarily in Econsave Supermarket (the big one, not the mini one) as cashier, on weekdays, around 6pm (after work for many people), there'll be a lot of people buying vegetables in very small quantity, example, 2 onions, 1 garlic, 1 bunch of green onion, 1 bunch of kangkung, etc. The total bill would be less than RM5. I think sometimes less than RM2. It was the time where one could get a huge big bunch of kangkung for RM1. Now the quantity is way smaller. 

Normally I didn't buy all this vegetables, the most I would buy fruits. So I have no idea the price in Econsave is cheap or not. Nowadays, fruits are not cheap anymore. Last weekend, since my nephew stayed with us over the weekend, I bought a packet of grapes, one small packet of cherries, one packet of frozen blueberries and 20 oranges (this is for praying), and the total cost was around RM65. I am grateful that these mini marts in Malaysia carried the fresh vegetables and fruits. I think (my opinion only) that Malaysia don't really have food desert, only problem is the affordability. I am not sure whether one could buy fresh vegetables using mykasih now or not, but 2025 cannot for sure.

Cucumber (timun hijau)

tomato

eggplant (terung pendek)

So for my dinner on Wednesday night, I had instant noodle with tomato, cucumber and eggplant. I bought Cintan Mi Springy Kenyal. I think it is new packaging, long time no buy Cintan.  

Cintan Mi (new packaging)

ingredients list

Like I said before, I don't really cook. So, I don't even have bowls to clean the vegetables, so I just utilized my cooking pot. And the only salt I have was in a small bottle, I think I bought that like 4 or 5 years ago. Well, salt won't expire, I sprayed a healthy amount of salt into the water for cleaning. 

cleaning in my one and only pot

salt from 4 or 5 years ago

After cleaned, I peeled the cucumber and eggplants and cut it into chunks. I didn't cut into thin slices, I felt that it's troublesome. For tomato, I just cut into 6 portions. The eggplant oxidized really fast, I think less than a minute, the eggplant started to change from white to yellowish already.

rubbing cucumber head and body (to remove bitter taste - the white thingy is responsible for the bitterness)

the eggplant oxidized fast

peeled and sliced

Then, I just put the instant noodle on the bottom part of the pot, then poured all the vegetables on top of the noodle, add water until slightly above the noodle, I plan to let the steam cooked the vegetables, well it works. Surprisingly, the eggplant tasted better than I thought. Actually I don't really like eggplant, but it tasted fine just by steaming and submersed in instant noodle powder soup.

simple 1 pot meal

On Thursday night, I intended to finish up all the ingredients, but I felt that I needed some protein, so I went to the 99 Speedmart to get tofu, however, I couldn't find white tofu, so instead I got frozen sotong. Well, this was the first time I bought frozen sotong. When I opened it, it smelled fishy. Anyway, I only used up like 4 rings. The rest still in my refrigerator. 

frozen sotong

frozen sotong

So for my Thursday dinner, I had Mamee Chef Tomyam flavour instant noodle. I put 4 rings of sotong on the bottom of the pot (I never defrosted it), then instant noodle on 2nd bottom layer, then all the vegetables on top. For this round, I didn't peel the eggplant, just cut into chunks. Add water until slightly above the noodle and boiled it. Another meal!

another 1 pot meal

Wednesday Dinner cost not including miscellaneous items

item	price (RM)
Cintan Mi 1 packet	0.95
Tomato	0.70
Cucumber	1.00
Eggplant	1.40
1 orange	2.00
total	6.05

For Thursday dinner, it is higher a bit.

item	price (RM)
Mamee Chef Tomyam 1 packet	1.75
Tomato	1.30
Cucumber	0.95
Eggplant	1.30
1 orange	2.00
Sotong	0.80
total	8.10

Well, I know instant noodle is not the healthiest meal around, but at least I compensated with vegetables!

Sweet Potato Planting

Around a year ago, a relative gave my mom many small sweet potatoes, it was given by her farmer neighbour due to it's irregular shape and small, it's not good looking enough for sale. Since the quantity was too big, it was distributed among family members. We cooked most of it, but some are too small, peeling the skin was too tedious, so I buried it in a pot. and after around five or six months, I harvested four small sweet potatoes. 

During harvesting, a small piece was chopped off, so I buried it back to the pot. And I have seen so many videos that sweet potatoes can be propagated from stem and leaves. So I took additional 2 cuttings from the plants and planted it. 

Last week, on first week of June, I "harvested" it again. Ok, this was all for experiment and fun. So, I just make sure I watered the plants, no additional efforts were being done. And I would pluck the leaves when It grew too much. I read somewhere that too many leaves could take the nutrients meant for the tubers.

sweet potato plant

Well, there were too many weeds. So I cleared it first.

cleared the weeds

After that, I pulled the plants. Surprisingly, two out of three plants didn't have any tuber. The one that grew from a chunk of tuber didn't have any sweet potato. 

the plant grew from sweet potato chunk

The one and only sweet potato I got was small and around the length of my finger. Hahaha. 

sweet potato tuber

sweet potato around the length of my finger

The harvest is very small, so I buried the tuber back and planted another two cuttings (one with leaves on it, another was the one with a chunk of sweet potato).

new planting

After around two weeks (13th June 2026), I went back to observe the growth. The one with chunk of sweet potatoes already grew new leaves. But the sweet potato haven't sprout yet. Will update in another six months i think, provided it is still alive then. 

after around 2 weeks

Have fun gardening!

Chic Cafe Klang • Botanic

On the Hari Raya Haji holiday on 27th May, I went out for dinner with a dear friend. We stayed near to each other, but we didn't go out together as often. We were busy. Since we both did not have any activity on that night, we decided to have dinner together. We planned to have dinner in Botanic Klang. There are a lot of restaurants in Botanic. 

We decided to go to Chic Cafe, after all it's the first one that came out from google search. Initially I thought that it's a western style cafe that served pasta, steaks, some local favourites, etc. We only realized it's a Japanese style cafe when we reached there. There are so many restaurants nearby that area, there's even a lok lok restaurant next to it. On the corner lot, there's a bak kut teh shop that was full of customers although it's not even 6pm. Very lively area. 

When we entered the cafe, the waiter told us that we can have free rice or noodle top-ups. LOL. Before we ordered, we saw what other tables were eating, and the portion is not that small. So we ordered a rice set (丼)  for sharing. Apart from carbohydrate, of course we needed some protein, we also got the karaage chicken (fried chicken). And a pot of peach + pear + apple fruit tea. 

rice set

The cutlery and dishes in the shop are so cute. Even the sauce that came with the fried chicken was served with a duck shaped dish. Since we were sharing the rice set, we ordered a six piece karaage chicken set. Kind of regret, I over estimated myself. Although the food was good, we had to rest for a while to finish all. We should just order the three piece chicken set. There're variety of sauces, but if we got the multi sauces set, it's more money spent, so we just ordered with one type of sauce. Well, the fried chicken is good enough without needing the sauce though. 

karaage chicken with sauce (the duck shaped dish is cute!)

The fruit tea pot was good too. The combination of peach, apple and pear was good. It's nice after eating a big bowl of rice and fried chickens. Hahaha!

peach tea + apple + pear pot

Me and my friend stayed for around 2 hours. The business was so good on that day, we saw that there are customers queuing outside, so we left. It's a good 2 hour get together with great food. 

Accessories (Chomel Jewelry)

I don't wear jewelry, but I like it. I get great satisfaction by looking at it. However, real precious metal jewelry, especially gold is very expensive. I only bought like three pieces before, and my mom gave me a bangle that I wore when I was a baby. Although some said that buying gold is investment, I couldn't justify buying gold jewelry and not wearing it. Might as well invest in gold account from banks. 

Anyway, thanks to online shopping platform, I found many cheap accessories, however, after watching some reports on the high percentage (much higher than allowable limit) of toxic chemicals found on cheap jewelries, I got cold feet. So, I started to look at cheaper precious metal, which is silver. Not sure how long silver can maintain the price, it's increasing like nobody business. Looking at the silver price trend, I actually buy more silver jewelry pieces. LOL! Before it increases until not affordable anymore.

Anyway, my latest purchase was a ring and bracelet from Chomel. It's a Singaporean company from the website introduction. I wondered where it's manufactured though, maybe in China or somewhere in South East Asia. 

rose gold plated ring with cubic zirconia stones

rose gold plated bracelet with cubic zirconia stones

I studied materials engineering for my degree and majority of the courses were metallurgy (steel) related. I was very fascinated with the metals, was even thinking to work in steel mill before I graduated, nowadays, I am more interested on precious metals. I guess the main metal for the ring and bracelet is silver and then coated with rose gold. The description on the metal is 18k rose gold, which is an alloy of gold and copper. Given the colour of the ring, I think the copper percentage is not so low though. 

No matter what the metal is, both the ring and bracelet are very good looking. The surface finishing is smooth and I didn't feel any kinky corner. I only wore it once though. Now it's inside my drawer. 

the invoice

inflated plastic to protect the items

the items came with paper bag and paper box

velvet bag

cloth to clean the jewelry

Anyway, I think one of the important parts of a bracelet is the clasp, it's quite sturdy, not bad. 

clasp of the bracelet

I was not exposed to all these items when I was growing up. I like to eat, however, as I aged, not a wise decision to eat like I was in my 20s. All these accessories are part of my emotional outlet after food. Ahh, so beautiful!

Dreame D20 Ultra Robot Vacuum & Mop - Maintenance & Cleaning

I had a medical scare last year and I was really tired all the time. Still, I couldn't stand too dirty floor and I still did all the cleaning jobs at home. I spent a lot of time and finally I surrendered and got a robot that could vacuum and mop. I saw the robot from a youtuber review. It sounds easy, hands free! 

However, after I did get it. I found out that I still had to do some basic maintenance on this, ergo cleaning. Well, I ran the robot everyday from Monday to Friday, on Saturday, I cleaned the parts. Let it rests on Sunday. On the robot maintenance videos, their robot parts were so clean! Mine were much dirtier than that. So I took it out, remove the dust, dirt and cleaned.

Below are the items that need regular cleaning, or else it will accumulate. And I doubted it could still do the job with the dirty parts.

vacuum box? before the dirt is sucked to the dust bag

side brush

roller

roller after thread being rolled into it and worn it out

another part that needed to be cleaned

base part - dirty water accumulated there

dock base parts that needed cleaning

dock base after cleaning

dock base after cleaning

Apart from the cleaning, some parts also need regular replacement. Yes, not only the dust bag. I didn't realize that before I got it. The side brush, roller, mop pad, HEPA filter, etc. And the genuine parts on Dreame are not cheap.

So I searched online and those dupes were much affordable than the genuine parts. 

Number 1 item: dust bag. Actually both are similar looking, but for the plastic connector, the dupe one is more flimsy compared to the genuine one, However, for the price (~80% cheaper), it's ok as long as it works. This is consumable parts, for me, don't need to use too high grade parts. 

left: dupe, right: genuine original

genuine dust bag connector

dupe dust bag connector

Number 2 item: roller. The genuine one is around RM79. And the dupe is around RM9 from some China shop in Lazada. The materials feel different, but it's still ok. My original roller also get caught up with thread and worn until a very visible dent could be found. After I replaced with this dupe part, still working. And there's a 3 year old child in my house, toys, etc are scattered around, not long after, this dupe roller also got some wear and tear marks. Nevermind, dupe is cheaper, can change regularly. 

left: genuine roller, right: new dupe roller

both dupe and genuine has some connecting end shape

dupe roller, after 1 month use

Number 3 item: side brush, it's around RM79 for 2 in Dreame offical store. I did try to get the dupes, however, I couldn't find the brush for this exact model, most description is for model with like one character different, I did ask the customer service, and the person mentioned it's compatible. I bought one and sad to say, it's not, the connecting part shape is different. I bought from official store after that, because my robot keep coming up with error "side brush wrapped", I thought it's the side brush issue and changed it. However, not working and I finally contacted the service center. Then, I sent the robot to the service center to get it fixed. It's the motor issue. Customer service for Dreame was actually very decent, they did informed that they could arrange courier to get it from me if I still had the box, I didn't, so I sent it personally to Bukit Raja. And after repaired, they agreed to send it to me by courier. I got it back safe and sound, and I kept the box, just in case, mana tau!

Dreame D20 Ultra error code: The side brush wrapped

I already got the dupe mop map, hepa filter too. But I haven't replace it yet. Hope it works! My friend told me cannot simply use other detergent, I think I will get the genuine detergent after the current bottle finish. Conclusion, I think getting this is a really good investment, although I still have to spend time cleaning it on weekend, at least, for five days a week, only job is just to add clean water and pour the dirty water out. And if not satisfy with the cleaning job, just request the robot to re-do the cleaning, no one will complain to you. Hahah!