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Tuesday, September 14, 2021

Gallimaufry#9

Just a bunch of random photos and thoughts from my corner of the world.


Ais Kacang
Ais Kacang aka Air Batu Campur (ABC)    a Malaysian dessert literally translated from Malay as "bean ice". The icy dessert is made of shaved ice with a serving of red beans, sweet corn, grass jelly, roasted peanuts and cubes of agar-agar as common ingredients. A final topping of evaporated milk, condensed milk or coconut milk is drizzled over the mountain of ice along with your choice of red rose syrup or sarsi syrup or both!  Yumm! So wickedly delish and refreshing on a hot day! Traditionally, a hand-cranked contraption (top left corner) was used to shave the ice. These days, the ice shavers are motorised.

A mural of a typical kampong (village) scene of villagers enjoying their ice kacang.
Back in those days, the ice kacang vendor pedaled his tricycle cart and roved in villages and suburbs.

The mural above brings back so many happy memories of my childhood when an ice kacang treat after a game of Hopscotch was the highlight of our lives. The ice kacang man would park his cart at the playground in our neck of the woods and his presence attracted all the kids in the neighbourhood like a magnet!
Growing up, when we weren't in school, we spent half the time outside, playing games like Jump-Rope, Tag, Simon Says, Blindman's Buff, etc. under our hot Malaysian sun. Haha, sometimes we would lose track of time and when we weren't home by dinner time, some angry mom would come looking for her kids, waving her rotan (cane)! And we would all scatter home like scared rabbits!
Yep, my sisters and I did get the occasional good ol' fashioned ass-whooping!


Messages of gratitude to our frontliners.

These photos were taken at my vaccination center.

Skywatch from my balcony

From our condo's community vegetable patch
I never knew that eggplant flowers were so pretty!

Leaf cutter ants
Dinner   Thai sweet and sour fish
Recipe   https://friedchillies.com/what-to-cook/asian/thai-style-sweet-sour-fish/

Ever seen a snail on top of a papaya tree?!

A random thought ...

ABBA is back!

Can you believe it has been 40 years since? 

It's like they never left.

I cried tears of joy.

What a gift in these troubling times!
My Corner of the World

63 comments:

  1. Have a beautiful day my friend. Many blessings.

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  2. You were obviously a bit of a naughty child Veronica. Now I never ever got a butt whopping! I was always a very truthful little boy. There's very little playing outdoors until it's too dark to see nowadays. Kids just play indoors on their infernal machines.

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  3. What is your lens model?:))) Perfect macro photos:)

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  4. Dearest Veronica,
    The deep fried Thai style fish reminds us of the Gurami style fish we ate in Wonosobo, Java Tengah, when living and working there!
    LOVE your photos with the Leaf Cutter Ants; excellent.
    Hugs,
    Mariette

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  5. Hi Veronica! You have a wonderful selection of photos today. Love the leaf cutter ants, fantastic picture. And so much yummy food, I love seeing what other people eat! And the sketching pics are gorgeous! Have a great week, take care, hugs, Valerie

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  6. Your photos are so beautiful, Veronica. I love the skywatch.

    Happy Tuesday!

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  7. Lovely collection of photos. I love the cute mural and your beautiful flowers. The sticky notes are so sweet, I am thankful for all the healthcare/frontline workers during Covid. The male looks delicious. The ant images are amazing, so clear. Take care, enjoy your day! Have a happy week ahead.

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  8. As an animal lover I like a lot the photos with the critters (and also the others). I have ants in my garden but I never disturb them.
    Have a good week ahead.

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  9. Your ant photos are amazing and I really like that pretty mural!

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  10. Love all the shots. Such fun and then there's ABBA. Excellent.

    Have a fabulous day. ♥

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  11. ...you should rent seat on your balcony for sunset, I would come!

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  12. Beautiful shots Veronica, I love them.

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  13. Wow; that skywatch from your balcony photo is just amazing!

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  14. Lots of interesting natural history here, Veronica. Thanks for including these interesting pictures.

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  15. What a nice post:) thanks for your sharing...

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  16. That skywatch pic is stunning. Lovely all the post it notes. What a time weare living in!! And yes, I think a lot of people are thrilled ABBA is back. #SaturdayCritters

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  17. Nice photos and what an interesting bug leaf cutter... Abba wow and they are making a new album.

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  18. Those ants are so BIG! You have a spectacular view from your balcony. And you have scrumptious foods where you live.

    I hope you are having good September days.

    ~Sheri

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  19. Beautiful shots, all of them, and I enjoyed reading that bit about your childhood memories and the ice kacang man.
    Love the view from your balcony shot. Amazing sky.

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  20. Hi Veronia, thank you for this great post. I have enjoyed it so much!

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  21. Sounds like you had some fun with the shaved ice as a child.

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  22. I really hope to be able to go and experience the Abba show in london 2022. They are so cool!!
    I like the fish recipe but I probably prefer to cook with fillets, I don´t like when the food stares at me ;)


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  23. Love these pictures! The mural is beautiful!
    xoxo
    Lovely
    www.mynameislovely.com

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  24. I love your random photos. Perhaps I will do that one week.

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  25. i really enjoy seeing murals that are well done like this one. it is so interesting that people were shaking hands and not wearing masks...it's funny the things you notice now, during the pandemic!!

    you have a GREAT view from your balcony!!

    the gratitude wall at your vaccination center is awesome, i wish we had one where i was vaccinated. i am happy to know you are vaccinated, i am sure that and receiving the antibodies really helped me. it was no walk in the park but i know it could have been so much worse!! i just read of 3 anti-vaccine people dying, that is so sad, perhaps educating people of the science better would help!! have a great day!!

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  26. That ice cacang treat sounds enticing.
    When I was young we also played all day with the neighbor kids and yep got an ass whooping every now and then but it didn't hurt as much as we let on.

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  27. All the images are very interesting, but "Thai sweet and sour fish" completely charmed me! :))

    Have a fine week, dear Veronica!

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  28. Amazing colours in the sunset pic. Great photos.
    The fish looks so tasty.

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  29. What a beautiful pink flower! It is a hibiscus, isn't it? I also like the blue and orange colours of the sunset.
    I have heard about icy dessert with rice or wheat but not of red beans :-) ... Looks delicious. I would like to taste it. Nice mural!
    It's easy to see many people are so happy to get the vaccine in your country. Those messages mean they're aware of nursers and doctors' hard word. That's great!

    Enjoy the rest of the week, Veronica :-)

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  30. You are an amazing photographer, these ant photos just blew me away! I don't know how you did it. Thanks for the abba new songs, Abba RULES!!!

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  31. what a nice post you created. Everything from ants to ABBA. Like you I really loved the news. And really love the two songs that are released.
    We need good news these days and this is one of them.

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  32. The shaved ice dessert looks very interesting!
    Beautiful sunset.

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  33. I didn't know ABBA was back, how cool is that?
    That dessert looks interesting. I don't think we have anything like that here.

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  34. Yes, my eyes went all watery when I saw the new songs from ABBA. I watched all the video clips on Youtube, the songs, the documentaries. Amazing that after 40 years, they are making a comeback.

    Love that ais kacang mural. It's so Malaysian, so appropriate for Malaysia Day, today -16th September. Happy Malaysia Day!

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  35. Fun post. My brother sat in ants, 30 years later me.
    And when you enter our condo, the first thing you´ll find is a carpet - hopscotch :-)
    Oh, and I love ABBA!

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  36. Nice series of photos. Your ant photos are stunning! Thanks for sharing and have a nice day.

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  37. Gran y variado post.Lindo mural.
    Buen jueves.
    Un abrazo.

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  38. Ais Kacang sounds very intriguing. I would love to taste that. Love the mural and reading about your memories. I was wondering what those colourful notes are in your collage! Wonderful photos!

    -Soma

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  39. Great blog, good photos. I love the photos of the ants and the moon cakes. I have to do them!
    Greetings

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  40. Veronica - thanks so much for your recent visit to my blog! I liked that picture of the ants until you wrote they are leaf-cutter ants ... they were responsible back in the day for eating all of my landscaping in Texas! Food in other countries from our own can be so different -- I am struggling with the idea of sweet corn and beans in a dessert :-) And who doesn't love Abba? Yay!

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  41. Oh my gosh that fish looks soooo good! Wish I had it for dinner tonight. I always love your gallimaufary! The mural and the games you describe sound much like my childhood (long before yours);but we didn't have the guy with the yummy treats in my small town.

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  42. what a beautiful series of photos and the one of the ants I thought was super nice too. They are hard workers and never sit still. And the Malaysian dessert looks delicious. And snails crawl into everything and then also into a papaya but house snails are useful because they eat dead material and further all the photos are very beautiful. Also thanks for visiting 1 of my websites. Wish you a beautiful new week. Lg, Tine

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  43. wonderful close-ups of the little ants - fascinating

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  44. Great shots - I especially love the ants! Such sharp macro images.
    Thanks for sharing at https://image-in-ing.blogspot.com/2021/09/in-abstract.html

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  45. Always interesting, I enjoyed your random photos very much. Thank you :)

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  46. Brilliant photos good quality too that food looked interesting :-)

    Have a capturetastic week 👍

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  47. You have a beautiful view from your balcony, and that sky is amazing.

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  48. Those ants are amazing and we just love that mural!

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  49. Thank you for the lovely auditions and images.
    Extraordinary details. Congratulation, Veronica!
    Happy WW!

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  50. Lovely to see all of these photographs.
    Your sweet and sour fish looks tasty.
    Isn't it amazing that ABBA are back :)

    All the best Jan

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  51. Long live Abba. May they sing forever.

    I have heard of this bean ice somewhere, maybe here in an earlier post? It sounds different...interesting. Would love to try it. When I lived in Panama, they poured sweetened condensed milk on top of their shaved ice. So good.

    Your photographs are sensational. Love how you can make ants look photogenic!! They are interesting little creatures, I guess. Beautiful, clear details.

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  52. What a fabulous series of randomness! Love the post-its.

    Thanks for sharing your link at My Corner of the World this week!

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  53. Ohhh, what a view, from your condo!!!!!!! LOVE it!

    And your Bean Ice Cart memories, are like children's memories, of the the same sort of thing, 'Shaved Ice'carts... And 'Ice Cream Man' trucks, in my Country. -smile-

    The 'Ice Cream Man' truck would go around neighborhoods, playing a tinkling tune, to let the children know, he was coming.

    😊 🍁 😊 🎃

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  54. What an interesting post! Thanks for sharing....

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  55. The Moon Cake Festival is a great time to enjoy traditional Chinese pastries.

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