escapades of the elusive kat

Look at this beauty of a Jewel Orchid! It's new!


The fake pumpkins (the plant is actually a species of eggplant, but the inedible fruits look like pumpkins) have turned orange waaaaayyyyyy earlier than the usual September-November. There's still some green, so maybe... it'll work out? With the last year's fruits, it took a long time for the fruits to dry up, shrivel and fall off, but still keeping the distinct orange color.

Oh and the McD's over here now have a Pokémon crossover. The bag box has a tail too! LOL


The burger itself? Well, they used sliced beef (instead of the burger patty) and for the bread it's actually a sticky rice patty thing. So shall I rename it as a rice burger? And the pie, it's an Apple Custard pie. It's just the regular apple pie with a slab of custard. I prefer the original. And actually, I never liked McD's anyway, except for their pancakes. Oh, and for this Pokémon crossover they have a chocolate banana McFlurry thing. I didn't get that as I didn't want it to melt, so one of these days, I will try that too.


Random photo dump of streets when I went strolling around on Sunday. I took a bus to get to the area I wanted to go, but I took a bus with a different route so it stopped a little away from where I really wanted to go, so I had to find my way back to the main street. I'm glad it was still daylight as I would never walk through unlit alleys at night.


That monster of a golden pineapple building in the far end LOL! You can see it everywhere!


Another silly observation is, the sign and the arrows says "pedestrian way" but I have no idea where it leads to LOL

Did a bit of gardening this morning so I just thought to put it on record for my own future reference.

My first terrarium. Still looking good. The red pagoda is growing like crazy. I've already cut the top off as it was squishing into the glass, but no sooner had I cut the top off, had it started sprouting new leaves at the cut site. It's a tad scary, really!


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It's the week before Chinese New Year. Usually, there are flower markets right about this time, and everyone goes to the flower market to "walk the flower market" (行花市).

With the COVID-19 situation, since flower markets will attract A LOT of people, the government in Macau (and in Hong Kong, that I hear) has decided to cancel the flower markets this year.

So... what happened now is... each florist (and non-florist) is hosting their own flower market!

The most popular flower for the Chinese New Year would be the Orchid. I'm trying to think of the Chinese name and if it links up to anything, but I can't think of anything that pops to my mind. And since I'm lazy, here's a handy website explaining each and everything. I wanted to get a very simple orchid that my Sis got last week, so after lunch today, we made a grand tour of visiting all the florists we know of (and those we don't know of).

About my comment above, "each florist and non-florist" is actually a hilarious truth. Let me explain!

So there are the regular florists and/or flower shops/stores/stalls...


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Oooh! The renovation guy remembered! He sent his minions to our place this morning and they finished my last wall as per my request.


However, it did not escape my eye that of those 2 shelves, he hung one by more or less 0.5cm higher than the other, so it's not entirely even. I mean, I thought they'd be able to do their own calculations and all that, but huh. But it's at a good height that if I sit on my bed against the wall, I will not hit my head, so it's all good.

My next course of action is to buy one more set of that light you see on the left shelf so that I could put it on the right shelf.

This way, I free up my window sill and the cats can lie there if they want. Nutmeg especially, loves to lie on the window sill and if I have plants there, she's just push them off (then everything dirties up my bed, meh). The round hanging terrarium will have to stay there because the base is a bit too wide for the shelf.

My Nerveplant is certainly slowly dying, even after changing the soil to dry it up, so I'm just slowly waiting for it to either die out entirely, or for a miracle to happen, as one of the leaves seem to be reviving under my new regime with them.

Today... such a long day!

First, I got woken up by Nutmeg at around 6am. She jumped onto me, did a zoomie spin kind of thing, then jumped off. That woke me up, and I thought, might as well for for a run! Although these 2 photos were taken quite a while apart, location-wise, these were opposing views. So when I was over at the Tower side, I saw that hilly view, and when I was over there, I saw that tower.


The sky was pretty hazy early on, so there was much nice photo shooting opportunity. As I ran, I saw at least 2 groups of photographers on their photo shooting outings. One of the groups was probably some sort of learning group.


As usual, we took the dogs for their walk. Dad got drunk when he went out with his friends last night, so today my Sis and I were pretty much on our own with the dogs, so we went to a new dog park. Super lucky, we got a car park. Frankie had a lot of fun, and even after a full 30minutes of his running around, when we got back into the car, he still wanted to stay out.


I had exchanged my left Apple AirPod Pro back in November because it started to get a lot of noise, and recently, the right one started to get that kind of noise too. So I went to the Apple Store this morning to get it sorted out. The guy confirmed I had problematic earphones, and then spun a story that "ah, if you pair an old earpod to a new earpod then you'd have to wait for them to sync, so I'm just going to replace both your earpods!" And thus, I got a new pair of AirPod Pro!

After that, we walked by this... erm... Deli Lounge kind of thing and we figured we could have lunch as well. Lunch was yummy, I really liked the couscous salad they served. I just might go there more often (I think they have a branch over in the peninsula side of town)


And then, my Sis brought me to this hidden florist/flower shop place. And jeez! I had looked high and low for the Rainbow Elephant Bush, asked people, walked around Macau (peninsula side) to look for them, and finally found baby saplings, and bought then... AND THEN I FIND THIS. Even though, I've reached a point where I know I shouldn't buy any more new plants, I couldn't not get that this time. I'll just place one in the office (and pray it doesn't die). Whoops, got a little carried away touching up photos and I uploaded this one that I've pushed saturation up. Sorry! I know I said plants should be posted unfiltered.


When we got home, I had to go out a few times (one to get Frankie out of the house, because some repairmen were hear fixing a drainage thing, one to bring something to my cousin, one to buy something that I was looking for, etc....) and on one of my trips out, I took Nutmeg with me, just so that she can have more practice of going out of the apartment.


And then, somehow, we find out Dad had fallen onto the ground last night when he was still out, and he was so drunk he didn't tell us anything last night. Today we see his wrist is all swollen, so, I had to drive him to the hospital. He's still waiting in the emergency room, but supposedly (and by experience), usually trauma cases have a shorter wait time, but he's still waiting. So we took the dogs to another dog park near the hospital, got them done (short video below, this dog park is quite nice, it's HUGE!), went to fill up the car, went back to the hospital, he was still waiting, so we went home first.



This was such a long day... I had never had an over 1000kcal day before, according to my watch. I'm beat. I want to go shower and just head off to bed, but then I think I should wait for Dad to be done at the hospital. I've asked Mom if she wants to go and stay with Dad, but it seems she's being petty and adamant that she's not going to keep him company. *Rolls eyes*

Been a while since I wrote about the plants... since I got a new addition today, I thought I'd make a plants post! All photos with no filter today, coz, plants!

This is my new plant! In Chinese it's called the 姬乙女 or 姬月季, I did some searching and found the English name to be Suehime, it sounds Japanese, and a little more digging I find out that it was cultivated in Japan in the 1990s. It's rather robust, strong resistance to diseases, and very easy care (plenty of sunshine and plenty of water). It can flower all year around too! This particular one I got is a little more expensive because of the stems and root, I thought it looked really cute, like a Bonsai. Supposedly I could have gotten just any regular shrub of the same plant at a cheaper price. But you know, packaging sells, and I fell for it.


( More plants! )

Remember the pumpkin plant I got? LOL

The "pumpkin" fruits dried up, now they look like sun-dried tomatoes LOL... and there was still a "green" fruit, but now it's turned orange and looks like pumpkin. A new flower sprouted out, but there are no bees to pollinate it, I wonder if I can do it myself with a Q-tip?


And then, the terrarium had one of the taller succulent grow so much it was cramped, so I decided to repot the entire thing. The terrarium itself looks terrible now, as I have no artistic sense to save my life...


The cramped plant got replanted to outside of the terrarium... I need to use bamboo sticks to try to straighten them up again.


The African Violet is growing new leaves, but I don't see flowers sprouting!

I forgot to mention, my Venus flytrap died; I was apparently giving it too much water; though I swear the woman that sold me that and my research said it needed water.

Then I had a small orchid, the flowers dropped naturally enough, but then the leaves fell off too, it was because it didn’t get enough sunlight to dry up the soil... and I had followed instructions to only water when the soul is very dry (like, a tiny bit of water, once a week) and to avoid direct sunlight.

Today I went with my sis to a plant shop, she wanted a succulent. I wanted to try but when I asked the shopkeeper, he said succulents aren’t exactly easy and told me to try this Nerveplant... Fittonia? He said, and I recount, “as long as this gets sunlight and water it’ll grow.” Okay. I believed him, and got this cute The Little Prince pot.



I don’t really like The Little Prince, but this design is cute, reading a book. There was one other where he had the fox with him, but this design was more cute.

Now I’m reading up on the Nerveplant and apparently, yes it needs water but no direct sunlight. So I can’t put it at my window sill. At least, I have to put it away during the better part of the day.

I have no green thumb but I’ll try again!!!!