Hot days call for light meals. My favourite for this spell of punishing weather is rice porridge with dried prawns. It is relatively easy to cook and easy on the stomach too. I like my porridge thick. For a more diluted porridge, add another cup of water.

Simple Dried Prawns Porridge

Dried prawns (heh bee) and rice.

1/2 cup dried prawns (remove shell)
1 cup rice

4 cups water

1 tsp sesame seed oil per serving
white pepper powder (to taste)
light soya sauce (to taste)

Wash dried shrimps and rice throughly. Put both ingredients into automatic rice cooker and add water. Turn off the cooker when the porridge begins to bubble over. Allow the porridge to simmer in the cooker for another ten minutes. Add, sesame oil, pepper and light soya sauce to taste. The porridge is sufficient for two persons.

Dried prawns rice porridge (heh bee moi).

News of death is something unpleasant to wake up to, more so when it is two deaths in one morning. I was still in bed when Wuan got back from Pudu market and told me that the cab driver told her Micheal Jackson is dead. The King of Pop is dead? What tragic news. I got up and searched for news of his death. Indeed, Michael Jackson had died of cardiac arrest at age fifty. The television is on. CNN is continuously running news on this. My eyes were wet as I watched on television and read tributes to Micheal Jackson.

And then I read that Farrah Fawcett is also dead at 62 today after a long battle with anal cancer. This cannot be a good beginning to a sunny morning. The faceless voice saying “Good morning Angels” kept playing in my head. While I remember her as one of the Charlie’s Angels, the poster of her in a skimpy red swimsuit is forever etched in my mind. Red swimsuit, flowing wavy blonde hair, that wispy smile - it was so sinful to the teenage in me.

The deaths of two icons of my formative years made me feel really old suddenly. The zombie of Thriller and the person who popularized the crotch grabbing dance move is dead? The one Angel that made teenage hormones hit the roof is dead? Those facts are hard to made sense of for now. This loss is coupled by the realization that things of my generation are slowly heading towards the sunset one by one. That makes me feel so vulnerable. Good bye Moonwalker. Good bye Jill Munroe.

While browsing through the photo album in my laptop, I came across a few images that I took recently and thought “Hey, we have Transformers right here in Malaysia too.” These are not vehicles that transform into battle-hardened robots with consciousness. These are not robots that shoots missiles and bullets. On the contrary, they work in construction sites to collectively erect high-rise concrete structures. They are the workhorses of the construction industry. They are the transformers of Malaysia’s urbanscapes.

These images were taken from Level 1 in Cineleisure facing the Surian Tower car park annex at Mutiara Damansara. The deftness with which the operators handled these mega rigs fascinated me. From my vantage point, I watched how these huge and seemingly clunky machines were manipulated with precision. As I watched, I also wondered how thousands of years before these machines were invented, were humans able to build enormous structures such as the Great Pyramids of Giza and the Great Wall of China.

Crawler crane.

Close-up of crawler rotary drilling rig.

Crawler rotary drilling rig.

Concrete mixer truck.

Crawler crane hauling concrete from concrete mixer truck.

Source: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

Warning: Spoilers ahead.

It has been a while since my short attention span was tested to its limits. This second Transformers movie literally got me gripping to my seat and giving Optimus Prime and his merry band of robots my full attention for two hours.

The battle scenes were fast and furious. Bumble Bee was adorable. Devastator was scary. Jetfire the SR-71 Blackbird Decepticon turncoat was magnanimous by sacrificing himself to help Optimus Prime triumph over the Fallen. The twins, Mudflap and Skids, were cute as an ice cream van and hilarious as Chevrolets.

The most memorable character, however, was the radio-controlled toy monster truck, Wheelie, who joined the Autobots after learning from Jetfire that he could actually switch sides. I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and is going to watch it again at the cinema soon. Autobots Transform!