Wuan brought some bak chang (glutinous rice dumplings) that she bought from Petaling Street when she came yesterday. Among them was a huge dumpling wrapped in lotus and bamboo leaves that costs RM8.00. We had it for afternoon tea just now. It was not as nice as we had expected and certainly not worth its price. There was a piece of belly pork, chestnut, two small cuts of shitake mushroom and one dried oyster inside, wrapped in a layer of green beans and then a layer of glutinous rice. I should not have eaten such heavy food as I have just recovered from two bouts of fever recently. Glutinous rice is known to cause indigestion when consumed even in moderation. However, after starving myself for so many days, it was like heaven-sent.

On the fifth day of the fifth lunar month, the Chinese celebrate the Duan Wu Jie, also known as the Dragon Boat Festival or the Dumpling Festival. All across South-east Asia, dragon boat races are held to commemorate this day in long shallow boats with a dragon head at the bow. However, the legend of the dumpling goes deeper than that. In the fifth century B.C. Qu Yuan, a well-loved Chinese court official and poet committed suicide by leaping into a river to protest the corrupt state of the country. Upon hearing the news of his death, the people living nearby searched the length and depth of the river for his body in order to give him a proper burial but they were unsuccessful. In despair, they made dumplings and threw them into the river, hoping that the fishes would nibble on the dumplings instead of the body. This year, the Duan Wu Jie falls on the June 22. This festival almost always coincides with the summer solstice which is also the longest day of the year. It is believed that one can stand an egg on its end on this day.

In modern times, the meaning of the dumplings have been lost to gluttony and commercialism. I am guilty of it, too. I eat dumplings because they taste nice, and not for the inherent significance. Moreover, they are available throughout the year. Ideally, the perfect dumpling should be firm to the touch yet soft in the mouth. The soya sauce and other seasoning should be well mixed into the glutinous rice. The texture of the rice should be smooth to the tongue. It should contain a generous portion of belly pork, chestnut, dried prawns, salted egg yolk and shitake mushroom. It is the fatty portion of the pork that makes the dumplings extra delightful. Most of the ingredients are those that I should consume with restraint. I do not eat these dumplings very often and I guess indulging in it once or twice a year should be all right, I hope.

This is going to be a short entry. I am down with fever again. It must be some food that my body did not agree with. I am trying to recall what I have eaten for the past few days. My urine is murky too even though I am drinking a lot of water. Hopefully it is not a bladder infection. I am taking it easy these few days, eating sparingly and taking more than my usual noon naps.

It has been hazy for the past few days. This is most probably the Sumatrans doing their slash and burn thing for the cultivation of their crops. It always happens around this time of the year. There is a lingering smell of smoke throughout the day. Drinking water is a good way to counter the unhealthy effects of the haze which includes irritation to the eyes and throat. Unless there is rain, this situation will get worse in the coming days.

A. Paniculata Capsules

Bad things do come in threes. After the lassitude caused by the heat wave recently, I was swept away by a spell of glum that descended on me stealthily. When the sullenness finally lifted, I was stricken by a low grade fever that rapidly developed into a full-blown fever. It is no fun being sick, especially having a fever, because I go by the age-old adage of starve a fever and feed a cold. Starving means avoiding rice and I am what the Chinese call a rice bucket. I must have rice at least once a day!

It began on Tuesday with an uncomfortable tenderness around my abdomen. I knew a fever was impending. What did me in was the beef rendang and fish curry that I carelessly succumbed to during lunch. By nightfall, I was running a temperature and shivering. To cut a long story short, after two days of Panadols and hempedu bumi capsules, the fever has disappeared. Those few days, I subsisted mainly on rice noodles and bread only, and of course, bottles and bottles of plain water.

The scientific name for hempedu bumi is andrographis paniculata. It is also known as snake herb in Chinese. This annual herb sprouts profusely after the rainy season and grows to a height of about two feet. The leaves are dark green in colour and elongated. The entire plant tastes extremely bitter. The leaves are most commonly used, either chewed as it is, its juice extracted and drunk with honey, or air dried, ground into powder and encapsulated. It is believed to cleanse the body and blood of toxicity and reduces hypertension. The Chinese, Malays and Indians use this herb in traditional medication.

Two nights ago was full moon. I looked out the window and there it was, bright and round, and illuminating the edges of the clouds surrounding it. What a nice sight, I thought, and snapped a few shots just as the clouds started to obscure it. When I downloaded the images and viewed them all at full size, I found some bright dots which I initially thought were stars. However, the same dots appeared in all the other images as well � same colour, same spot. A search with Google revealed that these are hot pixels.

Hot pixels are those that appear as bright dots in the image in long exposure, especially in low light and night shots. The CCD, which captures the image, consists of millions of light sensitive elements. Hot pixels usually occur when the CCD is heated up after prolonged use, resulting in charge leakage in some of the sensors. This makes the particular pixel brighter than the surrounding ones and shows up as white, red or green dots in an otherwise dark background.

Most if not all digital cameras have hot pixels. This anomaly can be removed by remapping the CCD. Remapping simply hides the odd pixels by masking it with the colours of the adjacent pixels. The camera has to be sent back to the manufacturer to be remapped. It can also be reduced by using the noise reduction feature available in most digital cameras. For the moment, I can live with those odd dots which appear only in images taken with slower shutter speeds. These defects are nothing that photo editing software cannot correct.

Apart from hot pixels, the CCD is also plagued with stuck pixels and dead pixels. In stuck pixels, the particular sensor is always on, producing a bright dot irrespective of shutter speed and aperture size. This usually appear as red, green or blue in the image. Dead pixels appear as black dots because the sensor is always off, thus not registering any light. This normally turn up as black dots in images taken in bright condition.

The LCD screens are also afflicted by these defects. This is unavoidable because the elements weaken as they age and start to malfunction. I have no complaints regarding this problem as this Nikon Coolpix 3100 has served me well, having captured over two thousand images and is still doing fine generally. The only gripe I have is that the battery power is exhausted fairly quickly and I usually have to carry a few set of spares every time I go out on a shooting spree.

Lucia of Mental Jog is organising Penang Bloggers Meet in conjunction with the International Weblogger’s Day on June 9. This is a good opportunity to come together and meet your blogging peers in real life. Check out this entry for more details.