Food and Sarcasm

I have been spending evening eating out with my friends visiting from Taiwan. And I found that I have lost the ability to think of interesting events to decorate my blog. My conclusion is that it is very bad for you to feast on good foods too much for too long and I can finally understand why English people have such great sense of sarcasm.

Chinese Men's Penis Phobia

No matter what you sell, you can almost guarantee the market share if the marketing bluff includes phrases like "make you energetic in bed" or "never fall" in Chinese world. Many of the strange, cruel way of dining or food ingredients come from the idea that it can make you a sexual superman.

There is a dish, named "3 squeaky voices", which is to eat the new-born mice alive. The 3 small squeaks come from the weak voice of a mouse when you pick it with your chopsticks, when you dip it in some sauce and when shovel it in your mouth. I only heard about it when I was small over the dinner table. But I can tell from my father's friends' faces, this is one of those type of dishes.

It is so funny that, in Chinese world, a man can be a total loser in every aspect of life but he cannot fail in bed as to satisfy his woman (thus, to control her, ha ha ha ha ha). Perhaps we should sell software telling our clients that you are not going to fall ever if using this product.

Forbidden City Kitchen Cookings

Master Li in Beijing is the decendant of the head of Forbidden city security guards, who has hold hold of the imperial recipe. Master Li started a restaurant to replicate the dishes meant for the emprorer. Li's daughter quit her job as a doctor became a full-time chef.

The food? You can tell that they use the best quality of ingredients and less MSG. The chef is very serious about the food. We have 12 cold dishes and 8 hot dishes. They all come in small portions, however, not as surpring as Royal China in London. Maybe I am bias, I like Cantonese crusin and there is not too much suprise in the imperial recipe.

Another very Nice Beijing Duck Place

The weather in Beijing is getting warmer and you see more green on the streets. Lots of people take out their small chairs, sitting on the road side and chatting with neighbours, enjoying the nice breeze. The summer is in town.

It did take us a while to find this restaurant, it is hidden in a small, old, close-to-demolish Hutong (don't ask me why is small alley ways in Beijing is called Hutong, not even local knows. The combination of the two characters, Hu and Tong, doesn't mean anything in Mandarine). You cannot tell that you are in the one of the top duck restaurants in Beijing when you entered the restaurant, you think you might have set foot into a local Beijing person's house.

But anyhow, they grill the duck in the open heath, burning the special type of woods. It is said there are 16 traditional procedures to make the duck, none of them is missing. The duck skin is crispy and light. The fat is tender but not stringy, not smelly. The meat is very soft. I think the duck is very young, might be 2 month old only.

It is unimaginable to eat those so-call Peking Duck (threaded deep-fried duck meat, probably those Cantonese Roast duck leftover) in London or New York China town again.

Tax Code

It is common practice in Taiwan to have two accounting books for small business. My mom kept one book for tax purpose and another one for real in/out cashflows. Quite a few Taiwanese who have business in China have done the same. However, the taxation and law systems are very different.

In China, the tax auditing force is so large that they can carry out throughout investigation to almost all business. Cooking the book or producing fake invoice is criminal offense (affecting national economic growth). Offenders cannot simply get out by paying fines. They are arrested and imprisoned, or even death penalty depending on how much tax you own.

The staticstic shows there are at least 90,000 Taiwanese being detaining in Chinese prisons.

Da Vinci Code, the mood of flower

Went to see Da Vinci Code with Cherry and Ben. To me, the movie is like wathcing Indiana Jones in Discovery Channel. Although knowing the Christinality history in Europe, but I have never learnt the secret society, piory of sion. I only remember people in medieval time killed each other, not because they were hungry, which really puzzles me.

Is Jesus Chris the divine or human, doesn't seem really important to a atheist like me. But I can feel the impact this has caused in western world somehow. But during the movie, the scenes of Monty Python's holy grail kept coming up in my mind. It is kinda funny.

I also watch Wong Kai Wei's the mood of flower. Very pretty. Maggie Cheung is drop-dead beautiful. But there is nothing besides prettiness in the movie. I don't know much about the artisitc aspect of the film making but I can feel that he is showing off.

How to Learn a Foreign Language

It is so funny to learn that XiaoHo has learnt Cantonese. Between my parents, they speak in Cantonese. But they always switch channel to Madarine when talking to XiaoHo. Somehow XiaoHo interrupted them when they were engaged in a Cantonese conversation. He understands the language!

Do you remember how you pick up the language when you were a kid? How do you make the connection of objects and their names? How did you learn how to describe and express your emotion? How do we learn communicating with others?

Does it Matter?

More than one person told me about how change is calculated in some common stores in south america. The changes has to be counted in a reverse manner to make up the total amount the customer pays. During the counting process, prevent yourself from talking, otherwise the counting has to be started again. They are happy people, no one seem bothered.

In North America, most math teachers carry with them a calculator, which is strictly prohibited in Taiwan. Because we have to write 2 big entrance exams at age 15 and 18, no calcultor is allowed. How to do add, subtract, multiply and so on by heart is a crucial skill to speed up answering math questions. We had to remember the squre of number 1 to 44, the cube of number 1 to 25, the squre root of number 2 to 5, learn those tricks to do (23*34) quickly, for example.

Does this matter to how a country performs or the government functions? I guess it is not too relevant. It is more related to how to allocate capable people in the proper positions, and do it efficiently.

Taiwan President's Son-in-Law

The Taiwan President's son in law has been involved in some insider trading scandal. I have never paid much attention to how the first family members look like but this guy was on TV news almost on daily basis.

The news clips show his work environment and what he does in work. He is a physician. I was really impressed that he looks clean, earnest and very into his patients. I think we all have some unknown, unexplainable feelings toward doctors. This profession almost makes a normal human being become a superman. Any issue that is related to the upmost secrecy of your body seems so trivial to them. You also feel obliged to open up without any hesitation. For example, the doctor could ask casually that how is your sex life and you would blob your guts out although what he wants to do is to prescribe you some birth control pill so he can make money. I guess fewer people feel that way toward lawyers or computer programmers.

A developer came to ask the client, did you do anything unusual to make the application crash? The client would routinely fall into the denial mode and blames the developer for writing this piece of work.

I dreamt about queuing up to see the Taiwan President's Son-in-Law for my eczma problem but I woke up before seeing the doctor.

Misread

I am not a particularly careful reader, my misinterpretation has provided my friends quite a few entertainment.

When I was in California, I think my friend wrote me an email saying that he might get laid off in New York. I was so confused because I didn't read the "off" (it was hidden in the next line). This sentense doesn't make much sense at all! I politely replied that he will succeed if he works hard enough.

I was chatting with a friend over MSN, I think we were talking something about the cute Chinese masseur in Beijing. We then talked about life sucks and nothing is worth smiling anymore. He then said "many smile when massaging me". I was like... What the hell is this? Am I going to become a masseues to smile a lot?!?! After a few minutes of chaotic exchange of words, I finally realised he was saying "many smile when MESSAGING me!"

Rain

The thunder storm came this evening, the rain washed off the dirt in the air, I walked to the subway station breathing the fresh air. I arrived in the station where is bright enough that I found my black trousers were dotted with mud. Who would think the little rain drop has carried so much sand?

Shopping in the Traditional Market

The highlight of my weekend is to go shopping in the traditional market nearby. My challenge is to buy the best quality of fresh fruit, veggies and meat with only a 10 yuan bill. One time I had only 5 yuan and 50 jiao left, and I walked to the butcher, planning to buy some ground meat.

I picked one small piece of pork belly for gridding but the stall owner told me it costs 6 yuan. I told her how much I had left and that's what I am planning to pay. She was almost angry when she cut a small piece of the meat, not even weighting it again. I then got my 5 yuan and 5 jiao worth of ground pork.

Banana Leave

This is a vert weird restaurant. They have got a westerner as a captain, who is managing a group of hyper-active, gender-unidentifiable, sexual-orientation ambiguous philipinos. You cannot enjoy your food quietly because the wait staff would come around and grap you to dance. They sing happily, skillfully ignoring their customers' boring faces.

Interestingly, both women and men love to touch our guys. Ben and Liu Yang felt molested and annoyed.

Fish Chair

I went to this fake anti store in Beijing, it was so exciting. There are so many little things to see, much much more interesting than silk street, that only sells clothes and fake LV hang bags. I bought a small fish-shape chair so I can work on my little coffee table and watch TV at the same time. Beijing seems nicer recently.
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Neitzsche argued that human beings have only will to power. I only wish I could have the power over my plants.

Shallow and Visual

I cycled the whole day and my back was really sore. So I decided to get a mini massage. I asked for the boy massuer because I thought my back really need some heavy dose of massage. But they sent in a very cute guy.

I felt very embarrassed to let a guy rob my feet. I guess my uneasiness is contagious, the automosphere became weired. Maybe I should insist a girl massues in the future.

Mosquito

I finally found my old camera, yay! I went to the local garden center every weekend, I have got 5 plants by now. Taking care of them is a very nice thing to do.

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When I was back home last week, the weather was very warm and we got almost a dozen mosquitos in our flat. Grace, Mankit and I were jumping up and down, waving and flapping the rolled up newspapers. No one can really get those staying up in the ceiling. My mom then told us to use the transparent plastic bag, slowly approaching our target. Inevitably, the target flies down and be trapped inside the bag.

Grace's mom was really impressed. She is a devoted Buddhist and she uses the same method to catch mosqitos but releases them outdoor. But my mom indicated she usually kills them by flattening the bag.

What does Real Power Mean in China

Just read an very interesting comment, it says, the really powerful person in China is the one who does not have to take the responsibility for his/her decision.

I cannot help but think this is even cooler than the enforcer in hocky.

High School Reunion

Patricia's hudsband, Leo, actually organised this reunion for us. Leo came to New York few times when I was still in New York. He is a typical business man, thick-skinly wants to be friend with anything that moves. He also connects with the other friend, Chung-Fen, and her hudsband. Leo and Chung-Fen talks in Taiwanese, teasing each other just like all old friends do.

Pat's son is 5 years old, pure as a piece of paper. Chung-Fen has a twins, they are almost 5. Kids were running and screaming, mother's eyes were constantly following their babies. Converstaion was all about children eduation. Completely chaotic.

We all meet in a luxurious hotel suite, Sharon came last with her 7-month-old girl, along with a 5-year-old boy and her hudsband.

It is so amazing to see my school mates again, they all still look like high school girls, the same body build and the same smile. Where has the time gone?

Sense of Humour

I guess not every one appreciate my sense of humour, but I can assure you that my senior high school mate, Claire, never fails to crack up whenever I am trying to tell a joke. I think she really likes me and doesn't want me to feel bad.

When we were in high school, she is the model student every teacher could ever dream of. And I was... As you have guessed, not. Somewhat we sat next to each other and we exchanged the techniques of reading novels underneath our desks.

Once I was trying to tell Claire a zen story. There were three little monks studying zen, following the most famous monk at the time. Monk A went to the old monk and asked "Master, if this then that and what?". The old monk thought about it for a while, he replied "You are right". Monk B came along and asked "Master, if this then that and why are we doing what?" The old monk paused for few minutes, and he said "You are also correct". The yongest monk was so confused and he went to old monk. He asked "Master, why do you think both of them are correct?". The monk replied after few minutes "Then you are right!"

No one laughed but Claire.

Hair Planting

We were having this conversation about men's bolding problem over dinner table one night. Kevin's theory is that the process of making men is more error-prone. Lots of genetic defects shown in men because the XY cromoson combination surfaces those dieases whereas the XX combination somewhat buries them. For example, more than half of Down syndroms and autistic patients are male. The other obvious one is you see more bolding men than women (of course, women tend to be more sensitive about their look).

Anyhow, I then contributed the scary hair reconstruction cosmetic surgery. The doctor planted the air ballon inside the hair growing region and pumped up the ballon so the hair growing region could be stretched to limit (believe me, he looked like an alien then). The hairless skin is then removed, replaced by the hairy one.

Irene said the hair planting business is very popular in Japan. Once the fine hair is planted, the clients have to come back for styling and washing on regular basis. The Japanese pursuit perfection to such an extreme, they even call you back few years later to plant some grey hair!

Back to Beijing

Just came back from Taipei this evening. I have not updated my blog for weeks and one of my blog readers thinks I am kidnapped or lost in the wood when hiking. To prove my existence, I have to write. Claire concluded my job in Beijing is very demanding because I didn't update my blog as frequently as in London. Blogging does give out a lot of information, whether you like it or not.

When queuing for taxi, a man cut in the line after me (because I skillfully stopped him from getting in front of me by pushing my cart in some weird directions). But I was still angry about this, so I turned around and told the man he should join the queue at the other end. He explained he was in a hurry, fine, every one is in a hurry, I said. The meaningless discussion lasted for few minutes. Luckily, the queue moved quite quickly. I pointed out the fact that it took me only 5 minutes to get to where I was without cutting into the line. And the man had to spend more than 5 minutes to explain me why he couldn't afford to queue like a normal human being. Absolutely ridiculous, I turned away and refused to talk to him.

He is really trying hard to persuade me that he is not doing anything wrong. I always think it would be so embarrassing if someone catch me littering or spitting, thus, I've never done so. I wonder what type of composition is it inside those people's brain?

I don't want to punish or crticising those who have done so. I don't want to be the heroin who tries to bring justice into the chaotic world, neither. Suppose that man didnt' try to cut in front of me, I might not even speak out at all. I think we should all learn how to defend ourselves. Learn marshall art if you have to. Guess we can preserve some dignity that way.