random IM conversation at work

I’m really not feeling like working.

(12:30 PM) Amy: do you make your own lunch?
(12:30 PM) danny: i started to cause i’m on a health binge
(12:30 PM) Amy: health binge?
(12:31 PM) danny: i’m eating healthy
(12:31 PM) Amy: sounds like an oxy-moron haha
(12:31 PM) danny: haha
(12:31 PM) Amy: yeah your lunch does look healthy
(12:31 PM) danny: chicken breast, brown rice, brocoli, and egg whites
(12:31 PM) danny: although i’m cheating since i add bbq sauce
(12:31 PM) Amy: wow i’m impressed

miley cyrus photo controversy

I don’t see what’s wrong with the picture. I think it’s the best photo of her I’ve ever seen (which is…not that many). I really like the photo, it’s classic and natural. I don’t think it’s over-sexualized at all and if it is sexually attractive, well, that’s because 15 year old girls are sexually attractive. I mean she looks like a woman…so?
And her expression is perfectly natural, especially compared to her other many other flirtatious expressions (some more and some less so) in other photos, which apparently are no big deal.
other photos thrown in for good measure:
photos 1
photo 2
I’m not saying that American children are not in many cases hyper-sexualized, just not in this case.
opinion on vanity fair blog
british opinion (mostly the opposite of the previous ones)

OCF heads up

I love OCF…(speaking non-sarcastically )

04/17 As of today, the OCF is now using a improved, more secure account
storage and authentication framework. Among other things, this
transition brings faster and more reliable Windows printing and
single-sign-on support for the Unix clients. It also means that
you MUST sign on to at least one OCF service (Windows or Unix
clients, webmail, POP, IMAP, online account tools, SSH (WITH YOUR
PASSWORD), etc.) sometime in the next six months, or else become an
obligatory beta tester for the password migration tool, coming
this fall.

forbidden kingdom review (spoiler-free)

Saw this yesterday, kind of stupid actually, even if you go in with low expectations like i did.  It’s the kind where you walk out thinking it’s alright, then your opinion decays over time. (Just remembered that it’s a kids movie, can’t judge it the same as an adult movie)

-Jacky Chan vs Jet Li fight is really good i think, but waaaay too short.  I ended up feeling i’d have gotten more out of re-watching drunken fist 2.  And Jet Li can’t quite act, no surprises there.  Same for everyone else except white guy, who is very good at looking sorry and confused, and Jacky Chan who pulls the whole movie together.  I also don’t understand why ALL Chinese guys have a crush on 刘亦非. I think she is cute but kind of ordinary looking.

-Too much ‘plot’…i’m sure <5% of the audience went for the plot, so why even bother? I don’t mean that the movie makes a lot of sense or is unpredictable, just that I felt like it didn’t have to be, so in terms of screen time, ‘plot’ moments are too long/many.

-Some parts are really funny, and some are unintentionally really funny…I remember one very serious part where I couldn’t stop laughing…

Yeah so pretty entertaining overall, as long as you don’t expect too much.  At least people in my theater were clapping at the end…

Tibet

Perhaps the most hopeful moment in recent Han-Tibetan relations came shortly after 1980, when the Chinese Party Secretary, Hu Yaobang, went on a fact-finding mission to Tibet and returned with severe criticisms of Chinese policies. He advocated a two-pronged solution: Chinese investment was needed to spur economic growth in Tibet, but at the same time the Han should be more respectful of Tibetan culture. Cadres needed to learn Tibetan; the language should be used in government offices serving the public; and religion should be allowed more freedom.

I’m still not completely sure how I feel about Tibet, but the above is probably close.  Interesting points (link to article below): 1) part of what Tibetans are fighting against is modernization, which will happen with or without Chinese imperialism, 2) much of the inequality starts with a linguistic barrier, 3) migrant workers are the driving force of change, and you can’t keep them out.  Not sure if these are completely accurate – only skimmed the article, maybe a closer read later.

As a postscript, I don’t even feel like writing about the media (this is re: recent protests againt Tibet coverage).  I don’t see how people automatically assume the media is or should be objective.  It’s another one of those truisms in America.  If you’re a business, you’re selling something, and does objectivity sell better than say, controversy?

Interesting article about Tibet below.  It’s by someone who’s actually lived in Tibet and also elsewhere in China.  To me it’s slightly more credible than someone who’s in Tibet for 5 minutes and needs an angle to sell to his editor next week.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/199902/tibet-china

Comments, please. 

British food

kinda looks like this, and slight variations of it, such as sausage and mash(ed potatoes), some meat (pot) pie/pudding of some red meat, with brown sauce over it served with either mashed peas or more mashed potatoes….
yeah this week (back from EU) has been a curious week for me, waking up not tired at 6 am every day.

porridge recipe

ingredients:

1) brown rice + plenty of water

2) burdock root, cut into long thin strips (牛蒡）

3) some kind of ground meat (chicken is healthier, pork goes better with the taste)

4) yamaimo (mountain yam), peeled and cut into big chunky pieces （山药）

5) Job’s tears (i thought this went by a different name, can’t remember right now), preferably actual grains but i used powdered (edit: barley?) （薏仁）

Cook 1) like how you usually make porridge, ie. boil then simmer.  Toss in 2) and 5) anytime, 3) when water is boiling, and 4) right before turning off the heat (so it’s crunchy).  Optionally, add chicken bouillon to taste.  Also optional is a piece of tofu skin 腐皮 (yuba?) thrown in at the beginning for taste. (Supposedly this is how you make Cantonese porridge base according to my cookbook.)  I’m not sure yet whether that adds any taste, but the texture is really cool…

It’s slightly bland so I ate lettuce stir fried with shrimp paste as a side dish today.  But I think it’s good even without, kind of a really earthy and warm feeling.  Yeah i’ve been making porridge lately because even though last week was 40 degrees, now it’s suddenly a nice summery ~70s.  And because porridge is the perfect antithesis to long day at work + too much coffee.

 

[Jackie Chan is]“an elderly junk dealer in 21st-century Boston and an itinerant fighter, specializing in the “drunken fist” style of combat, in a mythic ancient China.”

[Jet Li] also plays two parts, both in the mythic past: the mischievous Monkey King (who uses — what else? — monkey kung fu fighting techniques) and a monk.”

The reviews for this movie actually aren’t that bad.  I remember the trailer was pretty stupid, but how can anyone resist drunken fist vs monkey kung fu (!)…

the lost post…(edited with links and new stuff)

i’m still not sure what your timetable is, but hoping you still have time, here’s that post, updated with more stuff…also i have to repeat that i haven’t been there in a long time, and nowadays restaurants and bars change overnight in china, and new ones pop up everyday, and this is about the extent of what i remember right now.  anything else i would have to google or ask my relatives.  also if you give me more detail of what you might like i can probably come up with specific suggestions…

——–

grrr, i hate the page-forward and page-back keys on thinkpads.  i always end up losing my post/comments halfway through.

anyway the posters do look weird, because they don’t really match the ambiance of your apt so having them as the only things up on that wall makes you look like a passive aggressive closet communist…lol

i haven’t been in shanghai for a few years and things change fast in china but i would recommend FOOD above all else, because i think it’s most worthwhile and really something you can’t get elsewhere. 城隍庙 is where 南翔小笼包 is which is where ALLLL the tourists go and very possibly overhyped.  Across the street, upstairs is a restaurant that serves incredible Shanghainese dimsum.  I don’t remember the name bc it’s been awhile, just that it had Bill Clinton’s picture on the wall, and was relatively empty bc it’s pricier/nicer than nanxiang, but according to this it’s 绿波廊酒樓. 

food items to try: xiaolongbao, 八寶鴨、油爆蝦, any kind of Shanghainese pastries (although these are EXTREMELY fattening because they’re usually made with 牛油 – is that butter or something else?), lotus root stuffed with sticky rice, crystal shrimp (i practically lived off of these last two items for one summer there), 虾爆脆膳, 螺丝, any other kind of seafood, 鱼头汤 or any fish soup, 腌笃鲜 (old shanghainese dish, tends to be msg-heavy), 水晶肴肉 (i’m pretty sure this is made with something carcinogenic, but good enough that i don’t care…),

襄陽路 Market has trinkets and knockoffs.  might be an interesting, characteristically ‘china’ experience, bargaining required, looking non-american and non-rich helps. (edit: this place got torn down for the Olympics)

You have to visit the Bund (外灘) even though this is one of those completely touristy things to do.

歷史性建築 (copied and pasted from wikipedia, because i haven’t been to any of these) 

• 孫中山故居
• 宋慶齡故居
• 魯迅紀念館
• 中共一大、二大會址

Nanjing Road is a pedestrian street (http://www.chinaplanner.com/shanghai/sha_nanr.htm) with a bunch of shops mostly targeting Chinese tourists from out of town, very touristy, not much there,  so i would leave that out maybe.

徐家匯 is where the major malls shopping centers are. More shopping along 淮海路 but this takes a lot of time to walk down.

新天地 is an area with a bunch of expensive bars and restaurants.  The architecture is renovated from the poorest district in Shanghai, new buildings that preserved and incorporates some old shanghai buildings.

In summary,  when i was there (always over summer break) the things i really liked were 1) the food (esp seafood), 2) aimless casual stroll through shopping districts esp boutiquey stores which are hard to find and take a lot of asking around, 3) the Bund/xintiandi/whatever bar district of the moment @ dusk/night, but that was some time ago and if i were to go back now i’d probably enjoy a completely different set of things.  So it’s really hard for me to recommend specific things if you only have 1 day there.  If you tell me places you’re interested in it’s much easeir for me to let you know what they’re like…oh and xintiandi should be sort of interesting for photos…

edit: i’m told this is a really good place for shanghainese food – 小南国.  I also heard spicy (cajun?) crawfish has gotten really popular there in recent years (not when i was there anyhow) so that might be something you want to try.   My experience has been that it’s not easy to go wrong with food in shanghai (nor anywhere in the 江南 area), even if some places are more spectacular (expensive) than others, because most places have the same dishes, made pretty similarly.  It’s also interesting to check out other cuisine styles you can’t find outside of china, although i hear northern food is really poorly made in shanghai (and vice versa), so things like 清真菜 (uighur food, can be really, really good if done right), 贵州菜 (not sure exact definition, light with lots of bamboo shoots, fish, salty/spicy/sour),  云南菜 (not sure again)…

post-edit: personally i think a lot of times when you travel you feel the obligation to touch base at each of the main sights, but a lot of times they don’t tell you much that is authentic about the city.  Like when i was in paris, i didn’t really get much out of the Louvre, compared to other small things, random deli on the street full of French stuff i’ve never seen, lunch at random (and really good) chinese noodle shop where a bunch of parisian chinese immigrants were eating, etc.  Same with Hong Kong i remember, like the only thing i liked was walking through some street looking at people who actually live there going about their lives…So the point is, i think the most interesting thing is to just randomly walk somewhere and observe…

sally!

i’m wasting 2 rmb/min. and hard work getting around the great firewall of china to try to read your recommendations for shanghai and you don’t have any?
yes apparently my blog is blocked by the great wall of china…