Posts from June 2006
June 29, 2006
Wealth disparity
The wealth disparity thing in China can be fairly well exemplified by my typical bipolar morning breakfast routine.
I walk out of my building, cross the street and buy a basket of tasty steamed xiao long bao sprinkled with some hot peppers. 3RMB.
Then I walk a few meters up the street to Yum Yum Bakery, a Taiwanese style bakery that plays nice music and has little cellophane wrapping on each piece of bread. I order an iced milk tea and a cinnamon danish. 25RMB.
Guess which is busier?
June 13, 2006
I can hear it
I can still hear it. Can you?
In that old battle of the wills between young people and their keepers, the young have found a new weapon that could change the balance of power on the cellphone front: a ring tone that many adults cannot hear.
In settings where cellphone use is forbidden ¡X in class, for example ¡X it is perfect for signaling the arrival of a text message without being detected by an elder of the species.
"When I heard about it I didn't believe it at first," said Donna Lewis, a technology teacher at the Trinity School in Manhattan. "But one of the kids gave me a copy, and I sent it to a colleague. She played it for her first graders. All of them could hear it, and neither she nor I could."
Rest of the NY Times article here...
June 11, 2006
Haagen Duhhh
So there's a group of us sitting under the picnic table umbrellas in front of the fancy Haagen Daz next to St. Regis Hotel. It's a nice day, but then it starts to sprinkle a tiny bit. We decide, oh hell we'll just sit here, who cares if we get a little wet. Then a waiter rushes over and starts closing all the umbrellas.
"Hey, what are you doing?"
"It's raining."
"Yes. If you haven't noticed, that's why we're sitting under the umbrellas so we don't get wet."
He starts to close the umbrella over us.
"Are you serious? Why are you closing our umbrella?"
"Because it's getting wet!"
"But aren't umbrellas supposed to get wet. What the hell are you doing?"
"Sorry, my manager told me these umbrellas can't get wet."
He continues to close the umbrella.
"If you close this umbrella, we'll all get wet, and then we can't sit here and order our ice cream."
"But the umbrella will get wet!"
"Who cares? It's an umbrella!"
"But it's getting all wet!"
"Has it occured to you that it will still get wet even though it's closed, since it's already sitting here in the rain?"
"Yes, but it'll be closed."
So we all get up and have to leave.
June 07, 2006
I'll have the deep fried Air Trainers please...
While I was back in Taipei, Irene and I went down to Nantou county with some epicurean writers to visit a mushroom farm, an asparagus farm, and a bitter mellon farm. I felt like a kid on a field trip for school, except I was the one driving.
Afterwards, we stopped off at a friend's Italian ice shop in Taichung, and right around the corner was this hilarious bakery. They sold fried bread sticks which were a lot better than the donuts at Mister Donut.
I think the funniest part is not the name (which is funny, but has been used before), but the rolled bread in the Nike swoosh. Can Nike sue them for using a croissant as their logo? Tough call.
June 02, 2006
Bow wow
I went to a local diner, and was greeted by this really cute white toy poodle leashed up near the front door. I played with it for a while, and as I was ordering a bowl of xiao mi zhou and a giant bao zi, this extremely tall, big-haired, big-boobied, bodaciously-bootied model type babe struts in and immediately begins screaming at the top of her lungs.
"Get that thing away from me, oh my god!! Get it away from me!!! What is that horrible thing doing here?? Eeeeeek!"
I looked over to the boss behind the counter and in my best Beijing drawl say "Amazing how something so big can be scared by something so small."
"Hunh," he replied, "I wonder what she'd do if she saw a real damned dog."
The dog's zhu ren ran over and immediately carted the tiny creature away to safety.
For the rest of my meal, all I wanted to do was scowl at her, but she was so outrageously big that it was hard enough not to stare, and she would've just thought I was looking at her tits anyway, so I just dug my face into my meal and threw mental doggie darts at her while wondering what a terrible contradiction she offered to any male who got involved with her.
I've never figured out whether it's pronounced "Moe's (like owned by one of three stooges) or Moss (like that guy out of Bonanza), but the one down the hill from me is open until 2am most days, which means that if I get out of the club early enough, I can catch the best burger in town, the muo si la bao or the Spicy Mos Burger. They have lots of jalapenos and 
