My life in food and also TV

Food update: So you know, Alice's mom comes around every couple of days to cook lunch for us and that's pretty awesome. Today, my decision to get out of bed was initiated by her arrival here. She brought fresh-baked date cake, zao gao, which actually sounds like the term people use to intone "danger" or "oops." It's pretty awesome, because it tastes pretty much like fruity quickbreads that we'd be making this time of year back home, like zucchini bread (fine, not a fruit, but you get the point). I was glad I woke up when I did, because it was still warm! She insisted that she had to wait in line forever to buy it because everyone else likes it too, and that it's Y6 per jin.

I've gotten a random vacation the past few days because the high schoolers have been taking exams. It's been spent more or less on my ass... pretty relaxing, but I also feel like the ultimate bum. Still, I wish I got more days off! Today, Alice and I went through the shopping center again, only this time we stuck with individual stores (as opposed to the department store) and poked into a few places we've never been in before. Some pretty funky stuff on sale.

I was pretty much at the bottom of my funds, but ended up buying a really nice jacket anyways. Between that and the fee for the residency permit, my salary depleted really fast. Since I'm also saving up to replace my lost camera, I'm basically left with not all that much until next month. Ok. Purse strings of steel. Let's go.

Back home, I made some efforts to read some more and watch last season's Desperate Housewives finale. Around 5, Alice turned to me and said, "Do you want to go out?" I was like... did I say something? But apparently she'd been downloading more Korean shows and wanted to see if one was on sale at... the DVD place. So we went, and we bought. She got like... that show, a Japanese show, and Japanese show we watched already that she wants to delete from her hard drive. I got a Taiwanese adaptation of the catty Japanese manga Peach Girl, which is sort of playing in the background now.

So we saw this Japanese show about two guys who take on this really awkward, introverted girl as a project. They want to make her happier. One guy is like super popular, and the other's just sort of weird. I missed the beginning and most of the ending, but the parts in the middle were fun. It was really strange though, because here's an instance where parts of the spoken language made more sense to me than what I could glean from the subtitles, so my comprehension of what was actually taking place was really messed up. The acting may be the best out of the different regions that have produced drama that we have seen.

Taiwan has produced perhaps the worst, but in a charming way. Alice was watching another show a week or so ago that was made while she was still in undergrad, based on another Japanese comic I think. I think I spent most of the time I that I watched it with her just badmouthing the main character, whom I thought was kind of a stupid girl. Also, time was spent mistaking this guy for a girl, and just marveling at the really bizarre acting style they have. That style's also evident in the current show. I don't really get it, but I love it... but it's like watching the morning announcements in high school, or first-year student films. Or, like, your friends goofing around with a video camera.

The mainland has little to offer in the dramatic teleplay department, alas... Hudie Feifei is pretty much the only one I've been able to view in its entirety, and that one had one of the least satisfying endings of anything I've ever watched. It's on VCD at my house in Ohio if anyone wants to see it, but it's all Chinese language and Chinese subtitles.

The Korean show she got looks promising, as in it already threatens to take up a lot of viewing time, but so far it's hilarious and I want to see them fall in looooove.

But that's it. Honestly I haven't really encountered anything especially interesting beyond these things in the past week, so...