I just got a tremendous urge to buy something. You know, just to boost the endorphins a bit. I probably would not have actually made a purchase, but I wanted to alleviate this feeling by doing a little online window shopping. It always makes me feel a bit better and it seems like as good a time as any to get a little bit distracted.
Imagine my distress then when I realized that THERE'S NOTHING I WANT TO BUY. I can't even think of anywhere to shop! An odd sensation, I assure you. I honestly can't even remember where all the things I currently own came from. All right that's figurative, but like... the shorts I'm wearing was a Dick's purchase, my t-shirt was from a concert, my sweatshirt Bear Necessities, the bra was the result of a fun morning at Victoria's Secret, and I can't remember what underwear I have on but I'm sure it's really old anyways.
So... what now?
Showing posts with label Shopping. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Shopping. Show all posts
Sunday, November 09, 2008
Sunday, January 13, 2008
The day that went its own way
I had a good day today, the first truly good one in a while, and certainly the best since Tuesday, which is good, cuz I needed it. There was a reason I didn't want to get out of bed today... it might have been an interesting dream, or it was just that I was so darn comfortable (and resentful that someone had called the REALLY loud phone in the living room this morning). But I got up. My plan was really just to check out the new Touchstone gym in Oakland, boulder for an hour or so to get my money's worth out of this month's membership, then get off the bus on College, check out some of the stores, then go home. When I saw that the sun came out today after all, I figured I had no excuses and got out of bed.
This morning I had cereal for breakfast. I bought this cereal back in September when I first came out here and just hadn't been in the mood to eat it until earlier this week. It's Kellogg's Smart Start, and it held up pretty well on top of the fridge all those months, though the texture of the cereal in its natural state is such that it could go a little stale with no real negative effects.
And then I left. I marched down to the 51 and rode it all the way to GWPW's convenient location on 20th. And then I went the wrong way. I swear the website directs you to turn right, but I'm not dumb enough to undermine my story by actually checking that fact at this point. So I went the wrong way on 20th, but was pretty happy about it, cuz I had my new playlist throwing some new acts at me, and I was enjoying the weather. Then I saw Lake Merritt and figured that I'd better turn around.
As soon as I started heading the right way, I saw a building with a honking big smokestack popping out of the top, and I said "OH. Okay." And within short order, I was there. It's a lot... smaller than I expected. I mean, it's not tiny, and it's not the first time I've been spatially misled by a climbing gym's website, but yeah. Actually, the top-rope area was pretty nice, but the bouldering wall's a little depressing if you're not particularly advanced. Or maybe if you're just not up to a challenge, which I wasn't really today. I tried to do a couple of the easier ones, but for pretty much all of them there just comes a point where you realize that the person who set the problem was at least half a foot taller than me. After a couple leaps of faith that brought me nothing but the fear that I would injure myself on the next one, I sat back to consider my options.
It was at this time that someone came up to me and asked if I went to Cornell. I'd forgotten that I was wearing my Cornell lounge pants, though sometimes that's why I wear things like that, and the Ithaca shirt, and so on. This fellow was an 04 grad who had also taken intro to rock climbing and had just picked up the sport seriously in May. He and his sister had come up from Palo Alto to check out the gym and meet the rest of their family. Long story short, I got a harness and top-roped with them for a while, and by the time I left, it was about 3. I had a really good time! The top-roped routes are long, though even the 5.10bB's are doable for me. But since the, uh, commitment was a bit more than I was used, to, about 3/4 of the way up my mind started wandering and I had to tell myself that obviously I could go the next few feet no matter how tired I was because come on, look at it. I did 3 routes and used my arms a lot, so while they're not very sore, I feel them more than I have in... wow, a really long time. Have we not been working ourselves very hard on Tuesdays? I don't know. But anyways. I decided it was time to go when I was less interested in climbing than I was in eating and I felt kinda weird being this outsider in this big fuzzy family gathering. They were a nice family though! At one point I got very self-conscious as I belayed my new friend, because I was terrified that I'd set up wrong and he'd plummet to his death as his parents, sisters, in-laws, and nieces looked on with their bags of almonds and dried apricots. But that didn't happen! AND the mom offered me dumplings to take home (which i declined).
I went back to the 51 stop and waited just long enough for me to get fed up and pull my book out of my backpack. The bus showed up within the paragraph. A few stops later, this woman got on... and... well, I was sitting sideways in one of the fold-down seats across from the rear door, not even halfway down the length of the bus. She came and parked herself right in front of me. It was a little jarring at first, but not a big deal until I realized that she actually had quite a few better options in terms of location and even seating on this not-very-crowded bus. I'd been considering giving my seat to her when I came to this realization. She didn't seem to physically need to sit down, but she was a bit unwieldy with her backpack between her legs and a big floral spray in one hand. And she was right in front of me, the ribbons from the bouquet were flapping in my face... within the confines of my personal space. It was just extremely disconcerting, more so when the girl next to me got off and there was just me and this woman in this large radius of totally empty space. Then, without warning, she turned and exited the bus. Very sudden. Kind of a relief. Now, this encounter was a lot less colorful than other public transit encounters I've had, but it was one of the first to actually just... irritate me.
I went "shopping" on College, and the only thing I really bought was a Street Spirit from a woman on the street. I went into Jeremys and considered getting a coat. I went into a very cute shop in which the items were just out of my price range... and also sort of useless seeing as how I have no apartment in which to display cute non-functional knick-knacks like felt rocks. I went into a recycled/organic/eco-friendly store which was absolutely adorable. I heard as song I liked, so the girl checked out the playlist for me, and returned that the band was Peter Bjorn & John, ironically. I saw a LOT of stuff I wanted, particularly a particular artist's metalwork, and a lot of the jewelry, and so on... so I decided to store that away for another time.
By this point, my stomach was doing a constant rumble. I'd passed Ici and wandered around the Italian food place and La Mediteranee, but held out... I wanted to get home to eat the other half of my falafel wrap from yesterday. I walked the rest of the way back, and around the last block started wondering if I'd be able to make it. My backpack had started really weighing me down in the first store and my head was... hurting. It still hurts, actually. But I made it, even though I forgot my key, and I ate half of the half of the falafel wrap and showered and felt nice.
And that was my day today. I encountered a lot of nice people, and the sun was out, and I did more than I thought I could do. Hooray!
This morning I had cereal for breakfast. I bought this cereal back in September when I first came out here and just hadn't been in the mood to eat it until earlier this week. It's Kellogg's Smart Start, and it held up pretty well on top of the fridge all those months, though the texture of the cereal in its natural state is such that it could go a little stale with no real negative effects.
And then I left. I marched down to the 51 and rode it all the way to GWPW's convenient location on 20th. And then I went the wrong way. I swear the website directs you to turn right, but I'm not dumb enough to undermine my story by actually checking that fact at this point. So I went the wrong way on 20th, but was pretty happy about it, cuz I had my new playlist throwing some new acts at me, and I was enjoying the weather. Then I saw Lake Merritt and figured that I'd better turn around.
As soon as I started heading the right way, I saw a building with a honking big smokestack popping out of the top, and I said "OH. Okay." And within short order, I was there. It's a lot... smaller than I expected. I mean, it's not tiny, and it's not the first time I've been spatially misled by a climbing gym's website, but yeah. Actually, the top-rope area was pretty nice, but the bouldering wall's a little depressing if you're not particularly advanced. Or maybe if you're just not up to a challenge, which I wasn't really today. I tried to do a couple of the easier ones, but for pretty much all of them there just comes a point where you realize that the person who set the problem was at least half a foot taller than me. After a couple leaps of faith that brought me nothing but the fear that I would injure myself on the next one, I sat back to consider my options.
It was at this time that someone came up to me and asked if I went to Cornell. I'd forgotten that I was wearing my Cornell lounge pants, though sometimes that's why I wear things like that, and the Ithaca shirt, and so on. This fellow was an 04 grad who had also taken intro to rock climbing and had just picked up the sport seriously in May. He and his sister had come up from Palo Alto to check out the gym and meet the rest of their family. Long story short, I got a harness and top-roped with them for a while, and by the time I left, it was about 3. I had a really good time! The top-roped routes are long, though even the 5.10bB's are doable for me. But since the, uh, commitment was a bit more than I was used, to, about 3/4 of the way up my mind started wandering and I had to tell myself that obviously I could go the next few feet no matter how tired I was because come on, look at it. I did 3 routes and used my arms a lot, so while they're not very sore, I feel them more than I have in... wow, a really long time. Have we not been working ourselves very hard on Tuesdays? I don't know. But anyways. I decided it was time to go when I was less interested in climbing than I was in eating and I felt kinda weird being this outsider in this big fuzzy family gathering. They were a nice family though! At one point I got very self-conscious as I belayed my new friend, because I was terrified that I'd set up wrong and he'd plummet to his death as his parents, sisters, in-laws, and nieces looked on with their bags of almonds and dried apricots. But that didn't happen! AND the mom offered me dumplings to take home (which i declined).
I went back to the 51 stop and waited just long enough for me to get fed up and pull my book out of my backpack. The bus showed up within the paragraph. A few stops later, this woman got on... and... well, I was sitting sideways in one of the fold-down seats across from the rear door, not even halfway down the length of the bus. She came and parked herself right in front of me. It was a little jarring at first, but not a big deal until I realized that she actually had quite a few better options in terms of location and even seating on this not-very-crowded bus. I'd been considering giving my seat to her when I came to this realization. She didn't seem to physically need to sit down, but she was a bit unwieldy with her backpack between her legs and a big floral spray in one hand. And she was right in front of me, the ribbons from the bouquet were flapping in my face... within the confines of my personal space. It was just extremely disconcerting, more so when the girl next to me got off and there was just me and this woman in this large radius of totally empty space. Then, without warning, she turned and exited the bus. Very sudden. Kind of a relief. Now, this encounter was a lot less colorful than other public transit encounters I've had, but it was one of the first to actually just... irritate me.
I went "shopping" on College, and the only thing I really bought was a Street Spirit from a woman on the street. I went into Jeremys and considered getting a coat. I went into a very cute shop in which the items were just out of my price range... and also sort of useless seeing as how I have no apartment in which to display cute non-functional knick-knacks like felt rocks. I went into a recycled/organic/eco-friendly store which was absolutely adorable. I heard as song I liked, so the girl checked out the playlist for me, and returned that the band was Peter Bjorn & John, ironically. I saw a LOT of stuff I wanted, particularly a particular artist's metalwork, and a lot of the jewelry, and so on... so I decided to store that away for another time.
By this point, my stomach was doing a constant rumble. I'd passed Ici and wandered around the Italian food place and La Mediteranee, but held out... I wanted to get home to eat the other half of my falafel wrap from yesterday. I walked the rest of the way back, and around the last block started wondering if I'd be able to make it. My backpack had started really weighing me down in the first store and my head was... hurting. It still hurts, actually. But I made it, even though I forgot my key, and I ate half of the half of the falafel wrap and showered and felt nice.
And that was my day today. I encountered a lot of nice people, and the sun was out, and I did more than I thought I could do. Hooray!
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Life on the Streets
Today I randomly purchased two small bags of fruit for Y20. Included were strawberries and loganberry/mulberry-ish things, and they smelled so good that I just let myself get ripped off.
Alice had a day off today, so we went shopping! I found a pair of running shoes last night that cost only Y86 (the cheapest ones in WFJ were like 200+, with Adidas running about 600-1000), so like... I bought those. Also, I bought some really awesome zipper shoes... hard to explain, but they're really awesome, even though they will probably make my feet bleed a lot. Uh... also I got a shirt. And CDs.
In a shoe store, I found some awkwardly wingtipped sneakers, and realized that I would ultimately like to own a pair of slick, wingtipped ballet flats. If I had me a pair of those, I don't know what else I would ask for. I mean... well... figuratively.
Also, I realized something. All those random splashes of liquid that I thought were people emptying tea mugs on the street-- not that at all. So, diapers aren't really *in* here, most babies just wear pants with the seam split open in the back, so when they squat it's like one of those coin purses that pops open to reveal familiar excretory orifices. So I knew that parents coax their babies into peeing in the shrubberies and along the curbs and on the cobblestones near the playground, but I sort of convinced myself that I was skirting baby puddles pretty well. Today, outside the bank, we saw a family walking their baby along, encouraging it to leave this astonishingly long streak of baby pee in its wake. I mean, I avoid all street puddles on principle, but to be shown so vividly that the ratio of pee-to-actual water is actually much greater than I thought, that I run a high risk of stomping into *that* kind of puddle should my vigilance fail just once... well, it was humbling.
Yeah, shopping here isn't something I opt to do much on my own. Too much sales pressure. Like, I've never really been "pee-shy" (as Ryan called it) in public restrooms or anything, but I imagine that it's something comparable to what I feel when I walk into a store here. For example, I went into an outdoor gear shop last night and immediately there was a girl on my left and another on my right, intently following my gaze so that they could describe (as if I wasn't already looking at it) every object it landed on. So like "that's a t-shirt... those are swiss army knives... shoes... belts..." aaaargh! I just can't go about my business while under so much scrutiny. There is really no store where this does not occur, and it really gets me so... hulihutu that I no longer trust my own taste or judgement and feel so beleaguered and vulnerable that I eventually just have to get the hell out, abandon ship, mayday mayday! And so I do. So if I ever do elect to go shopping, I also elect to have Alice with me, because, strategically played, the presence of a second warm body increases the amount of personal territory we have between us.
I have learned that I have a new class on Saturday afternoon. I did find out just a few hours ago. I am going to lose my mind lesson planning tonight and tomorrow (mostly tonight, I suppose, dammit... or according to the people who subtitled the Friends DVD we have, TMD!). Glad I brought that coffee with me.
Alice had a day off today, so we went shopping! I found a pair of running shoes last night that cost only Y86 (the cheapest ones in WFJ were like 200+, with Adidas running about 600-1000), so like... I bought those. Also, I bought some really awesome zipper shoes... hard to explain, but they're really awesome, even though they will probably make my feet bleed a lot. Uh... also I got a shirt. And CDs.
In a shoe store, I found some awkwardly wingtipped sneakers, and realized that I would ultimately like to own a pair of slick, wingtipped ballet flats. If I had me a pair of those, I don't know what else I would ask for. I mean... well... figuratively.
Also, I realized something. All those random splashes of liquid that I thought were people emptying tea mugs on the street-- not that at all. So, diapers aren't really *in* here, most babies just wear pants with the seam split open in the back, so when they squat it's like one of those coin purses that pops open to reveal familiar excretory orifices. So I knew that parents coax their babies into peeing in the shrubberies and along the curbs and on the cobblestones near the playground, but I sort of convinced myself that I was skirting baby puddles pretty well. Today, outside the bank, we saw a family walking their baby along, encouraging it to leave this astonishingly long streak of baby pee in its wake. I mean, I avoid all street puddles on principle, but to be shown so vividly that the ratio of pee-to-actual water is actually much greater than I thought, that I run a high risk of stomping into *that* kind of puddle should my vigilance fail just once... well, it was humbling.
Yeah, shopping here isn't something I opt to do much on my own. Too much sales pressure. Like, I've never really been "pee-shy" (as Ryan called it) in public restrooms or anything, but I imagine that it's something comparable to what I feel when I walk into a store here. For example, I went into an outdoor gear shop last night and immediately there was a girl on my left and another on my right, intently following my gaze so that they could describe (as if I wasn't already looking at it) every object it landed on. So like "that's a t-shirt... those are swiss army knives... shoes... belts..." aaaargh! I just can't go about my business while under so much scrutiny. There is really no store where this does not occur, and it really gets me so... hulihutu that I no longer trust my own taste or judgement and feel so beleaguered and vulnerable that I eventually just have to get the hell out, abandon ship, mayday mayday! And so I do. So if I ever do elect to go shopping, I also elect to have Alice with me, because, strategically played, the presence of a second warm body increases the amount of personal territory we have between us.
I have learned that I have a new class on Saturday afternoon. I did find out just a few hours ago. I am going to lose my mind lesson planning tonight and tomorrow (mostly tonight, I suppose, dammit... or according to the people who subtitled the Friends DVD we have, TMD!). Glad I brought that coffee with me.
Monday, February 05, 2007
I've been places -or- Moldy news
And that's the reason that I haven't been able to update this at all. I did make one attempt at an internet cafe in Jishou that was finally able to even connect to blogger, but there was some error at the end of it all, and I basically just stopped trying after that.
Anyways, I am back in Baotou now... arrived yesterday just before noon, and I'm ready to tell all about the rollicking good times I had all over the place. Errr... to be narrower in my description, I'm not ready to tell *at this moment* because my attention span says no, but I'm psyching myself up for it. I've been keeping tabs along the way of all the things I've wanted to note, and hopefully I'll be able to recount everything in some detail. Just not today! Instead, I'm going to list a, uh, table of contents, because I'm most definitely going to be doing this piecemeal. Sort of to make things easier to swallow and also so that I don't build up a psychological barrier to updating.
Just so this particular post doesn't get classified just as one of those stupid frank "I've got a blog" entries, I'll introduce the new situation with my refrigerator. Our fridge was unplugged while I was gone, presumably to save energy, but when I opened it yesterday, I discovered that much of its interior surface area is covered in mold. Quite smelly mold. Mold akin to bread mold, fortunately, so it doesn't appear slimy or orange or anything like that. Also there is an egg in there, which makes me very uneasy. I went out to the store today and bought some cleaning cloths, a kitchen cleaner that's hopefully anti-bacterial, and what I assume is an odor neutralizer for the aftermath. Actually, I tried to communicate to one of the sales ladies that I needed something to clean my fridge because it molded, and she insisted that there's no cleaning solution I can use because you put food in there, and that I should just wipe it with water. Well, maybe soap and water might be effective enough for SOME (okay, maybe most) people, but I personally want the peace of mind that all microorganisms in that fridge expired in a storm of chemicals. Sales ladies have this tendency to give me doubtable information about... everything. It makes it harder for me to trust. Anyways, I bought some things I thought might work, and also have an antiseptic that I use with my laundry that I was thinking about splashing in there too.
I then decided that I didn't want to do that today either, so I'm psyching myself up for that as well.
Tomorrow will be such a full day!
Anyways, I am back in Baotou now... arrived yesterday just before noon, and I'm ready to tell all about the rollicking good times I had all over the place. Errr... to be narrower in my description, I'm not ready to tell *at this moment* because my attention span says no, but I'm psyching myself up for it. I've been keeping tabs along the way of all the things I've wanted to note, and hopefully I'll be able to recount everything in some detail. Just not today! Instead, I'm going to list a, uh, table of contents, because I'm most definitely going to be doing this piecemeal. Sort of to make things easier to swallow and also so that I don't build up a psychological barrier to updating.
Just so this particular post doesn't get classified just as one of those stupid frank "I've got a blog" entries, I'll introduce the new situation with my refrigerator. Our fridge was unplugged while I was gone, presumably to save energy, but when I opened it yesterday, I discovered that much of its interior surface area is covered in mold. Quite smelly mold. Mold akin to bread mold, fortunately, so it doesn't appear slimy or orange or anything like that. Also there is an egg in there, which makes me very uneasy. I went out to the store today and bought some cleaning cloths, a kitchen cleaner that's hopefully anti-bacterial, and what I assume is an odor neutralizer for the aftermath. Actually, I tried to communicate to one of the sales ladies that I needed something to clean my fridge because it molded, and she insisted that there's no cleaning solution I can use because you put food in there, and that I should just wipe it with water. Well, maybe soap and water might be effective enough for SOME (okay, maybe most) people, but I personally want the peace of mind that all microorganisms in that fridge expired in a storm of chemicals. Sales ladies have this tendency to give me doubtable information about... everything. It makes it harder for me to trust. Anyways, I bought some things I thought might work, and also have an antiseptic that I use with my laundry that I was thinking about splashing in there too.
I then decided that I didn't want to do that today either, so I'm psyching myself up for that as well.
Tomorrow will be such a full day!
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
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...
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...
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Plus more adventures in food
last night, i dreamt that i was driving in mariokart along with a number of friends. it was sort of macabre.
Also included: baking experiment #1.
Ah, so yesterday was my day off! I sat around for part of the morning as Alice configured her new gmail account, then the two of us went out shopping. It was coooold yesterday! Well, just chilly and very windy. The wind totally sabotaged my outfit and I had to run back upstairs to change. Gangtie Lu (a wide road running E-W) was like one big wind tunnel.
We started out at a "spicy soup" place, as Alice has been calling it. It's funny she does this sort of descriptive translation for me, which is nice, but I swear I can handle the actual Chinese words... it'd be more helpful anyways. I think if I needed to find this sort of food on my own and asked someone for spicy soup, they wouldn't know where to begin. Almost every one of this region's specialties I've encountered so far has revolved around this main idea of spicy soup. Anyways, it's called ma la chuan, and it's the Mongolian BBQ of soup. Anything with the word "chuan"in it involves a skewer, by the way. So we ran across the street to this little restaurant that was incredibly crowded. No seats. We went up to what looked like a set of produce shelves at the supermarket, where there were baskets full of skewered mushrooms, tofu, greens, hot dogs, fish balls, squid, tofu skin, etc. You pick up your own basket and fill it with whatever you want. I went with two things of frozen tofu, sweet potato, yellowish brown mushroom slices, and some big leafy greens. Then up to the counter to pay for it... plus some potato starch noodles and a cold green tea, it all came to... Y7.5? Less than 10 anyway. They gave me a number- 6- and I went with Alice to stake out a seat. We managed to sit down at a counter, but it was not build for people to eat around it, and they were sort of using it to store some vegetables. So we snatched a table after some other people left.
You have to wait a while for everything to boil, but after a while, they bring out a bowl lined in a plastic bag filled with a whitish-yellow broth and a thin orange film of oil on top, assuming you asked for hot sauce, which I so did. You know, it was ok. I think I personally had better last week and a place near the Training Ctr. The broth was barely discernable... the entire thing was just the best spiciest soup ever. Dark red! It was great. I was crying, which is a natural reaction to having that much chili at one time. Ooh!
After that, we ran through the chill to an indoor mall selling nothing but clothes. I got a pretty generic navy track jacket from Eruner. Some nice white racing stripes down the side. And I put it on immediately, over my fleece, cuz it was cold outside.
When we finished there, we went back over to Wangfujing. We go there a lot. Just twice last week for the microwave. We went through the supermarket in the basement for.... baking ingredients! And a bunch of random crap. I always feel like an 8 year old who was asked to do the shopping for her family and buys only junk food and snacks. It's not aaaall junk food, but we're always short on snacks around here. The worst was this really heavy sack of flour.
Then back up to the 5th floor for a toaster oven! I bought a hulk of a toaster oven, a big brushed silver Galanz. It has a rotisserie function. Cost me Y638. We begged the saleslady for free gifts since we are clearly regular customers. She managed to find a set of spice jars and another microwaveable dish (we got two free with our microwave). One of the salesmen gave us a Y500 gift card in exchange for 500 in cash, and then carried everything out to the curb for us. I took the oven and all the groceries in a cab so that Alice could return with the bike.
The first thing I did was whip out an oatmeal raisin (that was originally "oatmean raising" for people who are interested in my disintegrating typing skills) cookie recipe I found online (ok, actually the first thing I did was put two pairs of jeans into the wash, but whatever). People here don't ever bake, so first of all, no one could understand why I wanted to buy such a big expensive oven in the first place.
Here's where the tricks game up though. The recipe called for baking soda. We bought two known leavening agents at the store, assuming one was soda and one was powder, but were unable to tell the difference between the two. I remembered a speech my home ec teacher gave in the 8th grade about what horrible things happen when you accidentally use one instead of the other. I realized that after all the baking I've done, I couldn't remember what one looked like compared to the other. I thought I'd be all clever and Mr. Science-y, and do some simple experiments in my kitchen, but... ok, so both contain NaHCO3, sodium bicarbonate, so both will react if you pour vinegar on them. So getting all excited about that didn't help me one bit. It turns out that baking powder is baking soda already mixed with a dry acid and usually corn starch and will react as it gets wet. So I added water and nothing happened to either. So I felt silly.
One did look more like corn starch than the other, but I didn't know if that was good enough. The internet didn't help a whole lot. On various message boards, some people claimed that xiaoshuda, which I had in a green bag, was baking soda, and on other boards, folks claimed that it was baking powder. I conclude that maybe none of these people actually know. The label on the other bag, a pink one bearing a character I don't recognize but am tempted to pronounce as "cheng" plus a character I do know, mian, is unscrutinized on the internet and didn't show up in Alice's translator. Xiaoshuda came up as "saleratus" which I had to dictionary.com to find out meant baking soda. Buuut, then there was all that other contradictory info. Finally Alice called her mom and came back with the answer, " just use the green one... the pink one you should use only if you're cooking something sour." A hint, yet still more contradictory.
This led me to believe that the green bag was actually full of baking powder, since soda needs an acid added in the recipe to do anything. But I decided to just listen to her mom, even though the recipe called for soda. A quick internet check revealed that various recipes call for one, the other, or both, so I just threw up my hands and went for it.
I mixed everything together in a pot. The recipe... basically functioned as a set of guidelines. The actual portioning of ingredients came entirely out of my ass. For one, it called for a cup of butter, but I only had one smaller-than-usual stick, so... Also, I don't have ANY measuring equipment! So I used a paper cup and what I thought was a teaspoon but which I now believe to be nearly two teaspoons. The recipe called for a massive amount of brown sugar, by the way. So I got to the part about raisins. I had a bag of green raisins that I got from the market a while ago, but when I tasted them it turns out... they're not the kind of raisins that would go into a cookie. So I ran to the fridge and got an apple and chopped that up. In baking the first batch, I discovered that 176ºC is so much hotter than the recipe needed. So I turned it down to about 140º. It looked to me like the bottoms were burning, but it was actually the brown sugar playing tricks on my vision.
I added some coffee grounds to the second batch, because I love coffee grounds in baking. Thanks to one of my kayaking instructors who introduced the idea to me and a Bobby Flay BBQ special for cementing that for me.
So... the outcome... Uh. You know, they're good. I'm happy to eat cookies like this. But there were a few brown sugar lumps that I didn't get to, so every once in a while you get this molasses burst that can be a little creepy if you're not prepared. Also, here and there you get a bite that's almost... savory? but not in a bad way. So I dunno. What I've determined is that the oven works. It's just execution that needs to be cleaned up a bit.
Alice's two friends were over by the time I finished, and the four of us went out for hotpot. This meal lasted for way too long. One of her friends met several of his there, and we couldn't leave until they were finished talking. In the meantime, the other three of us chewed gum and I dissected most of the larger floating spices in the soup and composed a portrait out of the leftovers. You know hotpot by now. This place does it pretty well and gives you a choice of two broths-- I thought it was called xiaofeiyang (little fat sheep/goat), but it seems like it's actually called something else. There are two giant statues of adorable goats in mongolian garb pulling noodles outside though, and I really want to climb one some night after I get a new camera. Very busy that night-- one very celebratory party at two large tables directly to our left, so...
Afterwards, they wanted to go to the internet cafe, so I went along. Spent most of my time reading around NYtimes and National Geographic and they played a Mariokart-esque racing game (hence my dream). We were there until 12, when most of the lights were turned off. By then I really had to pee and even my skin smelled like smoke. Alice and I took a cab home, where, unable to really account for anything I wanted to do, I did dishes, showered, and went to bed.
Ta da!
Also included: baking experiment #1.
Ah, so yesterday was my day off! I sat around for part of the morning as Alice configured her new gmail account, then the two of us went out shopping. It was coooold yesterday! Well, just chilly and very windy. The wind totally sabotaged my outfit and I had to run back upstairs to change. Gangtie Lu (a wide road running E-W) was like one big wind tunnel.
We started out at a "spicy soup" place, as Alice has been calling it. It's funny she does this sort of descriptive translation for me, which is nice, but I swear I can handle the actual Chinese words... it'd be more helpful anyways. I think if I needed to find this sort of food on my own and asked someone for spicy soup, they wouldn't know where to begin. Almost every one of this region's specialties I've encountered so far has revolved around this main idea of spicy soup. Anyways, it's called ma la chuan, and it's the Mongolian BBQ of soup. Anything with the word "chuan"in it involves a skewer, by the way. So we ran across the street to this little restaurant that was incredibly crowded. No seats. We went up to what looked like a set of produce shelves at the supermarket, where there were baskets full of skewered mushrooms, tofu, greens, hot dogs, fish balls, squid, tofu skin, etc. You pick up your own basket and fill it with whatever you want. I went with two things of frozen tofu, sweet potato, yellowish brown mushroom slices, and some big leafy greens. Then up to the counter to pay for it... plus some potato starch noodles and a cold green tea, it all came to... Y7.5? Less than 10 anyway. They gave me a number- 6- and I went with Alice to stake out a seat. We managed to sit down at a counter, but it was not build for people to eat around it, and they were sort of using it to store some vegetables. So we snatched a table after some other people left.
You have to wait a while for everything to boil, but after a while, they bring out a bowl lined in a plastic bag filled with a whitish-yellow broth and a thin orange film of oil on top, assuming you asked for hot sauce, which I so did. You know, it was ok. I think I personally had better last week and a place near the Training Ctr. The broth was barely discernable... the entire thing was just the best spiciest soup ever. Dark red! It was great. I was crying, which is a natural reaction to having that much chili at one time. Ooh!
After that, we ran through the chill to an indoor mall selling nothing but clothes. I got a pretty generic navy track jacket from Eruner. Some nice white racing stripes down the side. And I put it on immediately, over my fleece, cuz it was cold outside.
When we finished there, we went back over to Wangfujing. We go there a lot. Just twice last week for the microwave. We went through the supermarket in the basement for.... baking ingredients! And a bunch of random crap. I always feel like an 8 year old who was asked to do the shopping for her family and buys only junk food and snacks. It's not aaaall junk food, but we're always short on snacks around here. The worst was this really heavy sack of flour.
Then back up to the 5th floor for a toaster oven! I bought a hulk of a toaster oven, a big brushed silver Galanz. It has a rotisserie function. Cost me Y638. We begged the saleslady for free gifts since we are clearly regular customers. She managed to find a set of spice jars and another microwaveable dish (we got two free with our microwave). One of the salesmen gave us a Y500 gift card in exchange for 500 in cash, and then carried everything out to the curb for us. I took the oven and all the groceries in a cab so that Alice could return with the bike.
The first thing I did was whip out an oatmeal raisin (that was originally "oatmean raising" for people who are interested in my disintegrating typing skills) cookie recipe I found online (ok, actually the first thing I did was put two pairs of jeans into the wash, but whatever). People here don't ever bake, so first of all, no one could understand why I wanted to buy such a big expensive oven in the first place.
Here's where the tricks game up though. The recipe called for baking soda. We bought two known leavening agents at the store, assuming one was soda and one was powder, but were unable to tell the difference between the two. I remembered a speech my home ec teacher gave in the 8th grade about what horrible things happen when you accidentally use one instead of the other. I realized that after all the baking I've done, I couldn't remember what one looked like compared to the other. I thought I'd be all clever and Mr. Science-y, and do some simple experiments in my kitchen, but... ok, so both contain NaHCO3, sodium bicarbonate, so both will react if you pour vinegar on them. So getting all excited about that didn't help me one bit. It turns out that baking powder is baking soda already mixed with a dry acid and usually corn starch and will react as it gets wet. So I added water and nothing happened to either. So I felt silly.
One did look more like corn starch than the other, but I didn't know if that was good enough. The internet didn't help a whole lot. On various message boards, some people claimed that xiaoshuda, which I had in a green bag, was baking soda, and on other boards, folks claimed that it was baking powder. I conclude that maybe none of these people actually know. The label on the other bag, a pink one bearing a character I don't recognize but am tempted to pronounce as "cheng" plus a character I do know, mian, is unscrutinized on the internet and didn't show up in Alice's translator. Xiaoshuda came up as "saleratus" which I had to dictionary.com to find out meant baking soda. Buuut, then there was all that other contradictory info. Finally Alice called her mom and came back with the answer, " just use the green one... the pink one you should use only if you're cooking something sour." A hint, yet still more contradictory.
This led me to believe that the green bag was actually full of baking powder, since soda needs an acid added in the recipe to do anything. But I decided to just listen to her mom, even though the recipe called for soda. A quick internet check revealed that various recipes call for one, the other, or both, so I just threw up my hands and went for it.
I mixed everything together in a pot. The recipe... basically functioned as a set of guidelines. The actual portioning of ingredients came entirely out of my ass. For one, it called for a cup of butter, but I only had one smaller-than-usual stick, so... Also, I don't have ANY measuring equipment! So I used a paper cup and what I thought was a teaspoon but which I now believe to be nearly two teaspoons. The recipe called for a massive amount of brown sugar, by the way. So I got to the part about raisins. I had a bag of green raisins that I got from the market a while ago, but when I tasted them it turns out... they're not the kind of raisins that would go into a cookie. So I ran to the fridge and got an apple and chopped that up. In baking the first batch, I discovered that 176ºC is so much hotter than the recipe needed. So I turned it down to about 140º. It looked to me like the bottoms were burning, but it was actually the brown sugar playing tricks on my vision.
I added some coffee grounds to the second batch, because I love coffee grounds in baking. Thanks to one of my kayaking instructors who introduced the idea to me and a Bobby Flay BBQ special for cementing that for me.
So... the outcome... Uh. You know, they're good. I'm happy to eat cookies like this. But there were a few brown sugar lumps that I didn't get to, so every once in a while you get this molasses burst that can be a little creepy if you're not prepared. Also, here and there you get a bite that's almost... savory? but not in a bad way. So I dunno. What I've determined is that the oven works. It's just execution that needs to be cleaned up a bit.
Alice's two friends were over by the time I finished, and the four of us went out for hotpot. This meal lasted for way too long. One of her friends met several of his there, and we couldn't leave until they were finished talking. In the meantime, the other three of us chewed gum and I dissected most of the larger floating spices in the soup and composed a portrait out of the leftovers. You know hotpot by now. This place does it pretty well and gives you a choice of two broths-- I thought it was called xiaofeiyang (little fat sheep/goat), but it seems like it's actually called something else. There are two giant statues of adorable goats in mongolian garb pulling noodles outside though, and I really want to climb one some night after I get a new camera. Very busy that night-- one very celebratory party at two large tables directly to our left, so...
Afterwards, they wanted to go to the internet cafe, so I went along. Spent most of my time reading around NYtimes and National Geographic and they played a Mariokart-esque racing game (hence my dream). We were there until 12, when most of the lights were turned off. By then I really had to pee and even my skin smelled like smoke. Alice and I took a cab home, where, unable to really account for anything I wanted to do, I did dishes, showered, and went to bed.
Ta da!
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Where to find dental floss
If ever you find yourself in a Chinese supermart on a quest for dental floss, try saving yourself some time. Rather than stalking the dental care aisles, direct yourself to cutlery and silverware. There you may find what you seek!
Granted, that's where they were keeping the toothpicks, but still...
I had a moment a few days ago where I was a little freaked out by my teeth, so I've also been drinking a bit more milk. I realized that without my regular intake of lattes, ice cream, cheese, and alfredo sauce I am getting zero calcium. So I went for the hi-cal milk, which I got accidentally on a previous trip and is actually awesome because it really tastes like it came out of a cow. China is not really the place for skim drinkers. Anyways, I sometimes get the impression that I'm drinking butter, so that can't be bad.
Got my first high school class in two weeks this afternoon. Alice is out copying our handouts now. We'll see how this first class goes... figured I'd get the lyrics interpretation/descriptive language out of the way the first week, since I don't know what kinds of things I can play on their equipment yet. After this, we'll do pop culture (music, movies, tv), education, admissions-type questions and tests (TOEFL, IELTS), cities and travel, and so on. I thought about the food thing a bit, and I'm thinking now that it might be sorta boring to do an entire class on.
Then the training center tonight, hopefully all the students will show up today. Last time, we were locked out of the room for like 30 min before one of the students busted in with a plastic card. Then a ton of technical difficulties, which I think I can overcome today. So music there, then some more Eternal Sunshine. I'll let you know how that movie goes with them.
I just watched it again to take notes-- I looooove that movie!
Granted, that's where they were keeping the toothpicks, but still...
I had a moment a few days ago where I was a little freaked out by my teeth, so I've also been drinking a bit more milk. I realized that without my regular intake of lattes, ice cream, cheese, and alfredo sauce I am getting zero calcium. So I went for the hi-cal milk, which I got accidentally on a previous trip and is actually awesome because it really tastes like it came out of a cow. China is not really the place for skim drinkers. Anyways, I sometimes get the impression that I'm drinking butter, so that can't be bad.
Got my first high school class in two weeks this afternoon. Alice is out copying our handouts now. We'll see how this first class goes... figured I'd get the lyrics interpretation/descriptive language out of the way the first week, since I don't know what kinds of things I can play on their equipment yet. After this, we'll do pop culture (music, movies, tv), education, admissions-type questions and tests (TOEFL, IELTS), cities and travel, and so on. I thought about the food thing a bit, and I'm thinking now that it might be sorta boring to do an entire class on.
Then the training center tonight, hopefully all the students will show up today. Last time, we were locked out of the room for like 30 min before one of the students busted in with a plastic card. Then a ton of technical difficulties, which I think I can overcome today. So music there, then some more Eternal Sunshine. I'll let you know how that movie goes with them.
I just watched it again to take notes-- I looooove that movie!
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