Overseas Chinese Web Guide

Author: Ken Chan

  • Siri: Remind Me to Put the Gazpacho on Ice

    While Siri is not perfect, I don’t view it as an embarrassment. I do blame Apple for the times when Siri cannot reach Apple’s servers. However, the voice recognition issues are understandable. When some people talk, all I hear is a jumble of words. So, imagine the task Siri faces when trying to understand everyone.

    On One Foot Tsunami, I saw all the different ways that Siri failed to parse the command to put the gazpacho on ice in an hour. After I finished laughing, I decided to give Siri a try:

    Siri nailed it on the second attempt. During the first attempt, gazpacho became Kasbe Chou, a somewhat Chinese sounding name. Still, if Siri can understand my English, maybe the problem isn’t Siri.

  • Washington Monument, Washington DC

    The Washington Monument in Washington, D.C. is a marvelous sight. Visible on arrival to Reagan National Airport, the monument greets visitors arriving at the nation’s capitol.

    At night, the monument is well lit.

    In the early morning, I was able to catch the sun’s rays lighting up the side of the Washington Monument.

    Walking around the Washington Monument, I took this experimental shot with the monument backlit.

  • Giant Panda at the National Zoo

    The National Zoological Park in Washington, D.C. offers visitors an encounter with rare Giant Pandas.

    We reached the Giant Panda exhibit shortly past noon on a warm Washington afternoon and I was concerned. After all the talk about Giant Pandas, the warm weather had me worried that our good friends would be huddled out-of-sight in some cool den. And, looking around, I could not see a single Giant Panda.

    Inside the monitoring station, I could see a Giant Panda taking a nap at an indoor pen. Better than nothing, I thought.

    After exiting the station, I continued walking and spotted this Giant Panda getting ready for feeding time.

    The zookeeper offered the Giant Panda a brown bag of treats. In the lunch bag was bamboo shoots and frozen fruit.

    Giant Panda munching away on the bamboo shoot. Big smile!

    Giant Panda scratches that itch with the foot.

    Thankfully, the Giant Panda made an appearance and we all left happy.

    The National Zoo is a short walk from the Woodley Park-Zoo metro station.

  • Cherry Blossom Festival 2012

    2012 marks the 100th anniversary of the Cherry Blossom Festival. Although I visited Washington, D.C. before the average peak bloom date, all the cherry trees around the tidal basin–save one–had already bloomed due to the unseasonably warm temperatures. Fortunately, the cherry trees along the Potomac River, as well as a few around the city, were still at their grandest.

    I have some cherry trees in my yard, but they are not as gorgeous as the ones around the tidal basin.

    From afar, the blossoms appear as pink cotton balls.

    Up close, the blossoms are almost like pink carnations.

    A bus runs from the Jefferson Memorial to Hains Point, if you are interested in viewing the cherry blossoms along the Potomac River.

    I also found cherry blossoms at the United States Supreme Court.

    I may have missed the cherry blossoms around the tidal basin, but what remained in other locations was still absolutely beautiful. Simply gorgeous.

  • Apple Siri Lawsuit

    I am really puzzled by the Siri lawsuit. In my experience, Siri has been an absolutely amazing–and almost magical–product.

    At first, I just asked Siri stupid questions. Not my fault really since I wasn’t entirely sure how Siri worked. The FAQ for Siri is really no help at all. However, as I’ve slowly figured out some useful tasks for Siri, I’ve come to rely on it more and more.

    Reminders. Siri is great for setting reminders. I find it a lot easier to dictate a reminder, place and time, than to type it on the virtual keyboard. If I keep forgetting to do something when I get back home, I can have the iPhone 4S remind me when I arrive at home. Siri is also great for setting up shopping lists. By adding the local Costco warehouse to my address book, I can tell Siri to remind me to buy a specific product when I arrive at Costco.

    Alarms. I use Siri to set most of my alarms now. Much easier to have the iPhone 4S remind me, than to keep close track of time.

    Messages. So much easier to dictate a message to Siri than to type it in on the virtual keyboard. This is especially true when I have one hand holding the iPhone 4S and the other hand clutching a bag of groceries. Simply indispensable.

  • Canyon de Chelly, Chinle, Arizona

    After Monument Valley, I headed for Canyon de Chelly National Monument in Chinle, Arizona. I stayed at the Holiday Inn, which was not far from the Canyon de Chelly Visitor Center.

    At the visitor center, I picked up a route map and headed off along the South Rim Drive. Since I had not been to Canyon de Chelly before, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I drove to Spider Rock, which is at the end of the South Rim Drive, and then stopped at as many overlooks on the way back as time permitted.

    The highlight of the South Rim Drive route is spotting all the dwellings on the face of the canyon walls.

    In the absence of binoculars, I just used the long-end of the zoom lens. To get a closer look, you need to take a guided tour in the canyon floor.

  • National Rice Cooker Non-Stick Pan

    Rice cookers are truly the work horses of the Chinese kitchen: toiling each day behind the scenes and maybe even taken for granted despite their constant effort to optimally prepare a bowl of rice. Our National rice cooker has faithfully delivered thousands of bowls of perfect rice over the years. However, it was beginning to show its age.

    The once pristine pan had accumulated some unsightly nicks and scratches in its non-stick coating. While purchasing a new rice cooker is one option, a cheaper alternative may be to just buy a replacement pan.

    So now, the rice cooker has a new non-stick pan which I purchased from the Panasonic. If your rice cooker pan starts wearing out, don’t forget to consider purchasing a replacement part instead of buying an entirely new rice cooker.

  • Momofuku Cookbook

    Last weekend, I found a copy of Momofuku by David Chang and Peter Meehan at the local library. It’s part autobiography and part cookbook with plenty of color and colorful language. While I’ve never set foot inside a Momofuku restaurant, I have read or heard quite a bit about their famous pork buns, so I decided to tackle that recipe first.

    The roast pork belly was simple to prep and cook. However, being an experiment, I did not cook the requisite 3-pound slab of skinless pork belly. Instead, I started with a 1-pound slab of skin-on pork belly, which was quite decent in size. I thought I would end up with more than enough roast pork, but the original square slab of pork belly reduced to a rectangular package of caramel goodness while in the oven.

    The tender pork was quite good, particularly when nestled between a steamed (store-bought) bun and accompanied by a smear of hoisin and shredded green onions. The first batch with skin-on was a bit too crunchy, so I removed the skin for the second batch. Needless to say, the port buns were well received. However, considering the amount of fat and oil that oozed out of that delicious slab of meat, I don’t see this dish making a frequent repeat appearance on the dinner table.

    The ginger scallion sauce was also well done. I love adding it to rice, noodles, and just about everything else. I’m still searching for a recipe that I can make repeatedly. Someone of the other recipes (Pig’s Head? Seriously?) seem totally off-the-wall for home chefs. I have to test some of the other recipes to see if I can find something more practical that would justify buying the cookbook after I return this current copy to the library.

  • Monument Valley Tour

    During my stay in Monument Valley, I signed up for a scenic excursion with Monument Valley Safari. Our tour departed from the parking lot of The View Hotel.

    Now, this being my first visit to Monument Valley, I was not too sure what to except, outside of a view of the legendary mittens.

    Seeing the mittens in person is impressive enough. But, Monument Valley had even more to offer, such as a rock formation resembling an Indian face.

    The Three Sisters.

    I had opted for a sunset tour of Lower Monument Valley. During the winter, the sun sets quite early. It’s already heading down behind this rock formation.

    All sorts of arches and other natural formations in Monument Valley.

    Hail to the Big Chief!

    I had wondered whether spending a few hours looking at rock formations would get boring. The answer is no. The landscape was absolutely stunning, with each monument, butte or mesa different from each other. Monument Valley is one place that I wish I could have stayed longer.

  • Navigon iPhone GPS App Review

    People living in Silicon Valley are spoiled. With 3G data speeds, I’ve been able to rely on Google Maps for most trips outside the daily commute. However, as the Arizona trip approached, I knew that one lousy data connection and I was going to be lost. With that in mind, I purchased the Navigon GPS app for the iPhone.

    Fortunately, I did not wait until the last minute because downloading the app and its associated maps took a long, long time. Besides the map, there is an additional 194.8 MB of required files. I pretty much had to leave the iPhone alone and let it pull down maps overnight for all the states I was going to be traveling in–California, Nevada and Arizona. If you discover that you were missing maps, like I did, then pray that the hotel you are staying in offers a fast Wi-Fi connection. The Courtyard Page at Lake Powell really saved me when I discovered the night before I was heading out that I was missing the Utah map.

    For the most part, the Navigon app is somewhat straightforward. However, if you are accustomed to entering free-form addresses into Google, then Navigon’s approach of requiring the user to select a state, then a city, then a destination may feel archaic. I experienced a slight learning curve in terms of getting acclimated to the voice directions. Took a couple tries at first to get on the highway, but once I achieved that milestone, I didn’t experience any further problems. The issue was that I was not used to thinking in terms of feet, so I had some difficulty at first in gauging how far away the next turn was coming.

    At the Grand Canyon, the Navigon app was indispensable. Since the Grand Canyon Village does not have a traditional urban grid layout, figuring out which direction I was heading was not obvious, especially at night. The Navigon app took me from the highway to the hotel entrance without problems. The only hiccup I encountered was when heading out along the Desert View Drive. I always ended up at the Grand Canyon Visitor Center without the Navigon app telling me to turn right before the parking lot.

    Two other problems I encountered were entering GPS coordinates for The View Hotel in Monument Valley and finding a place to eat in Page, Arizona. To learn how to enter GPS coordinates, I had to depend on Google. Google told me that More > Coordinates would lead to the form for entering GPS coordinates. Not the Addresses or POI button, but the unintuitive More button. The POI button is for selecting a hotel or restaurant nearby or in a city. If the establishment is not in the Navigon database, you can perform a local search using Google. Using the local search option lead me to the wrong place while I was in Page, Arizona. If the Navigon app was integrated with Yelp or TripAdvisor, I would have like it even better.

    As it turned out, the Navigon app was absolutely indispensable. I’m not sure that I ever saw the 3G icon show up during the trek. I was mostly on EDGE, which is not much better than no connection at all. And, of course, don’t forget to bring a phone charger.