-
Thiabendazole Yum
I spotted the following note on the box of oranges I brought home from Costco: Treated to maintain freshness in transport with one or more of the following Thiabendazole, Imazalil and coated with food grade natural resins and/or vegetable wax. At Costco, the warning isn’t too helpful unless you know what those unpronounceable chemicals do…
-
Chef’s Choice 1520 AngleSelect Diamond Hone Electric Knife Sharpener
I recently purchased a Chef’s Choice 1520 AngleSelect Diamond Hone Electric Knife Sharpener because some kitchen knives were flunking the ripe tomato test. Basically, if a knife could not cleanly slice through a ripe tomato, which presents the dual challenge of a moderately tough skin with a mushy interior, then it flunks the ripe tomato…
-
Happy Hollow Park & Zoo, San Jose, CA
I recently paid a return visit to Happy Hollow Park & Zoo in San Jose, California. Unlike the chaos immediately after opening week, the park’s operations were more settled this time around. The crowds were smaller, the lines were shorter, and the rides turned around a lot faster. All the hiccups that were evident during…
-
西红柿鸡蛋é¢
The restaurant translated this as tomato egg surface. Not sure how the relatively easier é¢ ended up as surface. I would have expected the trickier 西红柿 to be mistranslated as western red persimmon. Google Translate offers the better translation of tomato and egg noodles.
-
醬肉煎包
The restaurant translated this to “The soy-sauce cooked pork fries the package.” Google Translate offers a translation of Sauce 煎包. Not particularly helpful. If I separate the words into 醬肉 ç…Ž 包, Google Translate then offers Sauce Fried package. I think Pan-Fried Beef or Pork Bun would be the better translation.
-
Traveling on Cathay Pacific
I have been flying on United Airlines almost exclusively just to consolidate my frequent flyer miles. However, when the opportunity to travel on Cathay Pacific arose, I was mistakenly reluctant. Instead of being blinded by frequent flyer miles, I should have taken a close look at what other airlines were providing to see if I…
-
iPad Coloring Apps
Young children love to color. Sometimes, they inappropriately express their creativity by coloring on walls. Not good. So, as parents or teachers, we have to provide them with a proper outlet for channel their passion: coloring books. However, on a road trip, bringing along a set of crayons and coloring books can be cumbersome. So,…
-
CIA Prisoners in China
Central Intelligence Agency: Two CIA Prisoners in China, 1952–73 Beijing’s capture, imprisonment, and eventual release of CIA officers John T. Downey and Richard G. Fecteau is an amazing story that too few know about today. Shot down over Communist China on their first operational mission in 1952, these young men spent the next two decades…
-
China 2010
I first visited China almost 30 years ago. Back then, China was defined more by its past than its future. Everything that amazed me during that initial trip had an age that could be measured in centuries if not millennia. During that visit, the economic gap between the United States and China could not have…
-
China Hotel Internet Access
First, the good news. When I visited China, all the hotels i stayed in had in-room broadband internet access. Now, the bad news. Unfortunately, only the hotel in Nanjing had in-room wireless internet access. For the rest, online access came in the form of an ethernet cable. If I was lugging around a MacBook Pro,…