Third time is still not the charm

I meant to blog about this a while ago. I blogged earlier about Auntie Pauline’s lime jello cheesecake dessert, but little did I know I would be making it three times this past hoilday season, none of which came up to par!

1) Auntie Pauline’s family organized a surprise birthday party for her in early December. I volunteered to make the lime jello cheesecake as a sentimental feature, since the party was catered and already included dessert. Even though it’s got three layers, that’s not the hard part. The tricky part is to time the completion of the layers correctly, so that each liquid one is added after the one below has set properly. I screwed up in that the second layer of cheesecake had cooled too much in the mixing bowl, so that it didn’t pour evenly. I had to spread it with a spatula like putty. The result was several fissures, so that by the time I added the top layer of liquid green jello, it seeped all the way down to the crust. What I ended up with a marbled version of the cheesecake. Since each layer is supposed to be distinct from each other, the aesthetics was ruined. Ruined!

“Hey it’s not supposed to look like that!” exclaimed Auntie Pauline. Straight from the horse’s mouth; well our family is usually pretty straightforward. I laughed, partially in embarrassment. But she told me later that it tasted just as good.

2) I tried making it again for the family crab feed at New Year. This time I didn’t allocate enough time for the jello mixture to cool, so that when I poured it onto the cheesecake layer, it melted some of the cheesecake, and again, created a marbling effect in the jello. But it still tasted good.

3) The standard recipe fills a 9″ X 13″ pan, but since families tend to be smaller today, and most people are on some sort of dietary restriction (low sugar, low fat, low cholesterol), or simply don’t want to be stuck with leftovers, I decided to experiment with scaling it down, to fit a square 8″ X 8″ pan. Even though I hadn’t perfected it at full size yet! Fortunately, we had another family get-together in mid-January at Uncle YY’s house. “Why would you want to make a smaller version of the dessert?” he asked when I told him what dessert I was bringing. (He’s quite fond of it, and his issue is primarily anemia.) This time, my layers stayed separate. But I had miscalculated the volume, so that by the time I had completed the bottom and the middle layer, there was hardly any space left for the top layer of lime jello. So the ratio of the layers in each bite (which is important for the overall taste) was off.

Oh well. My next attempt at scaling down will be for Joe’s mom’s cheesecake recipe. It’s done in a 13″ round springform pan, which takes 5 adults way too many days to polish off. I’m going to attempt making it in an 8″ pan instead. One of these days. At least I’ve made this one successfully before in the 13″ pan!

Stowaways!

“Did you lose your keys?” Anne called on the phone.
“Hallelujah! You have my keys!” I was so relieved.
“I’m so sorry I took them by mistake, thinking they were mine.” It turns out she has a set of keys with a similar keychain medallion that says “If lost, please drop this in the nearest mailbox.” Only hers was from the blood bank, for having donated a gallon of blood (over time). Mine is from my alma mater alumni association, since I coughed up enough money for a lifetime membership (Not nearly as worthy a cause!)
“If they hadn’t been yours, I would have dropped them in the mailbox,” she said. It’s one of those things we’ve always wondered about (does it work?), but I didn’t really want to risk it and besides I wanted my keys back sooner rather than later.

In any case, it had been about 2-1/2 weeks since my keys went missing. It’s not unusual for me to misplace things for a few days. But I was pretty sure I hadn’t lost them in the sense that they were in the hands of a potentially unscrupulous stranger, but that it was somewhere in my house, in one of my myriad of bags? How did they end up with Anne? She had come over to carpool to class.

It made me recollect other incidences of my possessions taking long trips without me, which are pretty funny. All’s well that ends well, right?

About 15 years ago, Pat drove down from Vancouver for a long-weekend visit. On his last day here, we went to dim-sum, after which he dropped me off at my house and then headed on his long trek. For the next couple of days, I couldn’t find my car keys. I looked everywhere, but couldn’t find them. Then I got a call from Canada. “Did you leave your keys in my car?” Pat asked. Somehow they must have fallen out when I rode in his car. But since he didn’t usually have people riding in his backseat, he didn’t come across them immediately either. (In a delayed karmic tit-for-tat, last summer I had to mail the key to Pat’s flat back to him when I forgot to return it to him before I left HK!)

So misplacing keys is a commonplace thing. But what about a tent? My cousin Will and I had scheduled our respective weddings on back-to-back weekends one summer, so that relatives flying in could attend both in one trip. Biker and Si had decided they would go to Yellowstone National Park during that gap-week. So Joe and I loaned them our sleeping bags and tent, so they wouldn’t have to lug camping equipment all the way from Japan. We got out sleeping bags back, but then it wasn’t until they got back to Japan that they realised they still had our tent! It had been packed up into their suitcases, as they were going back right after the second wedding. Biker offered to send us money to pay for a new one (and keep ours), but fortunately his brother in LA was going to visit him later that fall, and brought it back for us!

“Gee,” said Joe. “I’ve never been to Japan, but my tent has!”

Swimming in Harlem and Dover – Part 2

I just got back from another trip back to Thailand (anchored by my cousin’s wedding.) This time I got to swim at an airport, twice no less.

Singapore’s Changi Airport (apparently it’s pronounced ‘Chang – ee’, not ‘Chang-jee’) boasts of many free amenities, including a free movie theatre, a couple of outdoor gardens (one a butterfly habitat), and even free mechanical feet massagers (I highly recommend you wear socks when using them), and a couple of train links between terminals (which might be nice if you have stir-crazy kids who like riding on trains). Of course there’s even more ways to separate your money from your wallet: the food and beverage outlets, the massages, the transit hotels, etc. (The shopping, however, is really much better at Hong Kong airport.)

The best money spent at Changi for me, is S$13.91 for the privilege of swimming in the pool at Terminal 1 (comes with loan of a towel, a locker key, shower and soap, and your choice of a box of ice tea in lemon, peach or apple flavour). I have no idea why the cost is pegged at such an odd number, why not round it up to $13.99? (It’s a smidgen under $10 US) You can stay for as long as you want. Do remember to bring your swimsuit with you. Although there is a Nike store at the airport, I don’t think they stock swimsuits.

There’s lounge chairs and shaded seats, and enough potted plants to feel green and tropical. A bar if you want a beer. It’s outdoors, but the buzz of airplanes taking off and landing is not too noisy, although the blasts of jet diesel fumes might bother some. There’s a jacuzzi.

The pool itself is kidney-bean shaped, but it’s large enough where you can swim back and forth without feeling claustrophic-dizzy. Since I was transitting both ways, I swam twice. My first swim was in the afternoon: and it’s warm enough that the water got too hot for me after 20 minutes of swimming. The second swim at 8:00 AM was better, the water hadn’t heated up with the day yet.

I missed out on a second swim in a locale that I’ve always wanted, but barely dared to swim in: a Thai canal klong. Instead I went paddling in the klong in a rua (which I’d never done before either). Instead of a traditional wooden Thai rua (as in kwey-tiao rua or the ones you see at floating markets), they now make rua in plastic, but it’s shaped exactly like the traditional wooden ones. This was a bright blue one, provided by Baan Suan Manovejchapan, a homestay where I stayed overnight in Samut Songkhram. They have a website www.meaklonghomestay.com, but URL is invalid right now. I highly recommend you email instead.

It is a wonderful traditional Thai wooden house on the klong, with extensive gardens/orchards extending inland. Among other typical fruits like coconuts, mangoes, and bananas, they also had this unusual species of chompoo (rose apple) that was round instead of triangular, and yellow instead of green or red or pink. It also had an unusual fragrance. On site is also a mushroom shed, and a outdoor stove/chimney for cooking coconut/palm sugar.

The klong is very quiet. The entire neighbourhood is orchards/farms and homes. The murmuring sounds of radios carried over the water from nearby houses. There’s lots of birds cries in the midst of all this greenery. I was perfectly content for hours, sitting on the porch at edge of the water, just watching the clumps of water hyacinth (introduced and now a prolific nuisance) floating by, along with odd plastic bottle (alas, reality).

There’s very little traffic on weekdays, so that any passing boat was an exciting event! A monk came by paddling upstream collecting alms around 6:30 AM. The dogs hung out on the pier with me as I gave the monk alms. On his way back downstream to his temple. he stopped again at our pier, where the dogs had been waiting and fed the dogs some of the alms he’d been given. After that, the dogs went back to the garden for a nap!

At 9 AM, a kwey tiao rua boat came by, and even though I was in the middle of a very tasty shrimp khao tom breakfast, I hailed the vendor for a bowl of noodles, to enjoy the novelty of buying kwey tiao from an actual passing rua (as opposed to the stationary vendors on land, whose boats are marooned on display!) To be practical, I borrowed a bowl from the kitchen, so that the vendor didn’t have to come back to pick up her bowl. (You simply can’t eat these soup noodles from a disposable styrofoam container!)

There’s more boat vendors on the weekends, where you can hail to buy fruit, veggies, flowers and prepared foods from people paddling their way to the local floating market, which is small and can only function on the weekends, unlike the big one at Damnoen Saduak, which gets enough tourists to be a daily event.

One of Baan Manovejchapan’s claims to trivia fame is that “King Chulalongkorn slept here.” Well, this is true of a lot more places in Thailand that one might think. (The claim to fame for the house across the klong is only that a Thai TV series was filmed there.)

Otherwise known as Rama V, Chulalongkorn reigned around the turn of the 20th century, and among the many progressive things he did, one was to travel around the country incognito, in order to find out first hand how things were going around his kingdom, instead of relying on second hand, potentially doctored reports from his courtiers and employees. I suspect he also had a bit of a travel bug; he also visited, in official capacity, Singapore, India, Java, and Europe (twice), as well as other parts of his domain!

Often on these incognito trips he went undetected, taken for some wealthy man, traveling with a few servants. As ordinary people offered hospitality to almost every passing traveller: meals and a place to sleep for the night, he really got to experience a lot of homestays! A few times, he was recognised, as photography had been introduced to Siam in his father’s reign, but few people had photographs of the king, much less themselves.

The thought crossed my mind that it would be impossible for King Bhumibol (the current king, Chulalongkorn’s grandson) to make the same sort of incognito trips today, with the proliferation of media, and the extreme veneration of the king. In Thailand, you’d have to be born blind to not know what HM looks like, as there isn’t a single home, business, workplace or even public street that doesn’t have a portrait of him. And yes, they were all put up voluntarily.

Come to think of it, even King Chulalongkorn himself would be unable to go anywhere in his kingdom unrecognised today, as there are many people who also venerate him by putting up his portrait at their home, business or workplace. (Rarely is his portrait part of a public street display, though.) For visitors to Thailand, Chulalongkorn is the one with a moustache, without glasses. Bhumibol has glasses and no moustache. For more context, Chulalongkorn is the son of the king in “The King and I”

Conan and Tintin?

The red hair. The giant cowlick. The big billboard sized forehead. Boyish and seemingly non-sexy.
I can’t be the only one who thinks the talk-show host and the boy wonder reporter are twins separated at birth. Maybe during Conan’s impending hiatus from the TV-dom, he could take on the role of Tintin in the live-action (unimaginable!) movie being produced by Spielberg?

Earthquake: preparedness vs rescue

I was talking to someone who relocated from the US to Sichuan. She works in the transportation industry and was telling me her cultural war stories. Her frustration with the way things work, or don’t work, over there, were fascinating to me (Of course, since I wasn’t the one having to deal with them personally! Although I could sympathize with her). She was the first person I’d talked to who worked in China in my field: transportation. Two things she said that most struck me:

1) “There’s really no transportation planning per se in China, it’s only barely started to take hold. Most planning is done top done, from the central government down to the provinces, cities etc. Also, all the transportation planners are really young, some have studied abroad. But still there are no experienced transportation planners who could mentor them, the Cultural Revolution caused the void of a generation of transportation planners who would have been the current generation of managers“

That really struck a nerve in me, because I never thought about that. Those who were youths/young adults during the Cultural Revolution are now middle-aged. I guess they correspond roughly the Baby Boomer generation here. Here, as baby boomers are retiring in droves, they are leaving quite a void of their experience and continuity in their workplace. I saw lots of middle-aged people in China, going about their normal daily lives, but I guess a lot of them had their education and careers disrupted and thrown off track by the Cultural Revolution, so they could be ‘poorer’ and less ’successful’ than they should be if they had a normal life course. Some of them could have been transportation planning managers today.

Some of them must have been Red Guards too. I wonder how they feel today about all the mayhem and social violence they committed back then, or do they simply seal off that part of their memories? Some punk who bullied others and vandalized property then, became an ordinary postal clerk, or a taxi-driver. Just like some Nazi guard who tortured prisoners then, became one of many autoworkers in the American Midwest.

2) She was talking to one of her Chinese colleagues about the lack of transportation planning before building. “If you took the time to plan it before your build the transportation project, you wouldn’t have to go back to fix it after it fails.” In China, apparently they’re growing so fast, they don’t have time to plan. When problems arise after project completion, they just patch it up or tear it down and build a new one. Her colleague explained to her,

“Over there (US), you do earthquake prevention/preparedness. Over here (in China), we do earthquake rescue!”

There’s some irony to that, they’re working in Sichuan, which last year was the scene of a horrendous earthquake where a lot of seismically-substandard schools collapse and killed lots of students who were the only children of their parents (thanks to the one-child policy).

I usually am too clueless to feel earthquakes (when Loma Prieta hit, I was walking around campus along Strawberry Creek. Since there was major construction going on at the Life Sciences Building, I thought some clumsy crane operator had dropped a steel I-beam.) But I actually felt the one last Thursday morning. I was in my car, and it shook. I was worried that it was a sign that my car was really ready to breakdown.

Phew! App was app’d

No, I’m not talking about smart phones. The (grant) application (I wrote for an agency I worked for) was approved.

Last year, one of the major projects I worked on as a contractor was pulling together a grant application to Caltrans. The proposed project was a worthwhile one, I was just worried that the application didn’t sell it well enough, even though I put a lot of work into it. The matching funds for the project was a bit convoluted, because it was differentiated for various phases.

Competition was going to be fierce, especially with the State’s perpetual budget woes. I read a peer agency’s application for the same grant program (because I was charged with writing a letter of support for it), and I was worried, almost envious, because their application was really well-written. I would have felt really bad if my agency didn’t get the grant, because they paid me to put so many hours into it! However I forgot all about it after the summer until I had to look up something today on Caltrans’ website, and wandered into that section. I checked the approved projects list, and PHEW!, it got funded.

It might have been given a little less than what we requested (I can’t remember now), so hopefully the discount was due to Caltrans’ budget, and not my poor writing!

I’ve swum in Harlem, I’ve swum in Dover

Today was the first time I went swimming this year. It reminded me of something I keep meaning to blog about: going swimming in different places.

The following song was something we learnt in my elementary school; I guess it was traditionally sung by British sailors.

I`ve been to Harlem, I`ve been to Dover
I`ve traveled this wide world all over.
Over, over, three times over
Drink all the brandywine and turn the glasses over.
Sailing east, sailing west
Sailing o`er the ocean,
You`dd better watch out when the boat begins to rock
Or you`ll lose your girl in the ocean

OK, so I haven’t technically swum in Harlem or Dover. But last year, I did get to swim in a lot of different places. When I talk about swimming, I’m talking about doing laps, not just splashing about in a pool to play around. Terry, not my cousin, but Zoe’s dad, also swims quite a bit. He told me about this website swimmersguide.com which lists swimming pools all over the world, so that if you find yourself somewhere and want to do laps in a pool, you can easily find out where.

Here’s a brain dump of places where I’ve been swimming when I was away from home:

1) Kowloon Park, Hong Kong: I’ve walked past the length of Kowloon Park along Nathan Road umpteen times, but it wasn’t until this summer when I found out there was actually a pool there*. (I’d been dreading having to have schlep all the way from TST to Morrison Hill just to go swimming.) I went one morning fairly early at about 7 AM. There’s outdoor recreational pools (i.e. amoeba-shaped), and an indoor lap pool. Both unfortunately are really warm (I’m not sure from the weather, or if they’re heated.) I swam in the indoor pool, because it was marginally cooler, but even so, after 20 minutes I had to get out because it was too hot. The lap pool, at that hour, was dominated by elderly swimmers, and it was bit crowded. There were no lane dividers either, so I really had to watch for oncoming traffic while doing my laps back and forth. There is a McDonald’s in the park, right across from the pool entrance, which must do gangbusters business with all the post-swimming munchies. It was there when I noticed McDonald’s Hong Kong had mango pies, but I resisted trying one because I was looking forward to something better: egg custard tarts.** If you want to know it tastes like, check this link out.

2) Lake Michigan, Chicago – I hadn’t really intended to go swimming in Lake Michigan. We were staying in a hotel on Lakeshore Drive that I had booked, in part because it advertised a swimming pool. When I went showed up early one morning ready to go with my goggles, I found out that it was indoors on the third floor, and about twice the size of a baby’s bath-tub. “Is there anywhere else I could go swimming for real?” I asked the gym attendant in dismal. She stopped her mopping for a moment and nodded her head towards the window. “You could go swimming in the lake,” she said, not unkindly.

Outside the window, Lake Michigan was sparking like hematite sequins in the summer sun. I looked down and saw tiny little figures swimming around a line of buoys right off Ohio Beach. Woohoo!
It felt a little weird to walk through an underpass (Lakeshore Drive at that point is essentially a freeway) with little more than swimsuit and flip flops, and a hotel card key to get to the beach. Since it was early, there weren’t too many people on the beach, and the few people who were swimming seemed like the dedicated, athletic types, mostly were wearing wetsuits or tri-suits. “Is it warm enough to swim with just a swimsuit?” I asked a swimmer on the beach. “Yeah, though most people wear wetsuits.”
Oh well. I doggedly jumped in. It was cold, but not as intolerably so as Aquatic Park in SF. My swim was cut short, not because of the cold but because of the waves. They don’t call it Windy City for nothing. I got knocked by a large wave, water went up my nose and down my throat. I stopped to cough it out, but I was spooked. I tried to tell myself to pay more attention to rhythm of the waves, so that I wouldn’t choke a second time, but I ended up resorting to doggy paddling so much I gave up and climbed up one of the ladders to the sidewalk along the lake and got on dry land. Well, at least I can brag that I’ve swum in Lake Michigan. And if there’s a next time, I’ll bring a nose plug.

3) Lake Michigan, Milwaukee – Midwestern geography not being my strongest suit, I didn’t realise that the Lake Michigan that fronted Chicago also bordered Milwaukee up the ‘coast’. We went to Bradford Beach: Joe went jogging, while I was supposed to go swimming. But then it was getting late in the afternoon, with the wind kicking up, the water quite chilly. Plus there wasn’t really anywhere to shower. So I got lazy and availed myself of the free deckchairs that I presume Milwaukee County Parks had so thoughtfully provided for the public. Had a very nice nap indeed.

Unlike Ohio Beach in Chicago, Bradford Beach is really wide and long and heavily used. There was a building on the beach with a concessions and toilets, which wasn’t all too pristine, and the beach was lightly littered. It had a seediness that made it seem raffish, in a happy way. It reminded me of Repulse Bay in the 80’s. A beach that provided fun and relaxation for so many people from all walks of life.

4) Lee, Massachusetts: I find New England so quaint. In Cape Cod, they have signs that say “Thickly settled” which serve as warning signs to motorists to slow down as they’re approaching a town’s main street/commercial area. Around here, the signs simply would say “Reduce Speed Ahead.” Just the words “Thickly settled” connote the way Puritans talked, even through they probably could have never fathomed streams of speeding rental cars in the 21st century around the towns they established in the 17th. At the other end of the state, in the Berkshires, they have a quaint thing about their lakes. Towns have these beaches on the lakes, as part of their parks system. But the beaches aren’t public in that they are open to anybody; you have to be a resident of the Town of Lee to use those beaches. Fortunately, if you are staying in Lee as a visitor, you also qualify as an honorary resident. Your innkeeper can give you a temporary pass, or in our case, the park ranger at October Mountain State Forest where we were camping.

Lee’s cozy little lakefront beach came with picnic tables, adirondack chairs on the lawn, a sand pit with a net, a basket full of paddles and balls for beach games, and a changing rooms but no shower; and a porta-potty. I guess it’s more like a frugalistic country club for the residents of the entire town! There was a swimming deck buoyed maybe 35 yards away. Two teenage girls in red swimsuits (were they even lifeguards? Maybe they were beach attendants for their summer jobs) had paddled out in a canoe to the deck and diligently scrubbed off the bird poop with their broom brushes. I swam out there, feeling very happy. First, unlike the hike up Mt Greylock the day before, where I kept lagging behind; I was actually in my element in the water. Second, I rarely get a chance to swim in open freshwater; I’m usually in a chlorinated pool or saltwater when I swim. The algae or water weeds in the shallows didn’t bother me at all.

Since it was an overcast day, it was a little too cold to hang out on the deck, although the scenery of the forest ringing the lake was very nice.

5) Stadtbad Charlottenburg – Alte Halle, Berlin: It’s a public bath/swimming pool. They have a specialised schedule, where certain times are reserved for the elderly, the disabled, women only, . . .and if you see ‘FKK’, it’s an abbreviation of Freikörper-Kultur, which basically means naked swimming.
It makes me wonder if there are onsens in Japan that also offer lap swimming pools.

6) Hotel Del Coronado, San Diego: Rare is the hotel that actually has a pool that is functional for laps. Hotel Del has a beaut of a regular rectangle, 30 yards long. The one time I stayed there, the pool was roped off into lanes in the early morning for lap swimmers. (Later they remove them for the general free-for-all for kiddies.) A big plus is the setting of the pool near the beach; you can even look up and see the iconic red roof. Very civilised. The pool at the Oriental Hotel in Bangkok is almost as nice: it’s almost a regular rectangle, almost long enough, near but not within sight of the river, in a lushly landscaped setting.

* The other thing I found out this summer that I never noticed before was that there was a public light bus (minibus) that served Austin Road, close to our flat. “Is this new?” I asked Pat. “No, it’s always been here!” I guess all this time we would just walk to the MTR station. But to get to the Star Ferry, which is quite a bit further, the public light bus saves you a long walk. Problem is, it’s hard to get a seat on it during peak periods from our stop. PLB’s have strictly-observed maximum seat capacities; there’s no strap-hanging on them.

** Would you believe that in the 5 blocks between Kowloon Park pool and the flat, I couldn’t find any egg custard tarts for sale? This is a stretch with 3 bakeries (including a St. Honore — local bakery chain, a 7-Eleven, and a Starbucks. For some reason, they just don’t sell egg-custard tarts in this ‘hood. “We’ll have them in the afternoon,” St. Honore told me. I had to make do with the healthier alternative: overpriced imported plain yogurt.

Lagniappe 2009

1. Meet Me Halfway – Black Eyed Peas
An obligatory pop hit selection for the year.
2. Time After Time – Cyndi Lauper
At least 120 artists have covered this song, but how many have sampled from it?
3. Always True to You in My Fashion – Blossom Dearie
Departed this year. Will always be remembered for her distinctive voice and persona.
4. Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In – Fifth Dimension
Soundtrack for my rides to school when I was in 1st grade (8-track!), when Hair was originally on Broadway.
5. Step Right Up – Tom Waits
From 1975, this still struck a chord in 2009. Caught this surfin’ late night on KCSM.
6. Bas Ek Kinng – Singh is Kinng Soundtrack
Most people watch KQED cooking shows on Saturday mornings. Sometimes we watch ‘Namaste America’ instead.
7. Across the Crystal Sea – Danilo Perez
I don’t really like New Age, but this is very catchy, and gets cred from being on KCSM!
8. Canned Heat – Jamiroquai
I bought a used DVD of Napoleon Dynamite and fell in love with the dance sequence all over again. Vote for Pedro!
9. Yellow – Coldplay
Closing song to David Henry Hwang’s Yellowface.
10. Talkin’ Baseball (Willie, Mickey and the Duke) – Terry Cashman
San Diego version is Talkin’ Baseball (Padres All The Way). They won’t be going all the way anytime soon
11. Hells Bells – AC/DC
Eerie witnessing Trevor Time in Miller Park … against the Padres
12. Beer Barrel Polka – Liberace
Brewers’ home crowd belts out lyrics to this song immediately after Take Me Out To The Ballgame in 7th inning stretch
13. Ben – Michael Jackson
Requested but not played at friend Ben’s wedding either because Ben was about a rat, or MJ’s passing the same week
14. The Forgotten Times – Tsai Chin
“Go yum teem, chung yum jun, tai yum geng . . .” (Sweet high notes, accurate alto, deep bass) remarked Tony Leung in the movie Infernal Affairs. One of the best lines, in one the best scenes where he’s selling a stereo to Andy Lau..
15. Always On My Mind – Elvis Presley
Elvis was popular among locals for Thanksgiving karaoke during recent trip to Bangkok.
16. Surfin’ Bird – The Trashmen
Type in Surfin Bird on Google and the 2nd auto completion option is surfin bird family guy
17. Junk Food Junkie – Larry Groce
Organic, sea salt, white sugar, and macrobiotic were already in the lexicon of this 1976 song that reach #9 on Billboard
18. Take Me Home, Country Roads – John Denver
Joe’s foray into karaoke was not with The King but with this former Grape Nuts spokesman
19. New York, New York – Frank Sinatra
The Mets with Danny Meyer far outdid the Yankees in ballpark concessions department
20. Destination Anywhere – The Commitments (Soundtrack)
Can we leave already?

Porting my newspaper deliveries

Since I did a lot of travelling in 2009, I did a lot of vacation holds on my newspaper deliveries. It sounds really dumb, but I wish I could get my New York Times (or the International Herald Tribune) delivered to me wherever I’m at. Of course that feature already exists online, i.e. if I had an iPhone, I could read it anywhere, anytime.

I could even buy it at most newsstands, if I want to be stubbornly old-school and read it on paper.
But since the NYT/IHT is available in hard copy subscription in pretty much every major metropolis of the world (at least the ones I travelled to last year!), it would be neat if I could schedule it such that it gets delivered to my parents’ place in Bangkok, or the hotel I’m staying at in DC, etc etc. It would just be an addition to the regular local delivery to drop off an extra copy at an extra stop for a few days. Then I could still pick it up at the doorstep (or even from the hotel front desk, where it would be under my name) and read it while eating my breakfast, whether it’s an industrial brekfast pastry the size of Denmark, or leftovers from the dinner my step-mom cooked the night before.

No matter where I’m at, I’d still have a little ritual of home. That would feel so special.

After 2012, I’ll never have to buy another calendar again

Happy New Year! Since it is January 1, I went to change my calendar. Surprisingly enough we didn’t get any calendars (via presents or freebies from stores), I had to dig through my pile of old calendars to find a re-usable one. Some years I actually get new calendars (free), so I have “duplicates”.

Since 2010 is not a leap year, and today (Januray 1st) is a Friday, I looked for a 1999 calendar. No luck. I can’t believe I didn’t have a 1999 calendar. But that’s probably because I didn’t buy or get a 1999 calendar, because for that year I re-used a 1993 calendar, which also started January 1 on a Friday. The calendar features photographs of Lake Tahoe. I probably got it as a gift from someone, since I’m not into buying landscape scenery for calendars. Most of the ones I got are rather cartoony, like Peanuts, Far Side, etc.

One only needs a set of 14 calendars, for January 1 on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, etc on non-leap years, and then a corresponding set for leap years. Since I’ve been saving calendars since 1988, I’ve almost completed my set of 14. I’ve got leap year calendars from 1988 (Friday), 1992 (Wednesday), 1996 (Monday), 2000 (Saturday), 2004 (Thursday), 2008 (Tuesday). The last leap year calendar I need is 2012 (Sunday), and then I’m done.

Non-leap calendars can be reused more often. The set goes like this for Janaury 1 on the following days of the week:

Sunday: 1995, 2006, 2017
Monday: 1990, 2001, 2007
Tuesday: 1991, 2002, 2013
Wednesday: 1997, 2003, 2014
Thursday: 1998, 2009, 2015
Friday: 1999, 2010, 2021
Saturday: 1994, 2005, 2011

So next year, 2011, I have two 2005 calendars, one of Picasso prints, and a freebie from Sears that features Chinese folkart that is actually pretty cool.

Obvioulsy, while the dates for holidays like Forth of July and Thanksgiving will be correct, the preprinted dates for events based on the lunar calendar, like Chinese New Year and moon phases, will not be correct when you reuse these Gregorian calendars.

The neat thing about re-using calendars is when you see notes marked on dates when you first used the calendar. So the ones from my college years are marked “Math midterm”, “Chem final”, etc !