Month: February 2005

I’m now on the Indian leg of this journey. Updates will follow, perhaps slowly. (23.3kbps dialup only)

Prawns, shrimp or scampi?

They use the word “prawns” here almost exclusively, and cutely say “shrimps” when one of us Americans looks at them funny at the utterance of prawn something.

For those of you too lazy to follow the link: shrimp=prawn except for some people only use prawn for medium to large size shrimp.

http://www.iusedtobelieve.com/

i used to believe is a collection of ideas that adults thought were true when they were children. it will remind you what it was like to be a child, fascinated and horrified by the world in equal parts. the following pages will reassure you that the things you used to believe weren’t so strange after all…

For instance: i used to think that since the movie screens in theatres were so big that there was a huge video player behind the screen and several people had to lift the gigantic tape into the player and then someone had to be shot out of a canon to hit the play button.

When I was a kid, I used to eat two taco bell tacos and often remarked that they should make a bigger taco and then I’d only need to order one.

I believed that I invented the Taco Bell Grande Taco*. I even convinced myself that I had written them a letter asking for the bigger taco, which upon reflection seems unlikely.

*The Taco Bell Grande Taco was an extra long taco that Taco Bell introduced in 1984. This site claims 1985 http://www.inthe80s.com/food/t.shtml 

Co-worker Josh told us over dim sum lunch today about the 6–train Celsius system. Start out at 33rd street with 0; 33 degrees Fahrenheit is equal to 0 degrees Celsius. For each local stop North add 5 degrees Celsius. Of course it isn’t always scientifically accurate, so don’t try and mix volatile chemicals using this, but it certainly helps figure out if you need a sweater or not.

33rd street = 0
42nd street = 5
51st street = 10
59th street = 15
68th street = 20
77th street = 25
86th street = 30
96th street = 35
103rd street = 40
110th street = 45
116th street = 50

As an avid Winxp remote desktop user I thought I knew all the tricks. Need to restart? I thought the best way was cmd…”shutdown -r”. Then yesterday I needed to access the change password dialog from the ctrl-alt-delete menu. Well of course you can’t ctrl-alt-delete in a remote sessions.

CTRL-ALT-END brings up the ctrl-alt-delete menu in a remote desktop session.

[found via Google Groups posting]

Back in Hong Kong.

It hasn’t gotten old for me. I still really want to go stay at the ice hotel.

The hotel is constructed every November in the village of Jukkasjârvi in northern Lapland, Sweden and opens in December (it melts in April). The hotel features a lobby, a pillar hall, a film auditorium and 30 individually designed suites like the one you see here.

[via Mocoloco]

Photo courtesy of Emily Wilson.

Tuesday was a good day. I saw a taping of Last Call with Carson Daly. The guests were Mark Burnett, the boss Tony Danza, some comedian whose name escapes me and I can’t seem to find online, and Matt Pond PA. I was on Matt Pond’s list so the seats were great (I was the +1). Two items of note: they film the show in the same studio they film Saturday Night Live in and C.Daly looks exactly like what you think he looks like. During the band’s performance they have everyone move over to the music stage — the same stage SNL uses — so you can pretend to be at a rock show. I wasn’t feeling my rockingest due to Formal Tuesdays coat n’ tie mandate and being in the front row. (Vinod invented office Formal Tuesdays so he could wear his custom made Hong Kong suits more often.) You just cannot rock-out in a tie, it’s science, you can’t argue with it.

The show airs Friday, Feb 18th real late at night.

Matt Pond has a new EP out featuring a cover of Holiday Road by Lindsey Buckingham — you know, the song from the Vacation movie. Here’s the iTunes link. Funny story about that song: My brother Kevin and I liked that song a lot. We rented the movie, but wanted to capture the tune before we had to return it. This was before the days when electronic equipment had abundant inputs and outputs so we resorted to holding the video-camera up to the TV and exploiting the “analog hole”.

On to San Domenico’s on Central Park South for a special chef’s tasting menu. Out came: Scallops | ravioli stuffed with a soft boiled egg, spinach and ricotta | gorgonzola risotto | chilean sea bass | venison | three desserts and a wine selected specifically for each course. I don’t think I really grasped the concept of “tasting menus” and pretty much woofed down each course in its entirety. Reservations were an early-bird 7pm, but that didn’t stop the digestion process from waking me up at 2:30am with a blood sugar rush that kept me pacing my apartment until 4:30am.

  RNam says: hi corey
  RNam says: Kung Hei Fat Choy
  Corey says: uh…
  Corey says: you too?
  RNam says: yes… “Kung Hei Fat Choy” is the blessing in Chinese New Year
  RNam says: “Kung Hei” = wishing you, “Fat Choy” = fortune
  Corey says: great. I’ll start tellilng random people on the street and see how it goes
  RNam says: in chinese culture, married people should give red pocket to those who are not married
  Corey says: what is red pocket?
  RNam says: a little red envelop that contains money
  RNam says: so.. when you come to hk, remember to say “kung hei fat choy” to <wealthy, married Kong Hong CEO, name withheld> 
  Corey says: good idea

Kung Hei Fat Choy everyone.

More on Chinese New Year from Wikipedia.

We was robbed.

The chili turned out really fantastic. Great care was taken in the organic ingredient selection and cooking and it showed in the final product.

The mystery spice was “Coriander.” But just a tiny bit.

Two factors conspired in our defeat.

1. There were eight entries and only around 25 people max. Most everyone came with close friends who knew who’s chili was who’s and voted accordingly most of the time. There was no attempt to disguise pots.
   
2. New Coke. See, back in the 1980s Pepsi was going around with their “choice of a new generation” and proclaiming that 4 of 5 people (or some other high ratio) choose Pepsi over Coke in blind taste tests. The Coca-Cola corporation did what any globo-corp entity would do and set up a lab to change the formula to beat Pepsi consistently. Thus New Coke was born. Much sweeter than the original and therefore worked better in Dixie cup sized portions with mall-browsing-consumers. We all know the rest — people liked Old Coke (“Classic”) because over the course of an entire can it was better and not too sugary.
   Same thing with Chili. If you want to win a Chili contest you have to just jack up the spices to 10; you can’t win with a beautiful, subtle, richly meated, delicious recipe like mine.

The winning chili was a) the host’s b) the spiciest by far.