The dark side

I remember when I was younger, I used to spend a lot of time cooking and learning how to cook. I would watch Rachel Ray, Alton Brown and American's test kitchen to learn cooking techniques, then I would learn from many recipe books to try different dishes. Watching cooking shows was one of my favorite pass-time.

I used to spend hours after work cooking a meal. I have to say most time spent was on rinsing the vegetables multiple times, and chopping up ingredients.

These days, I don't spend that much time cooking anymore, and I'm not sure why. Once a while, I still cook a good meal, but now I like to make simple dishes quickly. One example of these quick dishes is the Campbell soup cream of mushroom with chicken.

I put some chicken in a oven proved dish, then put some sliced mushroom and chop onion on top, and then add a can of Campbell soup cream of mushroom, then pop that in the oven to bake for 30-40 minutes. That's dinner. While the food is in the oven, I can do whatever other things.

The oven is becoming my best friend, even though I still need to figure out how to not overcook the pork loins and bake sweet potatoes without exploding them.

When I started doing this Jack joked that I've gone to the dark side.

The she-elf

Our conversation during "Ant Man":

Y - Evangeline Lilly is so exotic looking. I guess that's because she is an elf. (referring to her role as an elf in the last Lord of the Ring movie).

J - What [heritage] is she?

Y [look up in Wikipedia] - Canadian.

Alexa stop!

We added a few new toys in the house, and some are still under installation as we speak. One of them is the Amazon Echo, who is named Alexa.

Initially Jack bought one and out of nowhere he would he start asking questions: "Alexa, what's the time? Alexa, is it raining outside?" It sounded to me like he was talking to his new girl-friend, so I asked him to change her name to something less human and more robot-like. The only options for names were: Echo, Alexa and Amazon, so we changed it to Echo.

We bought two more pots, so now we had one in the kitchen, one in the living room and one in the bedroom.

Last Thursday I called my mom on the phone and we were talking in Cantonese. Echo must have picked up something in our conversation, and she started playing music. I walked into the bedroom and continued my conversation, and the one in the bedroom started talking to me. I frantically pushed the buttons but couldn't figure out how to turn it off. I muted the phone and yelled: "Alexa, turn off music," but it didn't work either. Finally I unplugged it to get it to stop.

I wrote Jack an email to report the incidence, and showed my dismay. Then while I was watching a movie in the living room, she picked up something from the movie and started talking again! Jack email back right away and said: "First of all, you have to call her by the right name. We changed her name to Echo, so you should address her as Echo." I did that and indeed, she responded correctly. I was so annoyed that I told Jack to return two of the pots, because it wasn't working out after all and we didn't need so many everywhere in the house.

When Jack got home we discussed, and we were guessing the name Echo was too easy to be picked up by the pot accidentally, so we change her name back to Alexa. Then we had to practiced talking to her and trained her. Today, after I woke up, I asked:

"Alexa, how's the weather?"
"Alexa, what's the time?"
In which she answered correctly.
"Alexa, what's in the news?" and then she started to play BBC news summary, which was impressive.
"Alexa, play Beatle's songs." and she started playing Beatle's songs.
"Alexa, play the latest U2 album." which she did so correctly.

Now I must say I'm a OK with Alexa, but I'm sure there will be other quirks to work out. Also it feels like three of us in the house now, because Alexa still managed to chime in on our conversations, and it makes us laugh. Being in the AI business, I like to trip Alexa up with more complex questions just to trip her up.

Once a while Jack would say something like: "Ying, turn on the TV," or "Ying, make me tea."

The rest of my impressions of Beijing

[It's been around 6 months since my China trip, so naturally my impressions of Beijing have faded. Let me just jot down whatever I can still remember, so I can move on to writing other more recent topics.]

The evening we landed in Beijing, my friend, Ms. Z,  whom I have never met in person but worked with for over 5 years, took us to what I would describe as a new-age traditional Beijing eatery.  We ordered zha jiang mian (noodle mixed with minced pork and bean paste), onion pancake, stir-fried Napa cabbage, and hot and sour soup - typical Beijing food. To make zha jiang mia, cooked noodle was put in a big bowl, and in a separate plate, there were some shredded vegetables, bean sprouts, kim chi, minced pork and the bean paste. The idea was for the customer to add condiments and the paste together and mix according to taste.

Jack observed: "This is like in Korean tofu house." We explained that in Korean tofu house, we were served six different types of pickled veggies and kim chi in small plates as complimentary dishes.

Ms. Z said matter-of-factly: "Oh, they learned from us."

Jack and I both laughed, mostly because her tone and expression couldn't be more like mine as I said something like this so many times before. I guess I never realized how annoying this kind of nationalism could be until I heard it from someone else.

The food was good, but we were not impressed as it wasn't much different from what we had in the Bay Area. The wait staff were yelling greetings whenever patrons entered or left (just like in Sushi restaurants, and I'm sure they learned it from us too), and it was quite startling and annoying. But we really enjoyed Ms. Z's company, despite how exhausted we both were. We talked about everything and even tried to convince her that American TV shows like Modern Family were greatly exaggerated and one must not believe that is how people live in America.

We had a short walk back to the hotel. At the courtyard of a famous Catholic church, there were locals, mostly middle-age and elderly, group dancing. I am guessing it was some kind of slow-paced after dinner exercise? Next to them, I also found a smaller group, relatively younger individuals, who were dancing Zumba moves with some popular Chinese music. It was all very amusing and slightly humorous to me as a once-certified Zumba instructor. Other people just hang out, and enjoyed the weather and company. I was pleased to see how relaxed and happy people were. Jack watched a guy who play the Erhu beautifully. We were both amazed to see how he made any kind of noise out of this strange two-string instrument, because Jack bought one online, and still is trying to get it to work.

I fell asleep as my head hit the pillow and slept like a baby for 5 hours. I woke up at 3 AM. Between chanting a mantra and listening to music, I drifted in and out of dreams until 6 AM when the breakfast opened up.

We went downstairs to the restaurant. Awaited us was a big spread of breakfast buffet like we have never seen before. Along the wall, there were made to order stations that served eggs cooked anyway you want, with bacon, ham or sausage; stew and grill vegetables; four different types of made to order noodle soups with various sauces and spicy oils. I even ordered myself some freshly stir-fried mix green vegetables. On the opposite side, there were fresh pastries such as croissants, danishes, muffins, donuts for people with western taste, but I never got around to try any of those. Then there was a station with pots of hot porridge (plain, chicken and pork), steam baos/man tou (made of bao dough but without any filling), fresh hot soy milk, and healthy food like steam yams, steam corns, and whole wheat steam buns. There were also all kinds of cereals, oak meals, and some Indian food such as roti, aloo gobi, sambhar. There were different types of Beijing specialty, mochi-like, deserts, fresh fruits and yogurts. Finally, there were German specialty espresso machines and various juices.

Needless to say, we were like little kids in a candy store. Everyday we woke up happy to know that the breakfast buffet was waiting. We were always the first to get to the breakfast, and we made sure to spend at least one hour there. The nice lady at the noodle station who also made my stir-fried vegetable taught Jack how to mix different types of condiments and sauces in his noodle soup to make it very tasty and spicy. She asked if we came from America and proudly said her daughter was going to a university in Minnesota. She said she went there to visit her just last year, and it was very cold. Breakfast was definitely the highlight of the day for food.

We were in Beijing for two and a half days - Saturday, Sunday and most part of Monday, and we had an English private guide with our own driver. It was expensive but it was worth every penny. Our guide was a typical Chinese man in his thirties, who named himself Murphy. His English was OK, but we appreciated he put in efforts to communicate with us. Of course I didn't mind helping out translate when needed. We later found out he was not native from Beijing, and his dream was to work full time as a tour guide in the city. The first day he came with his boss who drove a high-end BMW sedan. On the way, Murphy told us some history of the Great Wall. They took us out of the city to the Great Wall's Mutianyu entrance, which was significantly less crowded than some of the other more popular entrances. That day there was a marathon there, but it didn't bother us.

Murphy waited in line to get us the tickets and we entered the park. We walked by a gauntlet of vendors and eateries, which reminded me a lot of the Universal Studio in L.A., but with a very strong Chinese touch, of course. We waited in line to take the chair lift to get to the top of the mountain, and the line was moving quite fast until we got behind a lady, who couldn't make up her mind if the chair lift was too scary for her, and if she should take the less intimidating gondola instead.  After waited for 10 minutes listening to her animated debate with the ticket collector, we finally lost our patience and walked pass her. The chair lift was very much like the ones in our ski resorts, except when we were getting off, there were workers at the platform yelling and gesturing for us to run off to the right or the left and get out of the way. I was glad we got off without incidence and that we didn't have to do it again that day.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but with regarding the Great Wall, I say a picture cannot nearly do its justice. When we got to the Great Wall, which is, for two thousand years, a symbol of the Chinese civilization and history,  I was deeply moved. First of all, as big as it was, it was very long - measuring 5,500 miles. Since it was built along the top of the mountains, there were parts where it was so steep, we had to climb with our hands and feet, and at times we were drenched in sweat. It was built with bricks, big blocks and boulders, and I could not imagine how people could move any of them to the top of the mountain without the help of modern machines. As I thought more about it, it made me very sad, because all the people who built this wall back then must have die of physical exhaustion or some related illness. I asked Murphy, and he said: "Indeed, the Great Wall is also called the world's longest tomb." The thought sadden me. I touched the boulders with my hand, and tried to feel the spirits of the hundreds of thousands nameless slaves who were forced to give their lives building this monstrosity of a wall.

I was very amazed by how cool and comfortable temperature-wise inside the beacon and living quarters even in the middle of a warm day. Murphy explained to me it was because of the arches inside, which was designed to make it cool in the summer and warm in the winter. I didn't totally understand it, but I appreciated it very much as I waited inside the beacon while Jack and Murphy explored the other part of the wall, which was probably more or less the same as where I have already been.

There at the Great Wall, we saw blue skies and green forests. I looked into the forest, and tried to imagine about ancient times, how people were sending food and material in and out of the Wall, and their lives in villages around the wall. I was told that only the captains or generals got to live in the living quarters, and all the soldiers camp out on hillside. Commoners and soldiers have such tough lives. How did we get from "there" to "here", it's hard for me to fathom.

We thought our scheduled time of 1 and a half hour at the Wall couldn't be enough, but it was plenty enough for us to explore. If it weren't for the frozen bottled water the boss so kindly gave us at the beginning of our journey, we couldn't survive the hard physical activity in that warm summer day. For that, we were grateful.

We rode the luge off of the mountain. There was an opened half tub and it snakes back and forth down the mountain. The luge has rubber wheels that stayed inside the tube, and a break that rubs against the tube as we roll down the tube. As we waited in line, the guy gave us operation instructions in English and Chinese mixed with animated body language. Then he also translated it in Russian, Spanish and French for those tourists, and whatever other languages that I didn't recognize. That guy had a talent in language, and we were well entertained. Jack loved the ride, because that was the only thing he talked about the rest of the day. The only thing he had to complain was that he was stuck behind a guy who rode together with his son who rode slowly. As for me, I rode the luge so slowly that workers along side were telling me to speed up. I know Murphy was kind of annoyed, as he rode behind me, and had to ride the breaks down the mountain.

When we walked out of the park, a Caucasian woman in front of us was stopped by a couple of local men in ancient armors carrying fake swords. There was no way around them, and they solicited to take picture with her, which she complied. But then they rub their finger tips together to ask for money, and I thought it was very rude! As for us, we shook our heads with determination when we walked pass them, and they didn't bother us at all.

As we drove away from the Great Wall and headed back in the city, we passed by some orchards, and we stopped by one of the makeshift fruit stands. A lady with three or four baskets of fruits sitting under a big umbrella by the side of the road. We checked out the cherries, and the boss helped us to bargain down the price by 40%. Murphy told us we shouldn't pay more than 30% of the asking price in Beijing. Honestly I don't mind benefiting the local businesses, but I don't like the idea of being taken advantage of. Now we thought of it, we should have gotten Jack to stay in the car, because the locals were very good at unbashfully price gouging foreigners. Of course the shiny black BMW wasn't any disguise. We ate the cherries at the hotel, and it tasted the same as any other cherries we had in California.

That's about the most memorable part of our stay in Beijing. The next days we went to the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, and Temples of Heaven. Being in the palaces and temples, which I saw so many times in pictures and movies, in person was very special, but there was something about emperors robbing the commoners' money for their own extravagance that was a turn off. Comparing to the Great Wall, the tour to the palaces were not very spiritual for me.

Finally, we need to talk about the Peking duck. First of all, there were many Peking duck restaurants in Beijing. I can't help but feel sorry for the ducks. We went to a modern, French-inspired Chinese restaurant for dinner, which was a recommendation by one of my co-workers. The restaurant was most famous for the Peking duck. It wasn't hard for us to find out the reason why it was French-inspired. The portions of the food were super small, yet everything was over-priced. I took a look at the phone-book-like menu, and almost wanted to leave, but I was too embarrassed to do so. We ordered half of a Peking duck and two less expensive side dishes. The duck was superb. I have never had duck that has no fat and the skin so crispy and delicious. The duck was totally worth it and greatly appreciated, but the rest of the meal was nothing to write mom about, or lackluster (a good word I learned today.)