Yesterday, I had a two hour and a half hour day. I got up at 6pm, washed my face, brushed my teeth, walked to McDonalds, ate a Triple Mac combo while resisting the urge to hurl with each bite, walked to the internet cafe, attempted to write emails but couldn´t cause of a lack of coordination, walked back home and went to bed at 8.30pm.
I blame this crappy day on myself. I am a retard who doesn´t listen to his own body telling me that it is exhausted and doesn´t want to go out partying.
So my Saturday starts out fairly uneventfully, I do the same thing I always do in Cordoba, the same thing I always do in any new city......wander around aimlessly......well, not quite aimlessly, cause I was fucking hungry and in search of food. My wanderings took me to a modern looking mall tucked away somewhere. I think it´s in between the city centre and the student area of town. Anyway, all of the other places I´ve been to in Cordoba were old and quaint looking, like what Cashel Mall used to be. I was beginning to think that Cordoba was a city stuck in time and free from crass modern consumerism. I was wrong. This mall was like every other modern mall I´ve ever been to. Think of it like a Riccarton mall but a little smaller, that serves ribeye steak in the food court. I guess maybe it did have slightly higher end stores as well. Anyway, I decided to go for a cheesesteak from a place that had an official stamp that certified it as being ¨typical food¨of Argentina. It was aight. In a strange twist of fate, I randomly met up with my fellow classmate Jamie, an Englishman, and the two foreign students that he shares a homestay with, a Japanese guy and a Brazilian girl. Lucky bastard... I have a 19 year old American kid named Chase...... who is exactly what you would imagine a 19 year old American kid named Chase to be like. Also, I´m staying in a house owned by an old lady, that smells like old and faintly of catpiss (although I´m pretty used to that by now). I don´t hate my current homestay situation, I´m just jealous that Jamie has two cool roomies and an actual homestay ¨family¨ who takes them out to do stuff. Anyway...man I sound like a whiney bitch.
I spent the afternoon hanging out with three other Spanish-learning foreign students. We went to the Parque Sarmiento, which is the biggest park in Cordoba. It was a little disappointing, cause in my mind, I kinda expected it to be a bit nice. I keep forgetting that Argentina, while one of the most developed and wealthiest countries in South America, is still in fact part of South America and is not a developed country. So when, we turned up to the lake in the middle of the park and it was a disgusting slimey green colour and full of rubbish, I shouldn´t have been surprised. There was also a huge swarm of ducks and geese....massive, enormous creatures. Not surprising too, cause nearby there was a roast nut and popcorn stand, where a bored looking lady kept tossing out what I think was like dried corn kernels or something. Anyway, yeah......the park was alright. We went a saw a crappy little amusement park in the middle as well. Man, I´m sounding like an arsehole. It was a crappy little amusement park though, with rides similar to the ones you get at the Agricultural show in Christchurch. I´d say that the riverfront park in Jinzhou is of comparable level to this one, and believe me, that´s not a compliment. I guess if I was in a better mood, I would say that it was quaint and charming.
Anyway, I get invited out to a bar and club that night. We would meet at 11pm outside the mall we had lunch in. I was tossing up whether or not to go. 30 hours of Spanish classes during the week really sapped my body and mind and I was still a little fatigued at that point. Basically, my daily routine has been going to class, going for a post-class walk to clear my mind, coming home, having dinner and then sleeping.....that´s it. So this was my chance to do something fun, to party in Argentina and to dance to cool latin music. After much deliberation, I decide to go......hey, if I feel tired I can always go home early. They arrive half an hour late, which isn´t surprising, but still a little nerve-wracking cause I didn´t know if I´d gotten the right place and I don´t have a Argentinian phone cell number yet. We then head off to a smallish bar somewhere in Nueva Cordoba (which is the student area), which conveniently had a dance club above it. Lisi (the Brazilian girl) had a female Argentinian friend (who appeared to be a bit of a town skank) join us and we started off with some Argentinian beers. Conversation was a bit tough with the language barrier, but we managed to communicate to some degree. At times it did degenerate into me talking to Jamie in English about sport, Lisi talking to Ivana in Spanish and poor Yusuke sitting in the corner looking bored. After, a few beers the ¨chicas lindas¨that Ivana promised would be joining us, joined us. They were pretty far from lindas, I´d have to say. When she asked if we thought that they were lindas, me and Jamie both pretended not to understand. Ah, the advantages of being a complete noob.
We then head upstairs to the dancefloor. Jamie and I get a couple of big plastic cups filled with Fernet and Cola. I think this was the start of my downfall. These drinks were pretty strong. Fernet is a liquor made from herbs that tastes like Chinese medicine. These drinks tasted a lot of Chinese medicine and not much of coke. So everyone started drinking these. We start dancing, and the music is great. I love latin music. We drink more Fernet and coke and dance some more. The place was pretty dark and dingy and sparsely decorated. It kinda reminded me of the old Bush or a shitty student bar down in Dunedin. It got pretty packed later on as well, there wasn´t a whole of room to move. Things start to get a bit blurry for me after a certain point. I remember feeling fine and great, then oh shit what the fuck. So we leave the bar around 5am and I somehow walk back to my place. I don´t know how I managed it, cause I have enough trouble finding it during the day while sober. In retrospect, it probably wasn´t a great idea considering I´ve been told that it isn´t particularly safe wandering that area at night. Having said that, there were a lot of people out and it was well lit the whole way. But yeah, I get back around 6am, rip off my clothes and fall into bed. I should have probably gotten myself some water to drink cause I had a pretty fierce hangover the next day. I think it was the combination of mixing beer and liquor, plus having that liquor being of weird herbal origin. I was fucked up and I won´t be doing it again. I think I´m not going to get drunk again on my South American trip. It´s just not worth it..... I lost one complete day and I feel like crap even two days later. I´m too old for this stuff. The dancing to latin music was fun though, and next time I will do that sans alcohol.
Tuesday 27 April 2010
Saturday 24 April 2010
Flight to Buenos Aires
So I was sitting in my window seat on my flight to Argentina, watching other passengers board and hoping that the cute blonde Brazilian girl who had been sitting opposite me in the departure lounge would be my company for the next 12 hours. Ideally, no one would be sitting there cause extra space > cute girl, no matter how attractive she is. But seeing that the flight appeared to be fairly full, if I´m going to have to share close quarters with someone, I´d prefer that they look and smell nice. Unfortunately for me, while I did get a Brazilian (hahaha), it was of the male middle-aged variety rather than someone who possessed the important qualities of T&A. On further reflection, this wasn´t the worst result. The guy was skinny, he didn´t smell, he let me have the central armrest, and didn´t attempt to talk to me. This got me thinking about my ideal neighbour on a long haul flight. There are several different factors that are important in determing whether or not I am going to enjoy....well not enjoy, but not completely hate.....having someone sitting uncomfortably close to me for a long period of time.
Gender
This is not as important as I would have first thought. Females are preferable because they are, on average, smaller and smell nicer than guys. Obviously, I´d much rather sit next to an odorless, small man than some sweaty 300 pound female behemoth who forgot to take her sponge bath. Even sitting next to an attractive female isn´t a particularly big drawcard. Best case scenario is some mild flirting and maybe an extra Facebook friend. Sneaking off to the bathroom and having crazy hot sex only happens in Playboy forums. I mean, airplane bathrooms are disgusting and cramped... What happens if, in the incredibly unlikely event that you do meet someone who is attractive enough and who wants to fornicate with you in the bathroom, that you find the previous occupant has just laid a massive smelly deuce? Do you go ahead and fuck? I can´t think of many things that are a bigger turn-off than the smell of feces....although, I guess some people do like that. But yeah....gender....not really that important.
Smell
This is pretty crucial. Having flown many times in China, I can tell you that people can get some spectacularly bad BO. I had an experience on a somewhat long (maybe 4 hour) flight from Zhuhai to Beijing, where a woman had BO so bad that the only way I could tolerate sitting next to her was to stick my nose under my t-shirt and inhale my own BO the whole way. Smelling your BO is like smelling your own farts, sure it doesn´t smell great, but at least your own farts don´t make you gag....well....at least mine don´t. But generally, women smells can range from good to disgusting and men range from inoffensive to disgusting. After 5 or 6 hours of a long haul flight, no one really smells good, but at least by that stage one´s nose has become accustomed to the collective stench of everyone couped up in the cabin.
Size
Fortunately for me, I´ve never sat next to an exceptionally fat person. I am told that it is a horrible, horrible experience. I´m all for making fat people buy an extra seat... They´d only use that extra money to stuff their porky faces anyway... So the only people who lose out are the ones in the food industry. Perhaps airlines should start charging fares based on the weight and mass of the customer. I´ve always thought that it is incredibly unfair for skinny people to have the same luggage allowance as big chubby people. This section could turn into an endless rant of me bagging obese (real obese not muscley BMI obese) people, so I´ll stop here. Fuck....I know I´m going to get a whale sitting next to me on my flight from LA to Seattle.... I´ve been warned about American domestic flights by a few people already.
Talkativity
When I get on a long haul flight, I just want it to be over. I want to close my eyes and turn my brain off and magically make the next 10 hours go by quick. Having someone talking to me disrupts this plan and forces me to try to be interesting and sociable. This is easy when the person I am talking to is interesting, intelligent, funny and/or has a cute smile. However, these characteristics apply to around 5% of the general population. Quite simply, I´m not particularly interested in talking to the overwhelming majority of people, and if I´m not interested, it´s a big fucking chore to have to do it for an extended period of time. It´s not as if you can tell them to shut it and then comfortably sit next to them for a half a day. It´s a little different on short flights where there is very limited time for someone to bore the fuck out of you, or in cases where you have brusquely rejected their attempts at interaction, have them glare daggers at you. I like sitting next to foreigners cause A) people from different cultures are interesting to some degree and if you have to talk to them, then at least there is some novelty there....B) if they don´t speak good English, they are less likely to initiate conversation....at least in my experience.
So weighing up all the factors, sitting beside the middle-aged Brazilian dude wasn´t too bad at all. I still would have preferred the Brazilian girl (given that she probably smelled better, wouldn´t have been talkative either and of course there´s always T&A), but wouldn´t have traded for a random draw of the other passengers on the plane.
Oh, I just thought of something......all this only applies to adults or nearly fully grown people. Kids and babies are horrible on flights. I hate them and their parents.... at least for the duration of the flight....but at most other times too...for most kids and babies anyway.....this doesn´t apply to the kids of my friends, who are wonderful little angels..... hehehe.... hehe.... he...... *sigh*
Oh yeah, and it only applies to travel in economy class too. If you are someone who flies first or business class and pays for it out of your own pocket, fuck you. Fly economy and donate the extra money to charity, you rich fuck.
Anyway, this post has degenerated somewhat and I´m afraid to see where it´ll end up if I continue.... So.... post over, bye.
Gender
This is not as important as I would have first thought. Females are preferable because they are, on average, smaller and smell nicer than guys. Obviously, I´d much rather sit next to an odorless, small man than some sweaty 300 pound female behemoth who forgot to take her sponge bath. Even sitting next to an attractive female isn´t a particularly big drawcard. Best case scenario is some mild flirting and maybe an extra Facebook friend. Sneaking off to the bathroom and having crazy hot sex only happens in Playboy forums. I mean, airplane bathrooms are disgusting and cramped... What happens if, in the incredibly unlikely event that you do meet someone who is attractive enough and who wants to fornicate with you in the bathroom, that you find the previous occupant has just laid a massive smelly deuce? Do you go ahead and fuck? I can´t think of many things that are a bigger turn-off than the smell of feces....although, I guess some people do like that. But yeah....gender....not really that important.
Smell
This is pretty crucial. Having flown many times in China, I can tell you that people can get some spectacularly bad BO. I had an experience on a somewhat long (maybe 4 hour) flight from Zhuhai to Beijing, where a woman had BO so bad that the only way I could tolerate sitting next to her was to stick my nose under my t-shirt and inhale my own BO the whole way. Smelling your BO is like smelling your own farts, sure it doesn´t smell great, but at least your own farts don´t make you gag....well....at least mine don´t. But generally, women smells can range from good to disgusting and men range from inoffensive to disgusting. After 5 or 6 hours of a long haul flight, no one really smells good, but at least by that stage one´s nose has become accustomed to the collective stench of everyone couped up in the cabin.
Size
Fortunately for me, I´ve never sat next to an exceptionally fat person. I am told that it is a horrible, horrible experience. I´m all for making fat people buy an extra seat... They´d only use that extra money to stuff their porky faces anyway... So the only people who lose out are the ones in the food industry. Perhaps airlines should start charging fares based on the weight and mass of the customer. I´ve always thought that it is incredibly unfair for skinny people to have the same luggage allowance as big chubby people. This section could turn into an endless rant of me bagging obese (real obese not muscley BMI obese) people, so I´ll stop here. Fuck....I know I´m going to get a whale sitting next to me on my flight from LA to Seattle.... I´ve been warned about American domestic flights by a few people already.
Talkativity
When I get on a long haul flight, I just want it to be over. I want to close my eyes and turn my brain off and magically make the next 10 hours go by quick. Having someone talking to me disrupts this plan and forces me to try to be interesting and sociable. This is easy when the person I am talking to is interesting, intelligent, funny and/or has a cute smile. However, these characteristics apply to around 5% of the general population. Quite simply, I´m not particularly interested in talking to the overwhelming majority of people, and if I´m not interested, it´s a big fucking chore to have to do it for an extended period of time. It´s not as if you can tell them to shut it and then comfortably sit next to them for a half a day. It´s a little different on short flights where there is very limited time for someone to bore the fuck out of you, or in cases where you have brusquely rejected their attempts at interaction, have them glare daggers at you. I like sitting next to foreigners cause A) people from different cultures are interesting to some degree and if you have to talk to them, then at least there is some novelty there....B) if they don´t speak good English, they are less likely to initiate conversation....at least in my experience.
So weighing up all the factors, sitting beside the middle-aged Brazilian dude wasn´t too bad at all. I still would have preferred the Brazilian girl (given that she probably smelled better, wouldn´t have been talkative either and of course there´s always T&A), but wouldn´t have traded for a random draw of the other passengers on the plane.
Oh, I just thought of something......all this only applies to adults or nearly fully grown people. Kids and babies are horrible on flights. I hate them and their parents.... at least for the duration of the flight....but at most other times too...for most kids and babies anyway.....this doesn´t apply to the kids of my friends, who are wonderful little angels..... hehehe.... hehe.... he...... *sigh*
Oh yeah, and it only applies to travel in economy class too. If you are someone who flies first or business class and pays for it out of your own pocket, fuck you. Fly economy and donate the extra money to charity, you rich fuck.
Anyway, this post has degenerated somewhat and I´m afraid to see where it´ll end up if I continue.... So.... post over, bye.
Wednesday 7 April 2010
2009-06-11 Advanced HSK
After weeks of checking online, I finally received my results for the Advanced HSK exam. I am really happy to report that somehow, I managed to pass. I have no doubts that this was in part due to a large dose of luck, and I guess my fairly advanced listening and speaking skills as well. If you've read this far, I'm sure you'll probably stick around for the breakdown. My scores for each section:
听力: 65
阅读: 47
综合: 53
写作: 58
口试: 69
For a total score of 292, which is just over the minimum score of 280 for level 9.
Listening - This was very hard, and after the exam, I was sure that I'd bombed. What I forgot, was that listening isn't a strength of Korean students (who make up over 90% of Advanced HSK testees). Even though I got raped, they got raped harder and scalage probably bumped me up.
Reading - What can I say? While I had the necessary reading speed to handle the exam, I was sorely lacking in vocabulary. It's not much good being able to blaze through the texts when you only recognize 50-60% of the characters. I had to leave 8 out of the 15 questions blank in the first part, and I probably knew the answers to about 25% of the questions in the second part. I have no idea how I managed to get 47%. I'm guessing everyone else crapped out as well.
Comprehensive - Here's where the exam started to get a bit easier. I was feeling pretty down about having got shat on in the previous two sections, but it kinda took the pressure off and I relaxed and did okay in this section. 53% is probably an accurate reflection of my abilities, I knew I got a good chunk right, but I also had no effing clue about alot of questions as well.
Writing - I got really lucky in this section... Not in terms of how I performed, cause I did really well. In the 30 mins alloted, I spent 5 planning, 20 writing the requisite 400 characters and the last 5 checking for careless mistakes. This section went as smoothly as I could have hoped... and I got the lowest passing mark. Seriously, one less mark and I would have failed this section and the entire exam. I got a topic I could handle and did the best I could with my laughable vocabulary. If they'd hit us with "write a job application letter" or something equally sadistic, I would have promptly shat my pants and started crying.
Speaking - I had no worries about speaking, as this is my absolute strength and the biggest weakness of the Koreans. Listening to my fellow test-takers finish their recordings, it became obvious that I had the best pronounciation out of everyone in the whole room (excluding the teachers of course). The reading passage was fairly easy (even so, there were several characters I didn't know). Both of the disussion questions were pretty straight-forward as well. So I wasn't too surprised with my score of 69, which is actually a level 10!
So yeah... Yay me. I was so sure I'd failed, I literally yelled out and started jumping up and down when I found out I'd passed. Now I just got to figure out what to do next... Eh, something will come up... but for now... WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!
听力: 65
阅读: 47
综合: 53
写作: 58
口试: 69
For a total score of 292, which is just over the minimum score of 280 for level 9.
Listening - This was very hard, and after the exam, I was sure that I'd bombed. What I forgot, was that listening isn't a strength of Korean students (who make up over 90% of Advanced HSK testees). Even though I got raped, they got raped harder and scalage probably bumped me up.
Reading - What can I say? While I had the necessary reading speed to handle the exam, I was sorely lacking in vocabulary. It's not much good being able to blaze through the texts when you only recognize 50-60% of the characters. I had to leave 8 out of the 15 questions blank in the first part, and I probably knew the answers to about 25% of the questions in the second part. I have no idea how I managed to get 47%. I'm guessing everyone else crapped out as well.
Comprehensive - Here's where the exam started to get a bit easier. I was feeling pretty down about having got shat on in the previous two sections, but it kinda took the pressure off and I relaxed and did okay in this section. 53% is probably an accurate reflection of my abilities, I knew I got a good chunk right, but I also had no effing clue about alot of questions as well.
Writing - I got really lucky in this section... Not in terms of how I performed, cause I did really well. In the 30 mins alloted, I spent 5 planning, 20 writing the requisite 400 characters and the last 5 checking for careless mistakes. This section went as smoothly as I could have hoped... and I got the lowest passing mark. Seriously, one less mark and I would have failed this section and the entire exam. I got a topic I could handle and did the best I could with my laughable vocabulary. If they'd hit us with "write a job application letter" or something equally sadistic, I would have promptly shat my pants and started crying.
Speaking - I had no worries about speaking, as this is my absolute strength and the biggest weakness of the Koreans. Listening to my fellow test-takers finish their recordings, it became obvious that I had the best pronounciation out of everyone in the whole room (excluding the teachers of course). The reading passage was fairly easy (even so, there were several characters I didn't know). Both of the disussion questions were pretty straight-forward as well. So I wasn't too surprised with my score of 69, which is actually a level 10!
So yeah... Yay me. I was so sure I'd failed, I literally yelled out and started jumping up and down when I found out I'd passed. Now I just got to figure out what to do next... Eh, something will come up... but for now... WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!
2009-05-18 Basketball and duck hotpot
Today was Monday (I will refer to it in the past tense cause it's nearly tomorrow) and for me, Monday is basketball day. Every Monday 4pm at Eastgate courts, I engage in battle with my ex-students, friends and random Chinese dudes who want to take on a foreigner. After two years of playing ball in China, I finally came up against a dude who is better than me. I think this says more about the sad state of casual pickup ball at the university here than my actual basketball talents. Apparently this cat plays for the university basketball team. He was about 6', maybe 6'1, and the unusual combination of being both fast and strong (99% of guys here are either one or the other, actually... most are neither). Anyway, he was a bit of a dick, as evidenced by his arrogant demeanour and his use of a pretty offensive swear word everytime he missed a shot. I would say that were I eighteen and in shape again, I would have dominated him, but that would make me a sad old man... and that's something I don't really want to be.
After two hours of fairly intense four on four half court basketball, I took my sore back to KFC to meet up with Nicholas. From there, we went to a duck hotpot restaurant. Sounds a little odd, I mean I don't really associate duck and hotpot with each other, but it was very tasty. I was expecting the soup to taste more like duck, however, as it tasted like very delicious chicken soup, I can't really complain. After eating all the boiled duck, you can add extra ingredients in traditional hotpot fashion. We added beef, potato, spongy tofu, tofu skin (dried tofu noodles, very, very good), wood fungus and "Chinese cabbage". To be honest, the stuff came out of the pot tasting like normal hotpot fare, which is disappointing cause I was hoping for something different, but is good cause I like normal hotpot quite a lot. The place was definitely worth it just for the duck/chicken soup alone. Would go back.
Now I'm back at home and have a 听写 (tsk tsk tsk) that I'm not in the slightest bit motivated to study for. I think I'll go on Facebook and take some more silly quizzes.
After two hours of fairly intense four on four half court basketball, I took my sore back to KFC to meet up with Nicholas. From there, we went to a duck hotpot restaurant. Sounds a little odd, I mean I don't really associate duck and hotpot with each other, but it was very tasty. I was expecting the soup to taste more like duck, however, as it tasted like very delicious chicken soup, I can't really complain. After eating all the boiled duck, you can add extra ingredients in traditional hotpot fashion. We added beef, potato, spongy tofu, tofu skin (dried tofu noodles, very, very good), wood fungus and "Chinese cabbage". To be honest, the stuff came out of the pot tasting like normal hotpot fare, which is disappointing cause I was hoping for something different, but is good cause I like normal hotpot quite a lot. The place was definitely worth it just for the duck/chicken soup alone. Would go back.
Now I'm back at home and have a 听写 (tsk tsk tsk) that I'm not in the slightest bit motivated to study for. I think I'll go on Facebook and take some more silly quizzes.
2009-05-17 Japanese Beef Curry
I woke up this morning ravenously hungry and in need of a quick breakfast solution. Thankfully, my wonderful girlfriend made me some very delectable cinnamon rolls in Qingdao, most of which were still residing in my freezer. I made my way up the stairs to use the microwave in the 4th floor kitchen. No dice. I then had to trudge up to the 5th floor kitchen, where thankfully, the microwave worked. Being the curious sod that I am, I decided to have a poke around and was rewarded with the discovery of some of my cooking utensils from last year. Sweet! This fortuitous development prompted me to march straight down to DaFuYuan and the nearby vegetable market, to assemble the ingredients for a delicious Japanese curry.
Japanese curry is one of the easiest things in the world to cook. The MSG and cornstarch or whatever else they put in the curry cubes, ensures a tasty and savoury result every single time. All you need to do is cook a stew and add the curry cubes at the end. What could be simpler? The recipe I learned off my good friend Pingmu calls for a large quantity of onions to be thinly sliced and cooked slowly until they are caramelized and delicious. The onions are then mixed with tomato pasta sauce. I didn't have any ready made, so I added 5-6 skinned, crushed fresh tomatoes. In a different pot, 500gms of beef was browned and half a litre of water, some paprika and a small chunk of ginger added. I boiled the beef for about 15 mins and skimmed the impurities off the top. I then added the caramelized onion/tomato mix and dusted with more paprika for good luck. After determining the beef was cooked through and fairly tender, I added a sliced up carrot and two large eggplants, also sliced finely. Mostly Japanese curry recipes call for the use of potato as a thickening agent, I prefer eggplant, I think it makes the curry taste more vegetably and less floury than the potato version. Anyway, once the carrot slices were nice and tender, I turned down the heat and added the curry block. Voila! Delicious Japanese curry, not completely faithful to the Hiraki family recipe, but still good enough for me.
I just finished stuffing my face with two bowls of curry rice, so I am feeling a little 不舒服 (Oh no you didn't Dave, God you're a wanker). I think I'm going to go take a nap before bowling tonight. Jia You me!
Japanese curry is one of the easiest things in the world to cook. The MSG and cornstarch or whatever else they put in the curry cubes, ensures a tasty and savoury result every single time. All you need to do is cook a stew and add the curry cubes at the end. What could be simpler? The recipe I learned off my good friend Pingmu calls for a large quantity of onions to be thinly sliced and cooked slowly until they are caramelized and delicious. The onions are then mixed with tomato pasta sauce. I didn't have any ready made, so I added 5-6 skinned, crushed fresh tomatoes. In a different pot, 500gms of beef was browned and half a litre of water, some paprika and a small chunk of ginger added. I boiled the beef for about 15 mins and skimmed the impurities off the top. I then added the caramelized onion/tomato mix and dusted with more paprika for good luck. After determining the beef was cooked through and fairly tender, I added a sliced up carrot and two large eggplants, also sliced finely. Mostly Japanese curry recipes call for the use of potato as a thickening agent, I prefer eggplant, I think it makes the curry taste more vegetably and less floury than the potato version. Anyway, once the carrot slices were nice and tender, I turned down the heat and added the curry block. Voila! Delicious Japanese curry, not completely faithful to the Hiraki family recipe, but still good enough for me.
I just finished stuffing my face with two bowls of curry rice, so I am feeling a little 不舒服 (Oh no you didn't Dave, God you're a wanker). I think I'm going to go take a nap before bowling tonight. Jia You me!
Snarf snarf
These next few posts are old posts that I wrote last year while I was living in China, but was unable to put up due to the Great Firewall. You can see them in their original state at http://home.51.com/masanobu81. But I warn you, the page is a little hard on the eyes.
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