Here fishy fishy! [WARNING: GORE ALERT]

What an exiting day I had today.

 First we all headed over to Taipa because we had to pick up the debit cards for the bank accounts we applied for last week.  Then we went up to campus to take care of some school stuff and visit Carol.  We waited a long time for the shuttle that usually runs between the bus stop and campus and finally decided to hoof it up the hill.  We stopped to take this photo along the way.  I had to pose like this because all the Asian kids do. Behind me you can see Macau (the peninsula) on the right-hand side where all the skyscrapers are, and mainland China on the left, where the tree-covered mountains are.  That Space Needle-like building is Macau Tower and it's the tallest bungee jumping site on earth.  Directly behind my head is the bridge we take from our apartment.  When we finished our errands at school we went up to the library (the English Language Center is in the library basement) and looked around.  They had a lot of selections in English and I got a book on Macau history, one on Contemporary Chinese politics, and one on Chinese art history.  This is why I started the What I'm Reading space to the right - lots to learn.

After the library we all went into downtown Taipa for lunch, then Angie headed back to school and Beth and I got some frozen yogurt.  We wandered down to the part of the island known as Cotai - it's the reclaimed space that used to separate Taipa from Coloane, the southernmost island.  Now it's been casino-fied.  Our destination was The Venetian because Carol had told me there was a bookstore there with cool maps and I wanted a nice big one for my blank wall.  Need to improve my Asian geography.  I should have learned from my Sunday excursion, but I didn't, so after wandering around the enormous space for a while and getting false directions to a non-existent bookstore, we caught the bus home.  (I just ordered a cool and enormous world map from Amazon - only $10 to ship to Macau!)

No sooner had we arrived at home, than Carol called to say she was going to be in the neighborhood and invited us to meet her at the Red Market so she could help us pick out fish.  The Red Market is a place to get fresh stuff: fruits and veggies - downstairs; fish, chicken and other various living creatures - upstairs.  It's a pretty intense place - a fish jumped right out of it's tray when we walked past and landed on the floor.  A young man came and gingerly put it back in the water.  The place is filled with splashing and crawling and chopping and shouting.  Chaos.  But it's fresh and affordable.

From top to bottom: the fish man and his tilapia; Beth, Angie and Carol standing by to help; my bag of fish; and my new best friend.

I don't really cook, as many of you know, but when I left Berkeley I had at least mastered the ability to make some rice, steam some veggies and broil a fish fillet and call it dinner. I acquired a veggie steamer, rice cooker and convection oven yesterday, so I was out of excuses.  Time to take the opportunity and buy some fish.  So we met Carol and I told her that tilapia was what I often cooked at home.  Angie again translated so we were able to find that in living form.  I'd been told they would kill and clean the fish for me, but really this just meant cutting it up.  In fact it was only when I said something about only eating the filet that Carol realized I didn't want the head and told him he could leave it out.  Thanks Carol. 

So really what he'd done was cut the head off, slit the belly, removed the guts and thrown it in a bag.  A good start, but still a far cry from what I'm used to.  Luckily I'd had the foresight to ask my dad, the fish catching and cleaning master, for a lesson while I was at home.  Seemed pretty easy, if a little disgusting.  So the good news first, I didn't freak out.  Sometimes I have a tough time with blood but this didn't bother me at all.  The bad news, I didn't remember the lesson as well as I'd hoped and didn't have a very sharp knife.  So I cut off some meat from the sides as best I could, tried to wash off the scales and laid out the world's tiniest filets on my new oven tray. 


The oven worked like a charm, I used the top rack just like a broiler and they tasted good.  I then went and watched several YouTube vids on how to filet a tilapia.  Take home lessons - get a sharper knife and/or choose a thicker fish.  These are thin filets even when done by a pro.  I might have to start with something easier.  And I definitely need to get a new knife.  But I think I can do it!  In the meantime, my next oven venture will be something a little more familiar, like pizza.  Just gotta find the yeast and cheese.