Long time no blog

Hi everyone.  I'm back.  Thanks to those of you who expressed concern, but it's nothing more serious than a huge pile of grading, a big Thanksgiving dinner and a second round of battle with the lingering evil.  Something had to give, and sadly, it was le blog.  But since there are only two days of class left and all the exams are now graded, my blogging outlook for the future is much better.  So here are some photos to show you the highlights of the past week.

THANKSGIVING DINNER

Like all good things, it began with pie.  I went to every Western-style grocery store in Macau looking for pie ingredients.  In the end, I had to substitute honey for corn syrup, but I think it was actually a step up and will probably keep using honey in the future.  I stayed up (very) late last Friday night making three pies while watching movies with Beth.  Rear Window and Sneakers were our selections and they never disappoint.  I freaked out a little when I cut into one of these beautiful apples to find this inside.  Not a lot of places to get a spare apple at 1 in the morning.  Luckily I had plenty of filling even with seven, so the crisis was averted.

So after sleeping in on Saturday, I got up, purchased the rest of my groceries and made the mashed potatoes and gravy.  We didn't have turkey because our little oven isn't big enough, but I like ham better anyway.  Here's an action shot of the ladies in the kitchen. 

Yum, honey glaze.  Good idea, Angie.  I made my gravy with chicken broth but then added the ham drippings for flavor.  Not too bad, if I do say so myself.  Although you kind of have to be trying to make bad gravy.

Karen made a special dessert soup for the party.  Luckily we have this extra hot plate in our storage so she was able to work in the living room while everyone was finishing up in the kitchen.  

She cut up some purple sweet potatoes and boiled them in water, then started making these dumplings out of rice flour.  The yellowish brown stuff is cane sugar, which came in bars and she cut into small pieces.  She put a piece into the center of each dumpling and dropped it into the soup.  Dumplings with sugar inside - why didn't I think of that?

Carol and Karen, the dumpling masters at work.

Right before dinner was served, Carol made her contribution - boiled shrimp.  She cooked it with the green onion and ginger you see above, and salt!

Finally everything was ready.  We had ham (Angie) and mashed potatoes and gravy (me) and homemade bread (Chris) and the shrimp (Carol) and chicken wings (Karen)...

...and sweet potato fries (Angie) and broccoli casserole (Beth) and pasta with mushroom sauce and carrots (Amanda) and a variety of drinks (Yeow-Tong).  Not pictured, but thoroughly enjoyed, was the mulled wine that Chris made.  Yum!!!  What a feast!

 Here's most of our group at our tiny table.  We didn't have enough dishes so Carol and Amanda contributed.  Did you know it's actually quite easy to eat mashed potatoes with chopsticks?  :)  From left to right: Amanda, Karen, Carol, Angie, Chris, Beth, me.

Getting the table ready for dessert.  I made apple, pecan, and chocolate pudding pie.  Not my best ever, but not too shabby either given the circumstances.  Pictured here are Karen, Beth, Amanda, Sheryl, and Yeow-Tong. 

The soup was delicious!  Thick and sweet and unusually purple - and who doesn't like dumplings?!?

I really like this post-dessert carnage shot.  This and several of the other photos are provided compliments of Yeow-Tong.  Some are also from Carol.

After dinner I fulfilled a promise to Karen and gave her a little trim.  Then we all squeezed in around my laptop and watched Midnight in Paris - a Woody Allen movie.  It was a nice distraction while we digested all those calories.

Unfortunately, my late night pie-making escapade was just the opportunity the lingering evil had been waiting for.  It came back with a vengeance, so I had to bust out the big guns - Chinese herbs.  Back in Berkeley, I'd have to make an appointment, go to the Chinese medicine clinic, get my herb prescription, bring it home, cook the herbs myself and then finally drink the nasty stuff.  Here, it's like fast-food: you just walk up, tell the nice ladies at the counter what your problem is (or mime it in my case), and they'll serve you a steaming bowl of customized yuck in just moments.

This place is just a couple blocks from us and it's open quite late.  Very convenient.

The taste doesn't actually bother me too much any more.  When I first started using it a couple years ago, I'd shudder with every sip.  It does make me kind of nauseous though, and that sucks.  I think there's a way they can adjust the prescription if you have that sensitivity, but not like I know how to tell them.  So I'll just have to suck it up - like this.

My Chinese coworker, Monica, also shared some traditional sore throat syrup with us.  Once I tasted it, I realized I'd had this before back home too, just not in a handy single-serving pouch.  I think I've turned the corner, but I'm still kind of congested.  That's where Western medicine can help. I brought a generous supply of 12-hour Sudafed caplets with me from the States.  :)

And last but not least, some good news from yesterday.  I was accepted to present a shortened version of my thesis at a conference in Hong Kong next spring.  The focus of the conference is technology in various areas - mine is education, obviously.  Pretty exciting - if I'm lucky I might get a publication out of it!  I'll include the link below in case you'd like to read more.

http://www.e-case.org/2012/index.html

The goal

We're reviewing for the final exam in class right now and so to make it more fun I created a "football" game for my students.  It was the guys against the ladies and they had to answer vocabulary questions to advance.  To score a goal they had to fill in a sentence with missing articles and give me the rules for why they made their choices. 

If they did it correctly they got to hear this...

Busy day - I stayed late to help our Level 0 head teacher finish part of the final exam.  Because of that I didn't make it home in time to make potato toppers for Carol as I had planned.  So we went out for sushi instead at the place next to my house.

Tonkatsu, a.k.a. pork cutlet.  Pounded flat, breaded, and fried - with a sweet dipping sauce.  Decent, but Kat Garrison's version is better.

Salmon and cuttlefish sashimi.  Yum!!!  We also got edamame, miso soup and a spider roll.  (Don't worry, this is a kind of softshell crab roll.  Even the Chinese don't eat spiders, as far as I know.)

The best part of dinner was the lesson.  During my food court experience earlier this week it occurred to me that I should know how to swear in Cantonese, if I learn nothing else while I'm here.  A little tribute to Firefly, even though I think they swore in Mandarin.  So she gave me all the goods over dinner, but sometimes had to lower her voice way down so we wouldn't offend the other patrons.  At one point she said the waitress was giving her strange looks, so we took a break.  It was hilarious.  The Chinese have some awesome curses.  My personal favorite translates to this in English: "So many people die, why don't you?"  You can also use "deadly" as a way to add emphasis - like "deadly stupid" or "deadly asshole".  These are gonna come in handy, I can just tell.

Thanks Carol!

Food Court Navigation Assessment: Needs Improvement

Today was pretty good - slept in a little later than usual but still made it to my guilty pleasure breakfast with Beth before they turned the menu over to lunch at 11.  Then I had a nice chat with my folks and got to hear some of Dad's bowhunting misfortunes and Mom's Thanksgiving plans.  I got a lot of good talking time in this weekend actually, Skyped with Jay and Liv on Saturday and had an extended texting session with Alison - just like the good old days.  All very enjoyable, but it did nothing to help with my grading.  I got another pile done today, but too many remain.  Regardless, by dinner time I decided I needed to get out of my chair for a while and took a walk.  On my way, I came across a craft fair in the square near my house where I saw them putting up tents last week.  Cool stuff!  If I had been in a more relaxed state of mind, I would have looked around a bit more.  As it was, I just gave it a quick browse.

Here's a short pan of what it looked like.  This band was really pretty decent - sounded like 80's rock in Chinese - but in a good way.

There was all kinds of jewelry for sale, but I especially liked this table where the artists were drawing portraits on the spot.  The little pendants and pins are wooden disks, which they draw on with marker and then seal with clear nail polish.  Cool!


















I was also excited to see this booth.  I've seen these crazy stickers about in the city.  Remember "Too shiny"?  Same guys.  Regrettably they did not have that design in stock, or I would have gotten a copy for each and every one of you, but many of these stickers are not, shall we say, super P.C.  I did make a few relevant purchases for Liv and Shaw and Bobby though, cause they're not P.C. anyway.

Finally I arrived at my destination - the New Yaohan department store.  I've heard about this place a number of times, but this was my first visit.  The reason I made the journey was that a fellow coworker, Miranda, posted a picture of some pad thai on Facebook and it looked so good I couldn't get it out of my mind.  Stupid Facebook!  Anyway, she said she'd gotten it at the New Yaohan foodcourt, which is in the top of the building, above 7 or 8 floors of merchandise.

When I arrived, I took a quick walkthrough and soon found the Thai place.  There were Korean, Japanese and several other Chinese options too.  I deduced that I needed to figure out the order numbers of what I wanted and then pay at the central cashier - full marks for that step.  I ordered 3 things, because I was hungry and thought it would be nice to have leftovers.  But I forgot to ask for takeaway dishes - mistake number 1.

What I didn't realize is that they would treat each item as a separate order and put it on its own tray with its own plasticware and expect me to juggle them all.  As you can see, the food court is a hoppin' spot, and finding a table was tricky.  So they'd already called up my coconut and mango with sticky rice before I'd had any luck.  I grabbed the plate off the extra tray and just added it to my coconut tray, which the lady behind the counter didn't like at all.  Then she seemed annoyed because I couldn't instantly see which tickets were the right ones to give her because I was trying to maneuver the food on the trays. 

Anyway, the pad thai wasn't ready yet, so I wrapped around to the far side of the FC and managed to snag a table.  Setting down my heavy tray, I put my hoodie on the chair as a marker and looked for my third ticket.  Gone.  Must have fluttered off in the wind as I cruised around.  I need to have Carol teach me some Cantonese curse words.  That's what I'll ask her to teach me this week.  So I retraced my steps all over the food court trying to find my missing ticket.  No dice.  Luckily, I at least remembered my number, so I wrote it down on a notepad and sheepishly went back to the food nazi and tried to explain using my oh-so-famous gesturing system of communication.  She scolded me and shook her head, but finally handed over my noodles.  What a pain! 

On top of it all, the pad thai was only so-so.  It was really salty on account of all the shrimp it contained.  "Nothing Special", as my favorite admin likes to say.  Luckily, I'd brought just the right book for the occasion.  Read another chapter of "you are here" and totally let it all go.  Walked home relaxed and got some more work done.  Great book.  Even if you don't know anything about Buddhism or have never thought about it, it's worth checking out.  I can't recommend it highly enough.

I managed to get a nice vid of the Hotel Lisboa on my way home.  In case you're not sick of the Blade Runner comparisons yet, here's one more.  The lit up elevators you can see from the outside.  Check it out!

Finally, I should mention that if you'd like to see even more of Macau, (or have something to look at on the days I flake), check out Beth's blog!  She wasn't putting stuff up very often at first, but now she has a great collection of photos and tidbits about our crazy life here.  I'll add her to my sidebar as well, so you don't forget. 

Beth's blog: http://enroute-beth.blogspot.com/

Proud as...

When I began blogging about my day, I couldn't help thinking about my Level 0 students - and this quote from A Christmas Carol sprang to mind.

I spent all day grading their video projects and am thrilled with what a great job they did.  It took all day because I had some technical difficulties getting them all on YouTube, and because I used the grading rubric from our head teacher.  Note to self: When a rubric is four pages long and requires a lot of math to complete, it quickly becomes a rubric I will never use again.

We studied advertising in our first unit and so that was the incentive for this project, but the main goal was to get them to practice writing (they had to turn in two drafts of an outline and a script or storyboard), teamwork, and speaking skills.  I think that considering this is probably the first group project like this they've ever done, English is a foreign language to them, and they have a ton of other schoolwork to do, they did an awesome job!  Ok, I'll stop bragging now and let you watch for yourselves.  Here's a link to our class blog - again, please don't post any comments on their page.  But you can feel free to put some here!  I recommend starting at the bottom (M4) and watching them in reverse order with Magic Note last.  (There are six in total.)  It might be a little anticlimactic otherwise.  Most of my favorite students really shine here - I'm drawn to the performers, as usual.

http://basicskills10.blogspot.com/

The only other things I did today of consequence were to put up the lovey fall window clings that I got from my parents and explore a new grocery store that Beth showed me.  It was great - had all kinds of Western stuff and it's only a few blocks away.  I've been doing my grocery shopping on my lunch break in Taipa, but it's hard on my shoulders to lug everything back up the hill and home on the bus.  So, I'll be doing more shopping here now I think.  Here are a couple shots of the decorations.  Now to reward myself with the first chapter of my new book before bed.  :)

My greatest weakness

Those of you who know me well realize that the subject line of this post does not refer to chocolate, bubble baths or even a good massage.  (Although I did have one of those tonight and it was brutally fantastic, as always.)  So, despite all better judgement, I have succumbed after only 24 hours wait time to the suggestion of yesterday's Anonymous commenter and have loaded Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? to my Kindle.  This is a stupid thing to have done because I have a mountain of grading to finish in the next two weeks, and almost no self-control when it comes to limiting my reading impulses.  But I'm going to try to use it as a reward for every section I finish.  :)

Nothing exciting happened today, other than what I've already mentioned, so time to see what's in the random photo folder.  Looks like I finally have enough city shots to include a nice spectrum, and it's appropriate since I'm still indirectly talking about Blade Runner and this will help you to see what I mean about Macau's dirty beauty.

Another apartment building near mine on Macau Peninsula.  This was taken mid-September.

One of the many interesting little streets between my place and Senado Square, 

which is the main tourist spot on the Peninsula.  Taken at the end of September.

Same spot and day, but facing the other way.

Another one very near my place - I see this beauty every day on my way to the bus stop.
October 7th

This is one of the cute little streets in Old Taipa Village.  (Taipa is the middle island.)

October 9th

And finally, another view of the casino madness on a rainy night.  

Harrison Ford might appear at any moment...

October 10th

The Day After American Censorship Day

I want to begin today's blog by bringing your attention to an important piece of legislation that will likely affect anyone who reads blogs like mine in the future.  It's called the Protect-IP Act and apparently yesterday was the day to protest it.  By the time I found out it was already tomorrow (today).  You know what I mean.

Anyway, I don't know a ton about it because I just learned about it this afternoon, but it sounds like one of those ideas that starts as a good theory and then becomes a huge mess.  I won't go to great lengths to describe it, because I'd just be paraphrasing this video, and watching the video will be more enjoyable.  So here it is, as well as the link to the site I read about it on, in case you want more info or to send an e-letter to your representative.




http://americancensorship.org/


Another chaotic and long day at work.  We're all on the verge of getting sick and every teacher I see looks a little crazier/more frazzled than the last.  Poor Angie has lost her voice completely.  We are having fun teasing her about it, but I am secretly very empathetic.  Losing your voice sucks, especially when you need it to do your job.  There's a light at the end of the tunnel though - a light named Jaja.  So basically I'm just trying to focus on getting to tomorrow at 8pm.

I'm pretty much done teaching new content to my students as of today.  Next week will be review and test-taking and then the final week will be more tests, going over test answers and final day parties.  Two of my classes gave group presentations today.  So cute, some of them get really embarrassed.  Again, I empathize, but it's been so long since I got nervous about a presentation that I can't help but smile a little.  I was pleasantly surprised at how dynamic some of them were though, and how loud.  Some of my female students barely ever speak above a whisper.  Now I know they are capable, if unwilling.  And some of them just talked too much.  These were supposed to be 10 minute presentations - for groups of 3-5.  I had two groups that took 23 minutes!!!  What the hell!?!  I told them to practice and that they'd be marked for time, but I guess they just underestimated or didn't practice at all, cause whoa!!!  One of the groups only had 3 people.  The first 10 minutes was all the same woman!  So yet another lesson learned for next time.  Expect people to go over no matter what you do.  The sucky thing is that I couldn't just cut them off without hearing each person or I would have nothing to grade them on.  So I guess either be militant about each person's time in the future, or just plan a little extra space in the schedule for people like these.  Sheesh.

So because of these extra long presentations, my night class didn't finish until close to 8:30.  The bus ride back was uneventful, I guess all the Grand Prix people are home for the day.  It was raining today, which made it extra crazy on the ride in this morning.  Standing at the bus station on rainy nights always makes me think of the scene in Blade Runner where we first meet Deckard in the futuristic L.A. Chinatown.  It's super urban, grimy, dark, drizzling, neon lights flashing everywhere with Asian characters.  Today I expressed this comparison to Beth.  She's never seen the film, so I tried to explain, but it's complicated. "It's kind of a creepy sci-fi movie about the future," I began.  "You really like those kind of movies, huh?" she replied.  I guess I must.  :)  I have kind of a love/hate relationship with Blade Runner though, because although it's intriguing, it's one of those movies that leaves you hanging at the end without a satisfying explanation.  I HATE that.  Every time I see it I hope I'm going to finally come to a conclusion.  No.  Maybe if I see it here, in a more simpatico place, I'll finally figure it out.  I'll let you know - first I have to find a copy.  Luckily, I'm in download land.

The lingering evil - beaten back, for now

Some of you know about my lingering evil already.

These are what the Chinese herbs looked like
before I cooked them.

For many years now, I have been very fortunate in that I really never get sick like most people do - colds, flu, etc.  However, when my immune system is compromised, (usually from lack of sleep and dehydration), the same symptoms always occur.  Usually it starts with a day of dry, scratchy or sore throat, combined with or followed by a day of post-nasal drip.  Then I lose my voice completely and my sinuses start mass-producing snot.  A few days and hundreds of Kleenexes later, the snot dies down and I have to start coughing up all the crap that slid down the back of my throat.  That usually takes at least a week, and when it's really bad my ribs ache from coughing so hard.  Needless to say, this is a sequence of events I like to avoid at almost any cost.

Through the help of Arpita, my Chinese medicine friend in the U.S., I figured out a quick way to get rid of it. Chinese herbs taste gross though, so prevention is still the best cure.  (She's the one that told me it was a "lingering evil", because it always comes back exactly the same, unlike a regular cold.)  So the ultimate solution is to go into red alert as soon as I feel the first hint of a symptom.  This happened Tuesday afternoon and so I came home and went to bed as early as possible.  Hence no blog.  (Monday I just had nothing to report.)  I also slept a lot and took it easy today and have been drinking a ton of fluids, and it seems to have been pacified.  But, much like the sandpeople, it will probably return soon, and in greater numbers if I don't watch out.  So my late, late nights need to come to an end until the semester's over. 

I didn't go immediately to bed, because it was Cantonese night and I'd already bought all the ingredients for dinner, so I just warned Carol and she came over anyway.  I made tuna noodle hotdish and a fruit salad.  They had perfectly ripe figs at Park-N-Shop.  I couldn't believe it!  The salad was tasty, but the hotdish was just so-so.  I had to use regular wheat noodles instead of egg noodles, because I couldn't find the latter.  They tasted fine, but I think they soaked up a lot more liquid.  Either that or we can just blame it on my poor math skills.  Trying to convert all the ingredients from ounces to grams and account for a different sized pan may have been too difficult for me.  Anyway, the result was that it was kind of on the dry side.  Now Angie wants tater-tot hotdish, if we can just find the tots.

I finally put my new warm blanket on my bed and it's awesome.  Very snugly, and not too obnoxious-looking.

I took one decent break today to walk to the post office.  On the way I saw these tents going up in the square near our apartment.  The Grand Prix starts tomorrow, so I need to leave an hour early for work to compensate for the traffic nightmare we've been told to expect.  

At the post office was a care package from my folks.  Nice huh?  They know how much I enjoy autumn leaves and sent me these various window clings to substitute for the real thing.  The coffee print is from a Norwegian restaurant in Duluth (Takk for Maten Cafe) that they visited recently and the original was actually painted with coffee.  Cool huh?  If you're interested, visit www.justcoffeeart.com to learn more.  And of course no package from home is complete without cute children photos.

Speaking of cute children, on my way back from the post office, I suddenly realized a small voice was singing "Head, shoulders, knees, and toes" behind me.  I turned to look and it was a Chinese girl; I'd guess around 4 years old?  So sweet and so fun for me to hear some familiar and unexpected English.  Unfortunately the mother must have misinterpreted my interest and promptly shushed her.

The rest of my day was spent grading student projects.  Our unit is on stress and some of them elected to conduct a survey of their fellow classmates and report on the results.  One of the groups asked if they could use me as a participant, which I thought was sort of cute.  I'll include the vid here for fun and to give you an idea of my students' speaking ability, since some of you have asked about it.  This is a Level 2 student.

That's right - Reading Rainbow

So my day started off in the most righteous way possible.  I got back from McDonald's breakfast to find a text from Becky, asking me if I'd seen Jimmy Fallon's latest masterpiece.  It's so good that words can't do it justice, so I'll just post it and let you discover.

And here's the original so you can compare and contrast.

So great.  I love that guy.  Both those guys, actually.  (LeVar and Jimmy)


Mostly just did more grading today, but here are a few random shots from the weekend.

This is a glass model inside Kang Wu hospital, where I got my wrist treated.  My phone couldn't really capture it well, but it was very sparkly.  

Someone's getting ready for Christmas!

 
Angie came in to ask me a question and started laughing about the state of my bed.  It's my staging area; my to-do pile for the day.  The clothes are ones that need treating or hand-washing or mending, paper filing corner is in the upper right, and then all my various piles of schoolwork.  Makes perfect sense, yo.

I bought a new, warmer blanket on Saturday, with help from Carol who walked around with me and told me what they were made of and which was the best deal.  She tried to talk the price down for me, but it didn't work super well since the ATM gave me a thousand pataca bill.  "No really, she can only afford 300, oh wait..."  Anyway, I got a good one, but don't need it quite yet because it warmed up again.  It was like 80 degrees today!  At one of the stores the clerk surprised us all by going upstairs to get another blanket size to show us.  This is not unusual because many places have upstairs storage, but this one had no stairs...

You can hear Angie and Carol laughing and commenting on how we should try to get her to go up again if you listen closely.

And I also bought a new winter coat.  Carol and Angie thought it was too pricey (because they're Chinese and will only settle for an incredible deal), but Beth gave her blessing and she's pretty thrifty too.  I figured it was worth 990MOP for a coat that fit well on my big American shoulders, looks somewhat professional, is warm and will shed water.  It's wool, after all, and that stuff isn't cheap.  And I don't want to waste any more time looking for something better.