台灣烏骨雞

剛剛在Jay Leno Show看到人介紹台灣烏骨雞！據他說是"only found in Taiwan"，我還真的不知道勒。

他後來又講了台灣的臭豆腐，之外又講了個什麼泡了四十多天的「$#D^&^&^%.臭豆腐」(我以為他是講一家餐廳的名字，所以沒去注意那是什麼名稱)，他說這個他就只敢嘗一口。Jay問說那麼當地人會不會覺得你不禮貌？他說有些當地人也是不吃的。

我以前在台北上英文課時，有次的「謝師宴」我們是到家餐廳吃，然後有人就叫了道用砂鍋煮的臭豆腐，連我都是第一次看到那樣子準備的臭豆腐，還沒端進來就聞到臭味了，當然我們的美國人老師和她老公都不敢吃

冰淇淋風波

總覺得那個男的也是台灣來的，會這樣說的原因是我哥在幾秒鐘前才做過同樣的動作。

什麼動作呢？

那時我們在 Boston有名的觀光地點 Faneuil Hall Marketplace，逛著逛著看到一個賣冰淇淋的攤子，於是我們過去排隊買冰淇淋。那個時候有幾個小女孩擠在前面等著拿冰淇淋，另外還有一兩個人斜斜的站在一旁，也算是在排隊等著買，而我哥呢，一面抬頭看招牌上的價錢，一面就慢慢的往前走去，他根本沒有看到旁邊在等的人，我看到這情形拉了我哥一下，然後指指旁邊已經在排隊的人，我哥會意後閃到排隊的人後面。

過了一會，快輪到我們時，一對東方人夫婦走過來，而其中的男子正做著和我哥一模一樣的動作 --- 一邊抬頭看著招牌一邊往前走，然後就直接插隊在我們前面準備買冰淇淋。我那時真的是很不爽，臭著一張臉，大概是老婆終於注意到了，才對他低聲說了幾聲，而這位男子才恍然大悟似的回頭道歉。

Faneuil Hall, Boston, Massachusetts。圖片出自en.wikipedia.org

Faneuil Hall

Quincy Market

三字形建物：North Market（上），Quincy Market（中），South Market（下）。左邊中間：Faneuil Hall

檸檬與萊姆

萊姆--lime.

"Could you hand me the juice?" (I handed him the 100% bottled lemon juice.)

"No, this is lemon juice. I want lime juice."

"Aren't they the same?"

"No, they aren't."

這是我和我室友間曾有的一段對話。那時候他好像是要在某樣菜上頭加「檸檬汁」，剛好冰箱裡頭有lemon juice也有lime juice，所以我就拿了我在台灣時熟知的「檸檬」汁給他，然後他就抗議說lemon和lime是不一樣的，lemon適合加在xxx上頭(*1)，然後 lime配yyy(*1)才適當。

說真的，我是知道它們在風味上有些微差別，但是也沒差到這地步吧？！



(*1) 我忘了是什麼了，因為這兩種汁實在是太像，在我的觀念裡頭，他們幾乎是一樣的東西，所以我到現在還是不知道哪種汁該配什麼食物。

Requiem

Finally, it died, after almost 9 years of service.

My old Athlon PC had been working perfectly for the past 9 years, but it all changed today. Ever since I got my new HP laptop, I've been using it every day, so my old PC was neglected for quite some time. Today, I had a need for it, so I turned it on, set up my programs and went out with my gf. I figured those programs should finish by the time I came back.

A few hours later, I came home and found my PC not responding.... I clicked, pushed, pressed, typed, and kicked (Nah, I didn't), nothing I did could wake it up, so I resorted to the old trick--reboot. It didn't work.

I was thinking the possibility of it being hacked, but I ruled it out. Anyway, I did some diagnosis, and I concluded that the PC's bios battery was out of juice.

The funny thing is I went online afterwards to find some info about the battery life, and spotted some descriptions on a webpage that matched almost all of my PC's symptoms--showing funny messages when booting up, failing to recognize multiple partitions on a drive, and bios time falling back to 2000. The only thing not mentioned in the list is my PC ceased to respond some time after it was up.

So, DL3032 3V battery, kudos to your unusually long 9 years of life. I'll miss you!

House of the Dead

(SciFi channel is playing House of The Dead. Well, it's not scary at all...)

I hated this kind of "living dead" movies when I was a kid, because they scared the hell out of me. The funny thing is I'd never watched any single one of them back then; all I saw were trailers on TV and they were enough to give me nightmares. I knew they were all fake, but those zombies looked real enough, to a kid anyway, and I really couldn't stand the sight of seeing a person trapped inside a zombie-infested well and struggling to get out.

Apparently, the first movie was a big hit, so a series of "living dead" movies soon followed (just to jog your memories, if you're old enough, they are "生人勿近"，"生人迴避", etc)

Another one that scared the s**t out of me was Friday the 13th. It was the slashing scenes that prompted me to flip to other channels; I was fine with seeing a translucent or fog-like ghost, but not a machete cutting through a torso.

Then came A Nightmare on Elm Street. I guess the "trauma" I suffered when I was a kid stopped me from seeing this movie and its sequels. It wasn't until a friend told me they were actually quite funny that I started renting the movies and watched them. Well, I wouldn't call it "funny" but he was right—they weren't scary at all.

Well, let's get back to the TV I'm watching right now. So far, I have no idea what this House of the Dead is about other than a lot of kung-fu kickings, shootings and explosions. I guess the director tried to make his movie look more hip in the hope that youngsters would love it, but I must say he failed miserably. After all, it's not supposed to be an action movie.

"possess ... life style convenient"

我先前以為那是出自個英語人士，但是實在不大對勁所以拿去AUE問。因為幾個回覆的人回得很詳細，很精彩，反正問也問了，不看可惜，所以我把link放在 這裡，有興趣的人可以自己去看:

"possess ... life style convenient"

0 GRMAS OF TRANS FAT

per serving. Finally, KFC announced their new fried chicken with 0 grams of trans fat per serving. I heard about it early this year and checked their website, but it seemed like they were still trying very hard to find a suitable cooking oil. Well, I guess they finally found one, even though it's at the "per serving" level.

Now, this "per serving" is very tricky; it means that the content of trans fat in a certain food is not absolute zero--there's still a trace amount of trans fat in it, but FDA says it can be labeled as 0 grams as long as it's below 0.1 grams. 

Just for the fun of it, I went to KFC's website and used their nutrition calculator to see how much trans fat is there in 1 extra crispy chicken drumstick, 2 extra crispy chicken thighs, 1 mashed potato, 1 cole slaw, and 1 biscuit. 

The total amount of trans fat yielded to 1.5 grams. Well, it's better than 8+(*1) grams I got last time.

 

(*1) or maybe higher... I forgot the exact number..