William Chow's Personal Web Page
The year is 2006.
China Round 2
Sunday, May 21, 2006
It is hard to describe. The air is very dry, I mean that in the sense that the humidity is quite dry. To add to that, there is this smell in the air. It is like an electricial and rubber burning smell. It is like the wires from an amplifier got so hot it started to electronically burn smell. It also smells like an old rubber tire. Now mix this problem with the fact that all the windows are closed at night so no circulation of this air. Coupled with a high amount of particles in the air, so much so that at this time at night even with the windows open, my eyes are getting irratated to a point they feel like they are burning. It is like that sensation you are in smoked filled room and all the smoke is getting in your eyes. And it is not just your eyes, it is my throat too. It is also drying out and irratating my throat. It feels like you have been talking for a long time and the air is dry. So it feels real raw and you have a need to drink some water. Now, if that isn't bad enough, at night time you have the added smell of sewage coming in from the drain hole in the bathroom room floors. I explained this problem last year, but since there isn't a high usage and thus flow of water moving the sewage down there at night, that smell trickles up and it really stinks in the bathroom, and upstairs in general because of the low air circulation. Remember, they don't use the elbow trap method for blocking gases for their sinks and toilet. It is a bunch of connector pipes dumping into a big master long pipe downwards.
Oh well, I really have no control over it. I just have to adapt.
Today is a nothing day since it was raining on and off all day. I had to hang around the house. I started listening and pulling songs off my CDs and VCDs that I bought to make a 2006 mix of Chinese music. If you are interested in what I picked out of this year's popular music (and past) I will post a list in my MSN myspace.
For lunch, the three of us decided to go for hot pot. Now, it pretty much is the same as you would get in a Shabusen or any other Korean hot pot. The only real unique thing they have here is that the pot is divided into two compartments. One side has the soup mixture for spicy hot, and the other side is just your normal salty MSG soup base. Now, the only other real different thing they do here is, once they boil up their beef for example, they pull out the boiled meat and dip it into a sauce. The one that have for the normal side is a peanut satay kind of sauce. The hot side has they red hot pepper paste that we are all familiar with in this part of China. Anyway, I had a chance to try one piece of pork from the hot side. Damn it was so hot. I mean the hot side is just swimming in that dried hot pepper stuff. I don't know why even needed to pull out the boiled pork, to dip into the hot pepper stuff because it is already plenty hot as it is. Well, those two ate from the hot side, I ate from the normal side, I didn't use the peanut sauce too much, I just got my servings from the pot.
| The Experimental Chinese Food Of The Day is: |
Oishi Brand Chocolate Flavor Corn Curls
|
Well lets start with the corn curls. Well I was expecting something like a corn chip but no... This stuff is the material that a Popcorn Twist is made of or some types of Cheese Puffs. It has the same taste, same texture and same softness as the Popcorn Twists. The only new additive they have done here is added a top layer of chocolate on it. It is strangely addictive, however, unlike the cheese puffs, I have to stop because it was getting too sweet.
A good snack though, just don't eat too many of them.