“That’s bad Karma, Dude”
I started wondering exactly what karma means, and where the word comes from. In Chinese, karma is two characters (因果) which literally translate as “cause and effect”. The original word Karma comes from Sanskrit and it means “act, action, performance.” In Sanskrit (your) karma is what causes the entire cycle of cause and effect (i.e., the cycle called samsara). On wikipedia, I found something very interesting on the karma page:
‘Karma’ is an Eastern religious concept in contradistinction to ‘faith’ espoused by Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), which view all human dramas as the will of God as opposed to present – and past – life actions. In theistic schools of Hinduism, humans have free will to choose good or evil and suffer the consequences, which require the will of God to implement karma’s consequences, unlike Buddhism or Jainism which do not accord any role to a supreme God or gods. In Eastern beliefs, the karmic effects of all deeds are viewed as actively shaping past, present, and future experiences.
One good example of this is how we interpret things we can’t understand. “It’s a miracle!” After thinking about it, a western religious person would say “it came from god,” while an eastern religious person would think that it has some connection to their past or future. In some ways, those two reactions aren’t very different. However, when you start to want to influence or take control of things, in one you’d focus back to god and in the other you’d focus on the present moment. I think this is where the difference becomes significant.
Photo From: BAC*Photography
Maya Pizza Tien Mu Review
I am always looking for good pizza in Taiwan, and I’m usually disappointed when I find it - It’s usually bad or expensive (Pizza Hut happens to win both of those awards). Thanks to Hungry in Taipei’s Pizza Page, I have a few more places to try. However, last week I stumbled on Maya Pizza in Tien Mu, and I think it’s some of the best pizza I’ve had in Taipei.
They are between the new Sogo and Takashimaya in TienMu on a smaller road -a bit hard to find. View Business Card
Shi Dong Road Lane 91 #17
02-2876-1562
Taste – 8/10
Value for Price – 9/10
All of their 7 pizzas are either 200 or 220 NT, 3 of which are vegetarian. They are baked in a stone oven and ready in about 10 minutes. Unfortunately they don’t deliver, and on the night I visited there was almost an hour wait to get a pizza. There is 1 table outside with 2 chairs, so I wouldn’t recommend going there to eat, but the pizza spoke for itself.
This was the German Sausage Pizza. They used plenty of toppings and the flavor was OK.
This was my favorite between the two – the Goat Cheese. It was a nice mix of flavors and herbs, I will get this one again next time I visit.
The pizza was awesome, we’ll be back again to try some more pizzas and this time we’ll call ahead.
American Beef
In the last month there has been daily discussion in Taiwan about the recent decision to import US beef. They already import US beef, but previously Taiwan did not allow “high risk” beef to be imported from the USA. High Risk includes ground beef and beef offal (I have no idea what this means, but it should mean internal organs). There are several potential reasons for Taiwanese people being so upset about it, but the story I get is that those parts of the cow are the most likely to harbor diseases, especially Mad Cow Disease. As an American, I would never even think about Mad Cow as a risk of eating Beef. However, it seems that the rest of Asia (Korea went through this last year) thinks American cows are potentially crazy.
In response to this, Taiwan has gotten organized. All over town, restaurants are posting this picture in their windows:
I have been seeing this picture everywhere! You can see from the symbolism that they’ve said NO to US Beef. The red head on the cow shows that it is in fact MAD, and there’s even a number at the bottom unique to this store. The situation has gotten to the point where Taiwan has asked America to respect its wishes and will stop importing these beef parts. Last week, the Taiwan Legislature revised a law to ban the import of the Beef and now the executive branch is busy explaining why to the US government.
A Modern POV (Point of View)
Some people like to forward emails, I like to put TED videos on my blog. Over the last couple of years, TED videos have consistently knocked my socks off and have made me reconsider all kinds of things about the world today – I love them. This is a video that made me think about my assumptions.
He’s talking about people who aren’t centered on a god or a religion and the effects of their views. All around the world modern people are looking past their religions (particularly those religions that judge and point fingers at non-believers I believe) and forming different world views. What do these people believe in? What is the effect of these views? I was surprised at how relevant his observations were.
Speaker: Alain de Botton
Subject: How we define success, in ourselves and in others, and what it says about us
Time: 16:55
As of this posting, it has been translated into 15 languages 
Another great talk from TED!
The Truth – A tale of 3 Characters
Chinese characters have been evolving for thousands of years, and even today there are some big differences in how they are used around the world. Taiwan and Hong Kong both use traditional characters, while Singapore and China are using the simplified versions. Japan adopted the traditional characters a long time back and is now using it’s own blend of old and new. Taking a simple word like Truth (Shi2 hua4 = Real + talk) we can see how the characters have taken several paths:
實話 |
|
実話 |
|
实话 |
|
The top character is the traditional form, which I’ve heard has been in use about 2000 years. Japan adapted it and it’s been simplified to an even greater extent in modern Chinese. I like this example because it shows how it has changed in Japan slightly, and some words like hua (the 2nd character) haven’t been simplified to the extent they have been in China.
The Taiwan Breakfast Sandwich
While I was in the US, every now and then I’d stop by McDonald’s and have a sausage mcmuffin. Back in the day, it was only $1 and it was pretty good start to the day. I thought I would share the Taiwan equivalent with you all.
Taiwan has a convenience store culture. There are 7-11’s, Family Mart’s, and OK Mart’s everywhere. Furthermore, with the subway in Taipei being the highest rated in the world, lots of people get around via subway: hence the lack of McDonald’s drive thru windows. So, our local breakfast sandwich is coming from a convenience store. (By the way, if you want McDonald’s in Taiwan, you usually have it delivered via scooter at no charge)
This sandwich’s main ingredient is rice. Actually, I’m assuming it comes from a japanese style dish called onigiri (rice ball). You basically take some main ingredient, wrap it in rice, and then put a piece of norii (seaweed) around it. I’m sure there are traditional chinese versions of it, but I’m guessing there’s a Japanese connection with it here in Taiwan.
So here it is. I picked the bacon and egg variety. Also, I picked 7-11 because they have the nice picture on the front, at the other stores you need to be able to reach Chinese to know what you’re buying. There are also lots of seafood varieties, but I’ve always had a hard time eating seafood from 7-11. This one costs 18 yuan which is about $0.55
You can see there’s about 1 piece of bacon an inch long in the whole thing…not exactly what you get at McDonald’s for $1.25. It’s probably more like a potato salad with bacon. Anyhow, it’s still pretty good
When Not to Use Google Search
I think Google is awesome, and I use it every day. However, there are times when I get really frustrated with it. There are searches I run and no matter how I seem to change the words I use, I still get a bunch of crap. The crap is usually in the form of results that are trying to sell me something, when I’m either (1) looking for something free or (2) looking for a specific piece of information.
I’ve talked about using delicious a couple years ago, I use it for saving website links, but more and more I’m using the delicious community to help me find things I’m looking for. I’m not aware of other major communities like delicious, but I’m sure there are several or many out there.
To me, this is just like deciding to (A) look in the phone book or (B) to call your friend for a recommendation. There are times when the phone book is perfect (use Google), and then there are times when you want that friend of yours to tell you who to call (Use delicious or a community search). Here are a couple of situations when I use delicious to search instead.
1. Looking for Software
The delicious community is pretty technical (as you can see from their popular page), and it is a great resource when you need it. Recently, I was updating my resume, and I wanted to convert it from a Word file to a PDF file. I didn’t have the software for that, but I thought I’d try searching for it. Using Google to search (“convert Word to PDF”), I found several ads, and the first choice was a software download. I have no idea if this software is safe, stable, how many people use it, etc. I could research it if I wanted, but that’s more time. Here is a picture of the search results from a delicious search for “Convert word pdf”
Notice how on the left is the title of the website, and below it the actual website address. On the right the dark blue squares show How many people have saved this site. This box on this right is what I’m looking at. All of those boxes are dark blue because more than 1000 people have saved each website. Looking at this list, I make a conclusion that all of these first few are pretty popular, but there is one clear leader with almost 40,000 people who have saved the link. This clear winner is not on the first page of the Google results, so I probably would never have found it.
Even though this case produces an easy choice, in less obvious searches I can still quickly and easily see what a technical community of web users are using for different software applications.
2. Looking for “Free” things
Using the word “Free” on Google is usually like putting a target on your back. There are lots and lots of companies trying to sell you something, and they all know if they use the word free they are going to get a lot more traffic. This is not a bad thing, but sometimes it’s just nice to find the free thing you are looking for with a minimum amount of BS.
I am currently preparing to take the GMAT, and I’ve been looking for free test questions that I can take to practice for the exam. If I use the search term “GMAT prep” in Google I get a who’s who listing on the first page. All the most legitimate companies who make a living preparing people for the test. If you add the word “free” to your search the results don’t get any better.
Using the delicious search things are different. Actually, there’s not 1 top link in common with the results page from Google. There are a few companies selling here (as you can see from the titles), but there are also a couple of blogs and forum websites. These are the places that I shouldn’t have to spend money, and I can find free test questions / tips pretty quickly this way.
So, there are some examples of when I think there’s a much better choice than Google for search. The other nice thing about using delicious search is the information below the blue boxes on the right side (they are in grey, and the words I used are highlighted in grey). I can see the most common words other people are using to save the websites. If I’m having a hard time knowing what words to use to search, I can look here and get some new ideas and see what other people are using.
High Mountain Taiwan Oolong
In May of this year, Nono and I had the opportunity to visit a tea harvest at a high mountain tea farm in central Taiwan. It was an awesome experience, and it was great for us to see how it all happens – from the picking to roasting to tasting. We were not a part of a tour or anything, it was a “friend of a friend’s” farm and he let us participate in the spring harvest.
I’ve got the pictures in this album on Picasa, here are a couple of highlights.
This was taken from the mid-elevation point on the farm. We were at about 1800m elevation. Supposedly, tea can be considered high mountain if is produced about 1200m elevation. The air was so clean and fresh up there!
This picture shows the farm and the processing buildings. The larger looking building on the right is used only for drying. It’s a big open room with a big blower inside. The building on the left is where the tea is processed and where people sleep.
Here the freshly picked leaves are drying. After a couple of hours, they’ll be put inside to dry further. They will dry between a half day and an entire day based upon the temperature, humidity, etc.
Here is a process where heat is applied to the leaves. They roll around in this big dryer. After a minute or two of this, they’ll be put into a bag and crunched / rolled for a few minutes. These two processes are reaped many many times (about 40 ) until the tea is done. The drying process opens the tea leaves and drys them out, while the rolling compacts and closes them.
Tea tasting is constantly happening during the processing. Grab a handful of tea, put it in a bowl and pour boiling hot water on it. They also put a spoon in there which is used to smell the tea. I was surprised at how much emphasis is put on the smell of the tea.
It was great to see another side of Taiwan; Getting off the beaten path. Going up into the mountains, breathing the fresh air, being around all the tea…It was awesome. I believe the best Oolong teas in the world are from Taiwan – and there’s lots of them around here!
Summertime Pasta Recipes
The summer in Taiwan is really, really hot and humid. When it’s so hot outside, it’s hard to eat heavy foods. Since Nono and I love to eat pasta we started searching for a few summertime pasta recipes we could make. We found a few recipes that use lemon juice as a base and started experimenting with them. We have found most of them use either Parmesan cheese or garlic as the main flavor.
The lemon juice – garlic base is named Marvini and is pretty good. Our favorite uses Parmesan cheese instead and it’s called Jamie Oliver’s Summertime Pasta. This one uses shrimp and no cheese.
We’ve adapted a couple things from Jamie’s version. First, we’ve substituted the pine nuts with bacon (3 slices). Second, we’ve substituted the parsley with basil. The herb doesn’t actually matter, both of which you don’t taste at all. Hope you enjoy the pictures of our finished product
Chinese Words – Tone
If you’ve ever talked to someone about learning chinese, or what is difficult about learning chinese is that it’s a tonal language. That is you can say a word and depending on how you stress the begginning, middle or end it will have different meanings. This is indeed a frustrating thing about learning the language, but after a while you just have to go with it.
I’ve recently come across these words, and I was amazed at how subtle the differences are in pronunciation, but how different the final meanings are. All three of these words start with “Lao” (3rd tone), which by itself means old. From there you add the sound “Shi,” which is a very common sound in chinese.
|
Character |
shi Tone |
Meaning |
| 老師 | 1st tone | Teacher |
| 老實 | 2nd tone | Honest |
| 老是 | 4th tone | Always |
