Cool Things

Mozilla aims to make a record for most software downloaded in 24 hours, with the release of Firefox 3. It's somewhat silly, but hey, why not? The Download Day site is here.

You fail... orchestrally. (The music makes it seem sillier.)

Braainsss... (I should try this recipe...if I can find an appropriate brain mold.)

In other brain-related news, a monkey hooked up to a robotic arm successfully fed itself with said arm.

Twenty

So... I'm now past teenhood but have yet to achieve full adulthood. The transition age if you like, to soften the blow of having to be responsible and rely on oneself.

No, it hasn't sunk in yet. It won't for a while.

Then one day it'll hit like a wall of bricks and I'll know, really know, that it's too late to go back.

License Plate

To the owner of this car:


You are my hero.

Snapshot

It's week twelve, what amounts to the last academic week. The last presentation for our core module just finished, and now all that's on my mind is food. Food, and warmth. The wind is unduly punishing, and the wool cardigan I grabbed while rushing out of the house is doing little for me. It doesn't help that I unzipped it while I was indoors earlier.

"Help me hold this," I say, passing my laptop bag to B, who is walking beside me. I pull the cardigan free from where the strap of my carryall bag has trapped it, and secure the front. "Shall we go for pizza? I don't feel like having instant noodles again." The campus centre has a fairly good pizza place. While somewhat expensive, pizza is pizza.

B disagrees. "We might as well eat at Jessie's," naming our favourite pizzeria. Unfortunately it is in town, and a little too far for a walk.

"Don't tell me we're going all the way out there."

"No, what I mean is, the campus pizza isn't worth it."

"No." The money-minded part of my brain has taken over. "Asian grocery then?" The campus Asian grocery stocks packed lunches in its fridges, at prices considered cheap in this country.

"I don't know, is the food good?"

"It's-" I stop, remembering that I eat almost everything. I turn to L, walking quietly behind us. "Was the food good?"

"It was quite good."

Satisfied that it's not just me, I add, "Not enough chilli though."

"That's because you eat so much chilli." I don't deny the accusation.

We're in the campus centre now, and the temperature warms immediately. The Asian grocery is past the travel agency and B suddenly remembers that she's avoiding a travel agent.

"I've decided not to go back home after all," she explains. "But after all the trouble I put that guy, he's going to kill me! He kept calling my phone yesterday." I hand her my laptop bag as we walk past the agency, and tell her to check it for damage. She makes a poor attempt at hiding her face behind it.

We reach the safety of the grocery, and make a beeline for the fridge. There are packed lunches there again, but for some reason they seem less appealing than yesterday. I don't like the look of them.

"Maybe I'll have instant stuff today," I concede.

"I'll go buy food upstairs," says L. B is hungry now, and rummages through the buns on display. She picks out a chicken bun. A ham-and-egg bun catches my eye, and I pull it out. B has no more coins, so I pay.

"Is the guy in there?" asks B, cautiously peeking around me as we walk back past the travel agency.

"No," I say, glancing in. "No, wait, yes. He's not looking this way though." I juggle my two bags a little, until I get a hand free to open the bun. B and I chew as we accompany L upstairs.

Upstairs is a nice little lounge, complete with sofas, a dining hall and a take-out restaurant. We head into the restaurant and hang around while L goes queues up.

"That chicken looks good," considers B. "Why don't you eat here?"

"Too expensive." I glance at the pau buns on sale. $1.80 each. Are they mad?

"That's robbery. It's just not worth it," comments B.

"They are pretty big though." Well, not really. Just a little bigger than what we're used to back home, maybe.

"Yes, but I'd get tired of eating them half-way." L is done, so we walk out. I toss my bun wrapper into the dustbin, and happen to get a look inside as I do so. Plastic food boxes lie haphazardly in a pile, interposed with food scraps and dirty wooden chopsticks.

"What a waste," I say. "We always keep the boxes."

"At home, I'd throw them away. Don't you?"

"Never. We always keep them. We have this huge pile of them at home..."

"Oh... I don't. I mean if I'm eating out, I don't want to carry that thing back, you know?"

We walk down the stairs, past the pizza place and its long queue, out to the courtyard outside. Suddenly, B says, "Do you want Turkish delight?"

"Huh?"

She points. There's a booth where some girls are setting up cookies and sweets and things. A box of Turkish delights, generously covered in icing sugar, lies open on the table. One of the girls is still putting up signs displaying the price of each item.

"It's for the Burmese cyclone," explains one of the girls. I dislike Turkish delight, but the cookies look good. They are large, and the price of a dollar, for a charitable cause, doesn't seem unreasonable. I buy one for myself and another for B. "You owe me $8 now," I tell her.

There's a pile of longish roll-like pastries, pale brown dusted with green. I ask what they are. "Baklava," she says. "It's a Lebanese sweet." I give her a $2 coin to satisfy my curiosity, and she hands me one of the rolls on a paper towel. Now juggling two bags, a wallet and a sweet, I put everything down on a nearby bench and sort things out, and only then do I try the confection. The taste startles me.

"It's...really good?"

"Is it?" B is not entirely believing.

"It's like...chocolate." I offer some to L, but she refuses. "I'm thinking of buying one myself."

I break off a piece and give it to B. There's a pause, and then her face is forced into a smile. "Mmm!" L is convinced, and gets a baklava for herself.

"See you guys." B walks off in the other direction, where her house is. I walk down the path with L, finishing off the sweet and the cookie. We pass a dustbin; I consider going home to throw away the paper towels, then decide that that would be a curious brand of laziness. I drop the tissues into the bin.

My mental alarm signals go off instantly, and I wonder why my hand feels so...empty. My brain takes less than a second to work it out.

I spin on my heel. "Where's my laptop?" I think L gasps or something. I don't notice. I'm running back to where my memory says I last had my laptop bag. The bench where I put everything down after buying the sweets. That has to be it. It's a good two hundred metres back, and I'm not running fast enough. I have plenty of time to think of what will happen if it's not there.

All my work. Everything. I'm in a strange country, and suddenly I feel alone. I'm trying to move faster, and my legs can't.

I briefly wonder where L is, and decide it doesn't matter.

I'm not in training, and the adrenaline rush cannot help me. I stumble to a walk, albeit a fast one, gasping heavily. The bench is only a little further now. I pray, harder than I ever have.

I'm nearer the bench, and I see two black handles peeking over the top. I feel partial relief, but it's not enough. I walk around the bench and see my laptop bag, unharmed.

I have never felt more grateful.

I pick it up and inspect the contents quickly. Nothing missing. Still partially out of breath, I walk back. Across the courtyard, I spot L, running in short bursts. So she's not very fit either.

She comes closer, and I hold up the bag, exhausted but triumphant. She immediately stops, face relaxing in relief, and waits for me to catch up.

"I think I'd have died if I lost it," I say, between heavy breaths.

L says something, but I hardly notice. I think I babble some more as we walk. The danger is over now, and I feel light. My joints feel unstable, and a headache is starting to form behind my eyes. I think of checking the mail, then decide I can't be bothered. Somehow we get back home.

"It's high time the dustbin was emptied," comments L. I know. I wanted to do it this afternoon.

"I'll do it later. I'm too tired." A heavy understatement. Physically I'm fine. But something has happened on a mental level which won't sooth easily.

"I'll do it." I nod, getting over to my room door and fumbling with the key.

When I come back L is struggling to get the dustbin cover off. I forget she's never done this before. I prise it off fairly easily, much to her surprise, and get the hot water flask going. It's done in a few minutes, and I make instant noodles. The headache is getting worse.

I need a reboot. I haven't slept well for the past few days. I've been staying up late to finish up that last presentation. I've been heavily stressed. And I almost lost the most precious thing I own.

I curl up on the bed and sleep for an hour.

Potato Wedges

I must have mentioned at some point that potatoes dislike me. My past efforts at making potato wedges have always ended poorly for the frying pan. As for that one time I tried making rosti...Well, let's just say I had to spend half an hour cleaning the pan with a butter knife.

But no more. Today - today the order has changed!


They were very good. I even managed to put in the right amount of salt.

Also, this is post #100, which is a fairly awesome milestone.

Cold

I used to think I knew what cold was. When our lecture theatres hit fifteen degrees Celsius, I'd be shivering away and wishing I had a jacket. If I had a jacket, I'd be shivering and wishing I had gloves. The coldest I'd ever been was in a half-filled auditorium at night, with too few people to warm the air. I didn't have a jacket with me, as it happened, and so I shivered for two hours until it was time to leave.

But now I know that whatever I felt then, wasn't cold. Now I know cold. For example, the temperature outside right now is seven-point-four degrees Celsius. It's also raining, so the humidity is close to a hundred percent. I'm in my house, in a blue woollen cardigan huddling close to the warmth of my computer. My house has misled me multiple times into thinking that the environment outside was a lot warmer than it actually was. Let me tell you, anyone outside right now knows the meaning of cold.

And it's not even winter yet.

Junk Food

So... this article caught my eye.

I'm no psychiatrist, but I do remember what it was to be a child. I absolutely loved sweet foods, but even more so I loved salty foods. (I've always had a taste for the savoury.) I liked starchy foods like rice and potatoes, and meat especially if it was in curries or fried. I disliked vegetables and went without them as much as possible, but I would take the apples and oranges my father cut for me after meals. I also drank copious amounts of orange juice. It was like... manna or something. I wasn't too fond of plain water, unless it was chilled. I wouldn't drink boiled water.

As I grew older I started to see that vegetables weren't so bad. My mother always put chopped spring onions on my congee and noodles, so I got used to the taste. I started to like asparagus, beetroot and lettuce. Broccoli I still couldn't endure, but cabbage and cauliflower were good. I tolerated peas and onions if they were mixed in with a lot of other things. I was fine with kangkung if it didn't contain crystals.

When I reached my teens a big change happened, and by big change I mean a complete reversal of polarity. I started to actively like vegetables, especially if stir-fried. I'd go out of the way to get hold of unusual salad vegetables like rocket lettuce and baby spinach. Brussels sprouts were prohibitively expensive, but I did get to try them and I loved them. My opinion of broccoli remained unchanged, but I had to admit that curry leaves had an attractive flavour. I became fond of raw carrot. On the other side, my father became confused when threatening to withold chocolates did nothing to make me behave better.

I don't know what caused the change. Part of it may have been peer influence - when I went to camps and stuff, my friends would make grabs for the watermelon and papaya (I used to dislike both). Perhaps I wanted to be more like my father, who while old is fitter than many others his age. Part of it may have been instinct - it makes sense that a growing, active child would need more proteins and energy-rich food, while at adulthood the diet can become more balanced. And maybe, I had matured and was starting to make decisions for the good of myself instead of always going for what tasted better.

One thing I can be sure of - none of it had to do with being withheld from unhealthy things when I was young. I had plenty of chocolates and fast food when I was young. In my time it was still possible to buy a cup of Coca-Cola or an oily bowl of laksa from the school canteen.

However, while I still had access to those unhealthy foods, it was regulated. I considered it a treat to get a single square of chocolate per day. My father always sliced Mars bars into thirds - getting an entire bar was unthinkable. (I did get one once - as a reward for solving an entire workbook chapter of Maths problems. I was on cloud nine.) My mother would never allow us to have soft drinks in combination with healthy foods (something about affecting iron absorption), and fast-food was a rare thing.

Conversely, I was taught to like certain healthy things, from young. I have mentioned that spring onions were a staple on my noodles and congee. Whenever my mother deep-fried anything, she always made it a point to drain the oil on kitchen towels. She also used to spend a long time trimming chicken of skins and fat. (Misunderstanding the action, I once tried... washing a chicken skin and then eating it. Aheh.) Eggs were not allowed more than three times a week. I was given plain yoghurt when I was young - even now I prefer plain, sour yoghurt to the flavoured kinds. We were given lots of milk and cheese. Seasonings were used sparingly, to the point where I feel some kind of horror watching my friends stir-fry vegetables in copious amounts of oyster sauce. Coconut milk was vilified to the point that I can't still can't stand the smell of it, even today. And I still find it physically impossible to eat an entire tub of ice-cream at once - I was always taught it was wrong.

But perhaps the most important lesson came from some book that I read, and which I can't remember the title of now. It said that vegetables are not always good - they contain toxins, which can be just as harmful as cholesterol or fat. The key, the book said, was moderation and eating a large variety of foods. As I started to learn more about diet and nutrition through my Biology classes, the lesson was continually reinforced. It is not a matter of eating foods which contain a protein, a fibre-source, a carbohydrate source, etc. While carbohydrates tend to reduce to a limited number of monosaccharides, there are twenty amino acids, all of which are needed, and which are present in varying amounts in different foods. There are different kinds of fats (though all everyone cares about are trans- and cis-fats these days). And foods contain a frightening array of essential minerals and ions which can't be obtained from a single source.

I think the point of all this is... Suppressing "unhealthy" foods is not the way, especially when the definition of unhealthy foods keeps changing (*cough* margarine *cough*). Emphasising that there must be a mix of food groups doesn't help if it isn't clear that there must be variety within the food groups as well (lousy food pyramid...). And most certainly, implementing laws within schools which ban certain foods isn't going to work very well. It simply creates resentment towards the authority, and smuggling of contraband (and I thought it was bad enough in my time with all the chewing-gum trafficking and covert import of Coca-Cola in opaque waterbottles). The lessons have to come from trust figures - parents (and I mean loving parents, not the sort whose sole purpose is to be ATM machines), peers, likeable teachers, books and documentaries. They can't be forced - they have to come slowly, and be accepted slowly.

Furthermore there should always be substitutes to help the spirit when the flesh is weak. That's why I like the idea of fruit-juice lollies as alternatives. I'd also advocate small servings - ice-cream in small cups, or a small amount of fries. They help to ease, not suppress, craving, and build an ethic of eating such things in small, select amounts at a time. After all, there's evidence that some of these are healthy (in particular dark chocolate lowers blood pressure, and cholesterol is necessary in small amounts to maintain cellular function).

It is probable that good habits must be instilled early, and there is no time earlier than childhood. But forcing them causing opposite behaviour. Forcing, by creating laws or even rewarding "good" children with badges, may be easier to implement, but in most cases I'd expect it to be counterproductive. Patient teaching, ultimately encouraging children to make decisions on their diet by themselves, is what can cause a change.