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Huskies shouldn’t not be kept in this climate its cruel. And they need a lawn to play on, not just brief walks on the street. How long are you going to stay here? Only get a dog if you are going to be a faithful master for its whole life. BTW good luck taking it home on an airplane.
ok ben and tigerkuma why dont you guys have an arm wrestling match already!
growing up in new england i really miss fresh fish, mmm grilled salmon homegrown asparagus sam adams boston lager!
so to shift the convo back to chinese nutrition, anyone have any recommendations on readily available healthy sichuan food for people on a budget?
dou hua…. kong xin cai?
again i ask 炒饭 or 炒面？ not like any of its all that great, but if you were to select dishes on a typical sichuan menu, what would you pick and why?
@ben I’m a big fan of blue sword products, i’m really friendly with the workers at the local hu hui supermarket (i boycott hongqi and wowo) i like the underdogs and they keep 528 “blue sword” beer in the fridge and blue sword water in the freezer for me.
nutrition poll: The everlasting question 炒饭 or 炒面 ?
assuming portions and ingredients are roughly the same
Roommates just got an oven and I like to cook but only find time on the weekends. Like Charlie said, the protein in sichuan dishes is laced with exorbitant amounts of salt and spicy oil which really compromises the nutritional quality.
I’m also trying to eat less carbs late in the day, a bowl of noodles or fried rice at 8 at night is just going to go right to your gut. Recently I’ve been eating a couple cold dishes for dinner, 1 tofu 2 veggies I’m not a body builder but I run 10k races in the states and try to run 20-22 laps around the Chuan Da track 2-3 times a week (when the air isn’t too bad)
Every day I argue with my co-workers who want to eat za jiang mian or dao xiao mian which essentially has no nutritional value aside from providing over 100% of your daily saturated fat and sodium seeing that the ingredients are minced pork (mostly fat) chili oil and a few pieces of pao cai.
How come my Sichuan buddies aren’t getting Vitamin A deficiency or becoming morbidly obese?
When I first say this post I thought you were implying that you were looking for friends into sensory deprivation.
Wikipedia defines:
Quote:Sensory deprivation or perceptual isolation[1] is the deliberate reduction or removal of stimuli from one or more of the senses. Simple devices such as blindfolds or hoods and earmuffs can cut off sight and hearing respectively, while more complex devices can also cut off the sense of smell, touch, taste, thermoception (heat-sense), and ‘gravity’. Sensory deprivation has been used in various alternative medicines and in psychological experiments (e.g., see isolation tank).Short-term sessions of sensory deprivation are described as relaxing and conducive to meditation, however, extended or forced sensory deprivation can result in extreme anxiety, hallucinations,[2] bizarre thoughts and depression.[3
I’ve been wanting to start a budget thread for a while. I think more people should think about how much they actually spend and what is reasonable. After being here for more than a few months, the “but I’m in China excuse” doesn’t hold weight anymore when it comes to unnecessary spending.
I too am guilty of this, from 2008-2009 I was a 21 year old study abroad student in my senior year and I easily spent more money at bars than on rent. I’m sure many people can relate to this predicament.
Now that the nightlife isn’t what is was, (no more Chloe owned Paname and R.I.P. Panda club) I’m saving money for traveling.
Recently I’ve been concerned more with nutrition and balanced diet, as a vegetarian for 2001-2008 my eating habits quickly changed when I returned to China and realized that if I was going to do volunteer work in the earthquake area, maintaining a vegetarian diet was impossible. Also your options are severely limited when it comes to small fried rice and noodle restaurants.
Here’s what I propose, think of a daily diet (healthy, diverse options) for 1 person and post the prices
Breakfast:
南瓜稀饭 Nan Gua Xi Fan 1-2 RMB
A plate of assorted cold vegetable dishes (eggplant, tofu, green peppers) 5-7RMB
Really cheap option: 蘑菇白菜 包子 cabbage and mushroom baozi + xi fan = 4RMB but this is mostly carbs..
Cheapest option: Just Pao cai （free) and Xi fan 1-2 RMB
Lunch:
铺盖面 Pu Gai Mian have become my recent favorite. They are “blanket” shaped noodles in a clear broth with yellow beans that look like chickpeas (high protein no fat) you can get your noodles with beef or ribs but I prefer “suan cai rou si” pickled vegetables with just a small amount of shredded beef.
These noodles cost 7 kuai for 三两 Its a big bowl!
Alternatively I’m a fan of 盖浇饭 “gai jiao fan” rather than ordering a whole dish of chuan cai you can get a portion of rice with a meat/vegetable dish of your choice.
Gong Pao Ji ding, Yu Xiang Rou si or Fang qie Ji dan are widely available and provide a much healthier lunch than a huge plate of fried rice or oily noodles. Expect to pay 7-12 kuai for gai jiao fan.
Dinner:
If I have noodles for lunch I’ll get rice for dinner and vice versa. Recently I’ve been a big fan of a small vegetarian restaurant near the south gate of Sichuan university that has delicous balanced meals from 8-15RMB (seitan mock meat, tofu & vegetables, cold vegetables, pao cai, BROWN rice and soup)
Also korean style restaurants have delicious stone pot style rice mixes, with a good blend of vegetables and egg/ or meat plus you get kimchi and barley tea. There is a korean restaurant on yu lin nan lu close to the turnoff to Macchu Picchu. 石锅拌饭 ranges from 10-12RMB
Altogether you could eat this diet for about 30 RMB per day.
I’m interested in hearing other people’s opinions and hope to share more healthy ideas. This is just a start.
You’ll love padded bike shorts, they feel like diapers and keep your ass from getting sore.
However, real men wear tights.
Fixies would be a bit dangerous in this traffic. But yeah I’ve seen some trendy jiu-ling -hou on some fluorescent colored fixed-gears. how much do they go for?
2 days? maybe on a single speed kid’s bike. if you are reasonably fit you should be able to do 150 in 6-8 hrs. my 62 year old boss (female) rides 600 km in less than 20 hours. although she’s a pro there is no reason why you can’t get to emei in a day trip, spend a few days hiking then bike home. i’d be down to ride in the fall when there are less tourists and cooler weather.
But no one really wants MTG cards like they want fake ipads. If you put a print out card in a plastic card sleeve you can barely tell the difference.
We should start occupying tables outside of jelly fish for the sole purpose of playing MTG. Culture jamming!
That camera looks like it would be widely available in one of the 9-story “computer city” buildings on first ring road. Bargain low and walk away to the next guy selling cameras and you should get a good price. I’m not the best bargainer since I hate shopping I usually hold out until I really really need something and then cave for a price a bit higher than what I expected to pay.
I was surprised to find that electronics like this and “fake” name-brand clothing is actually cheaper in Shanghai markets like Qi-Pu Lu.
So you want to record your English teaching? Many private schools actually already have a minicam on site.
People just print out the rare cards, its called a “proxy”. But yeah, I’d be down to game again, I’ll trade you a deck if you can help me re-install wordpress 🙂
Sweet, I’ll be here. Actually I’d like to get some MTG cards in Chinese, a good way to practice reading, although the names of spells aren’t probably useful in day to day conversation.
Have you played that game 三国杀? All the middle school kids seem to like it. Although it looks kind of lame I’m still tempted to buy a pack and give it a shot.
Mike do you live in Chengdu? I haven’t seen any hobby shops that offer cards. I think downloading jpg files and printing them out would work just fine for rares.
You can play magic online if you have a pc but they charge a monthly fee.
If you are in Chengdu I have a decent sized collection of cards and would be down to play sometime over tea/beer.
Last night I met an Austrian living in Beijing named Walter who plays sitar/guitar professionally. He said he played with Li Daiguo at Little Bar two years ago and is in in Chengdu for about a week now.
Walter told me that at the Indian Consulate in Beijing they offer FREE lessons for Sitar, Tabla, Indian singing belly-dance etc. What a great opportunity for cultural exchange. The only thing you hear about the US. Consulate is horror stories of Chinese friends getting denied travel visas!
Might be worth looking into the Indian consulate cultural exchange programs, pack up your sitar and live in a hostel in Beijing for a week or two. I’m probably going to chill with Walter this weekend I’ll let you know when we do.
When I was an exchange student at SWUN in Fall 2008 the USAC program offered a cooking class at an upscale restaurant in the Third Section of Renmin Road South. The class was $140 USD and we learned all the basic dishes, but the downside was that most of the prepping was already done for the students, so it was a bit watered down in terms of difficulty. Unlike western recipes there isn’t a standardized measurement for ingredients, everything was 一点 一点 a bit of this a bit of that, so you have to have a good eye. But with a lil practicｅ you can learn to make most of the dishes you love.
