The days are drawing in fast, darkness pervades. [Fullsize Image]
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Monthly Archive for November, 2004
Here’s a question which you might not have thought of before (I know I hadn’t!) - What do you get when you cross an egg with a tea bag? Answer: A very brown tea-flavored (?) egg!
When I saw Echo placing tea bags in a pan with half-a-dozen or so eggs I though she had gone mad for a second or two until it was explained to me that this was a common Chinese specialty prepared by boiling eggs in tea. The theory goes that the tea seeps through the cracked shell, thereby flavoring the egg and giving it a marbleized appearance. Here’s what they turned out like:
The taste is certainly interesting and not at all unpleasant but it’s not something I’d want to eat everyday. From what I’ve gathered this term Chinese/Japanese cooking in general is a lot more healthy (lots of vegetables etc) and hence they don’t have any of the obesity problems the West are facing right now - coined the ‘meat-ball’ condition by my friend, and aptly so I think!
You can find instructions for cooking your own tea eggs (cha ye dan) here.
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Last nights intentions were good and in theory fairly simple - teach people how to cook chocolate chip cookies. Piece of cake huh? (poor joke) Not so fast! The first little problem occurred when we realised that we didn’t have any kitchen scales - I tried to improvise by using bathroom scales with me standing on them and then subtracting the weight of what I was holding but I don’t think the accuracy of this technique was quite what it could have been (no photos, sorry!). In the end we reverted to guesstimating the weights…
After this the mixture seemed to come together quite well and things looked like they should have, but how wrong was I! After spooning the mixture out in circular shapes on a baking tray they were popped in the oven for approximately 15 minutes. Upon opening the oven door what greeted my eyes were not a tray of cookies - all the cookie mixture had somehow melted into one huge amalgamous super-cookie!!
Luckily all was not lost, after being cut into smaller chunks it still smelt & tasted like normal. It was this point that a certain blue monster appeared out of seemingly nowhere and promptly devoured the whole lot!
An unwelcome guest
(If the picture above doesn’t make any sense to you take a look here).
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Thats it folks - Red Ted has left the country and is at this moment winging his way over to Tokyo. We probably wont have another progress update for another week at least so hold on tight till then!
Brushing up on his Japanese post-flight
When it came to writing on the customs label what was inside the package we were sending I very nearly wrote “endangered bear” or suchlike but I thought that was probably not a good idea and reverted to “child’s toy bear” - if RT ever found out I put that I’m sure he would be mortified!
Show me the money!
Unfortunately due to his recent fall in favor over the last year we could only afford super-saver economy class seating for him… in a jiffy-bag! We did however provide 1000 Yen to pay for the flight back in lieu of his handlers intervention - the only trouble with this is that I don’t think he has a pocket big enough to fit it in 
In other news… The will be another update this evening hopefully once I’ve had a moment to sort out the photos of last nights cookery escapades which were interesting to say the least - Delia Smith watch out!!
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I’ve been trying to wrap my head around vector math for 3D graphics the last couple of weeks and I think its starting to sink in eventually. As with most topics there is a tonne of helpful information on the net - I found an interesting Java applet which demonstrates various properties of vector particle fields. Even if you’re not a computer scientist if quite fun to have a play around with - you can find it here. Try altering the field equation type and see what happens. (Pretty patterns!)
Useful Japanese sentance of the week:
僕は渡り鳥に変身して移住しました。 boku wa watari dori ni henshin shite ijuu shimashita. - “I metamorphasized into a migratory bird and migrated.”
Apparently dinosaurs (恐竜) natively speak Japanese…
ゴジラは接吻しようとキティちゃんに近づいたが、逃げられた。[Babel Fish]
More of the same can be found here!
Looks like Citroen got a bit carried away with the advert for their new car but it’s still kind of cool (almost mecha like)!
P.s. Well done to my sister Sarah for getting her first conditional offer for a place at Birmingham University Medical School. It is particularly hard to get into medical school apparently so this is definitely a good step in the right direction!
Update from 14/11: Unfortunately RT’s flight was delayed to due the complete lack of exchangeable Japanese Yen in Durham. Out of around 6 places visited not one had any. This should be rectified tomorrow (Friday) and he’ll be on his way!
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