scruta

Dear 港汇广场,

Since you are one of the premiere shopping destinations in all of Shanghai, I would like to say that I’m concerned, and it’s not because of the price gouging one is bound to receive by going into one of your eyeglass stores, nor is it the questionable quality of some of your restaurants (I’m looking at you fifth floor sushi go-a-round). I’m perfectly willing to accept these pitfalls. They are to be expected in any shopping area.

I’ll cut to the chase. I’m deeply concerned about the status of the doors at the entrances to the building. They are perfectly satisfactory in their construction. They are positioned well enough, and work wonders for preventing drafts. However, why do you persist in keeping only one set of doors open at each entrance?

Locking the rest of the doors not only produces a minor nuisance for anyone entering and exiting the building, having to navigate the simultaneous entry/exit with disgruntled, stroller-ed mothers carting their offspring under heaps of shopping bags, or over-involved couples holding a public menage-a-tois with their Cold Stone buckets of cream-slop, it also presents a serious fire hazard. If there were a need to quickly evacuate the building, the cramming at the exits would result in shattering those fine glass panes in the doors at the very least, or the unfortunate trampling of one of your dear customers at worst. In the interest of safety and the continued prosperity of your business, I am advocating that you open ALL the doors in the future.

Sincerely,

Ferret

[The response:]

Mr. Ferret,

We are happy to hear shopping at 港汇广场 give you such wonderous feeling. It is our pleasure to open doors for you. A good opportunity indeed! If there is need to prevent the fire, then we feel this import. To stop the stampede, we will use our security guard to open door. There will be no trample.

We will speak to Cold Stone management about menage-a-tois cream. This is unacceptable what they do to mothers.

The glasses shop has a special buy! Buy 1 pair give you 1! 10,000RMB only at the least! If you want to eat the fifth floor sushi, please use enclosed coupon to feast vigorously without tariff.

Thank you so much from our patronage!

港汇广场

I’ve been trying to find an answer as to why Chinese people always drink hot water, regarding cold water as bad for health. My results thusfar have been poor (except for the awesome picture of the Chinese kettle lady), but here they are nonetheless.

1) Yahoo Answers! gives you a range of answers from the daft to the commonsensical, although none of them seem particularly compelling.

The best sounding?

in chinese medicine, they believe that drinking cold water will drain your energy because your body will have to use energy to warm it up. Where if you drink water that is body temperature, there is no energy loss.

I believe that and I dont like cold water. I drink at room temp and if you give me real cold water it feels like a shock to the system. Its only when you drink cold water a lot that you prefer it.

My favorite?

Hot water is good for you. It helps wash the food down. Cold water is not good for you.

Brilliant!

2) EthnoMed.org has this to say in relation to Chinese women giving birth:

When asked for a drink of water, women were offered ice chips instead of warm water that they prefer. Most Chinese women will endure the thirst for fear the cold water from ice chip will upset their internal hot/cold balance and subsequently increase their risk of developing arthritis in old age.

3) Jim Conrad’s Musings On Water and Chinese etymology make a nice, yet admittedly impressionistic connection between water and the Chinese psyche.

4) This Breaking News suggests that hot water prevents heart attacks, but also sounds as if it were written by a seventh grader. (Note first sentence proclaiming, “This is a very good article.”)

5) The best part to this small epiphany is framed by the blogger’s description of himself: “With a keen eye and a penetrating mind I bring to you collections of my random thoughts that I believe are so clever and original that you might have thought them yourself and hence relate to this blog.” (italics mine)

6) Perhaps the best source I’ve found (I think in part to my still developing Chinese), is this article from the Gansu Daily where I found Miss Teakettle. As far as I can tell, the article has something to do with drinking water only once after it’s boiled, and not reusing it again or later due to the possibility of contamination. It begins:

大家都知道日常生活中多喝开水有益健康，可水怎么烧，开水怎么喝，还有不少讲究。

As best as I can translate: “Everybody knows in their everyday lives how drinking hot water is good for your health, but how should you boil it? How should you drink it? There are many things to be concerned about.”

It’s the first part of that sentence. “Everybody knows.”

For the time being, I’m willing to keep on thinking that this connection between health and drinking hot water, like most conventions, is a matter of everyone accepting it’s true.

“Everybody knows.” Of course, they do.

When I boarded my plane yesterday from Shenzhen to Shanghai, I noticed that when I boarded all the seats up front were occupied quickly, but none of the ones in the back (were I was) were at all. This got me to thinking…

I assume that the tickets were sold from the front to the rear of the plane, and seeing as how I bought my ticket online only days ago, this would make sense. But how come everyone in this first wave of boarding was sitting in front? Perhaps it is indicative of the personalities/preferences of those boarding the plane. The ones who booked their ticket long in advance are adverse to rushing, or to put it another way, play it safe and plan ahead. It would make sense for people of this nature to be present right when the plane opened for boarding. Those who booked later, it would seem , tend to plan less and act more spontaneously. Hence the great rush to the back which ensued. Everyone who was prone to rush ended up with their seat in the back.

A COROLLARY

This reminds me: I’ve noticed that Southwest Airlines has actually taken this approach in boarding, allowing you to print out your boarding pass at home a certain time before. Those who print their boarding pass at the beginning of this time window are allowed to board first, while those who print it out later, or get it at the terminal have to wait longer to board. I find this strategy ingenious not only because it saves resources for Southwest (i.e. fewer staff to monitor the provision of boarding passes), but it is also relatively painless to their customers. (This is, of course, dependent on the fact that my observations aren’t just anecdotal.) Given the connection between preferences and the way in which passengers board, this arrangement would occur anyway. Southwest, by harnessing this insight, has enabled itself to increase efficiency without compromising the all-important specter of service.

Bu-Ran-Don
Did you guys know that Ferret doesn’t like cilantro?

I was recently confronted by my friends for the fact that I don’t like cilantro. My friend Bu-Ran-Don was cooking some chorizo-cod, and adding cilantro to the mix. I commented that I don’t like cilantro. Silence in the room. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so persecuted for my taste in food. (Yes, not even the fact that I like durian has brought me such honest disdain.)

But yes — cilantro — I’ve never found it that appealing; it tastes a little like trash. However, as I think is well documented, I have a little bit of a masochistic streak when it comes to trash. Therefore, I’m willing to tolerate a bit of it in my food. Interestingly enough, there is a burgeoning portion of the population (1,777 at most recent count) that has been so infuriated by this weed that they have taken to the streets — well, the virtual ones anyway.

I Hate Cilantro is such a community of cilantro haters. I think their vehemence is poignantly expressed by this picture from their website:

I was also pretty taken by their haiku section. My favorites:

This one by member Fairygreen:

Fondue so lovely
Wait, a bitter blow to tongue
A great meal ruined

Or this one (of many) by Popmusicguy:

Lucrezia Borgia
World famous for poisoning
Favored cilantro

Oh yeah, there’s an anti-cilantro store as well, t-shirts, hats, the whole bit. Markets in everything. Care to vent your hatred, anyone? (Coriander is also available.)

I’ve been prompted to engage in yet another Quixotic, wasteful project – to produce the greatest book that no one will ever read. (Some of you cynics out there may already be thinking the Bible or some other religious text. Think of this as a new Bible if you like, but I wouldn’t consider anything about this project divine.) Everyone would buy it, but nobody would read it — the most popular coffee table book known to man. (For those of you who are partial to coffee books, perversely taking pleasure in attempting to read books that weigh as much as a small child, feel free to get your hooting, huffing and puffing out at your computer screen out here.) For this project to succeed, it would require two things: first, a uncannily striking, yet utterly innocuous cover, capable of blending into the background in a distinctive way (My vote is for an impressionist painting. As to which one, I will return to shortly.); second, a plethora of prose that proves too daunting, informative, or otherwise uninteresting to warrant being published in a book that people will actually intend to read.

Readers of scruta, I am asking you for your submissions for this coffee table book. I am also asking you for ideas, or posts as to what would me a good cover. To get things rolling, I have submitted my own vote for the cover, and have provided a provisional introduction to the book. Feel free to comment on this also.

COVER FOR THE COFFEE TABLE BOOK NOBODY WILL READ:

This still life of sunflowers by Van Gogh (I don’t know the actual title) blends into any room with an air of familiar, completely innocuous sophistication. The cover immediately puts most people off from the book because either

1) They are an art snob, and think that Van Gogh is now just kitsch.

or

2) They think that it’s an art book that only art snobs would like.

At this point, only several groups come to mind who would still wish to check out the book. I’ll list them below and describe how I would put them off the book if they actually picked it up.

PEOPLE WHO REALLY LIKE VAN GOGH
These are the people who utterly adore Van Gogh. Their bathrooms are filled with his works. They have adorned the ceilings of their bedrooms with his posters, finding them stimulating their dreams, overcoming their moments of depression, heightening their orgasms. They have an extensive collection of Van Gogh books and movies both serious and frivolous. (They not only own, but were the ones that funded the Van Gogh themed adult movie.) They have named their children Vincent, regardless of their sex. And yes, they have considered mutilating their ears on more than one occasion…writing extensive journals about it, in the style of Vincent Van Gogh.

I recommend after the Monet picture to put in an essay by Heidegger in the original German. If the fact that the language is foreign doesn’t put the reader off, then the fact that it’s philosophy written in abstruse prose will. Now assuming that our reader is well versed in both German and Continental philosophy, and finds themselves riveted by the essay, never fear because my Prologue, in shining English will come to the rescue. The inexplicable disorderliness of the entire book at this point would also be enough to put anybody out.

PROLOGUE

This book is not intended to be read by anybody. If that fact excites you, then I should like to mention that it was also intended to be read by corporate lawyers and accountants. If your panties are still in a bunch, I have a question for you:

If you have two trains heading towards each other, 35 miles apart, one is traveling 85 mph, the other is traveling 75 mph. It is now 5:15 pm. At what time will these two trains meet each other?

(NOTE: The answer to this question is of vital importance to understanding anything further in this book. If you hate these types of problems, or find that deciphering them proves too difficult a task for you, then I would suggest that you put the book down now.)

The answer to this question reveals several things. I would like to start with a more oblique approach, in the style of the sophists of old.

In answering something, one generally intends to imply the truth. However, the truth is often generally intended in questioning somebody. So if we are assuming truth before we know the truth, do we ever know the truth?

If a woodchuck really does chuck wood, does it matter how much wood the woodchuck would chuck? I suppose that this all really depends on context. That in some cases, yes, it would matter that the trains would meet at 5:28 (and 7.5 seconds) PM because the woodchuck would not finish chucking wood until at least 5:30, and therefore could not be responsible for the flipping of the switch which would cause these trains to collide, derail, and cause innumerable family tragedies.

The point is that there is no point, unless of course there is a point. This concept is very difficult to grasp since it is rather pointed. This book will address such points.

(Here my prologue ends. If this hasn’t gotten you to stop reading by now, please submit something that would. Biblical begatting for several pages, perhaps?)

As I was waking up today, I got up to get some water because I was nursing a terrible hangover. As I was walking back, I noticed a strange piece of paper lying right near my open guitar case. As I moved my guitar case out of the way, I noticed that it was one of those sticky mouse traps with a mouse on it. I went and woke up my roommate (also suffering from a hangover) to come and have a look, and help me try to figure out what the hell happened. He assured me he didn’t put the mouse in my room, and that he hadn’t been using those type of traps. (I’m not exactly primed to the way in which things have been operating at my apartment since I’ve been away for quite a while traveling.)

So what the hell happened?

Well, the best guess is that it flew in from my open window (open because my building is always waaaaay too hot in the winter, so you have to crack a window to keep from sweating). But who the hell is throwing their mouse traps out the window of their apartment so that they can cascade down into mine?

Isn’t there a better way to dispose of your moused sticky paper?

I’m not happy to be a surrogate garbage handler, especially when the garbage is still twitching.