According to the fork etiquette, when you are using a knife and a fork to eat, you are to hold the knife in the right hand and the fork in the left. This is also how the utensils are set in formal settings. However, many left-handers opt to have the knife in their left hand and fork in their right because they find it easier to do the cutting with their dominant hand. This also happens to be the way I eat. It has a little bit to do with my upbringing, and the rest is just me being me.

See, I grew up in Taiwan so I was used to eating with chopsticks instead of forks. The only situation in which we would using two utensils at the same time was when we ate noodle soup. In that case, the right hand would hold the chopsticks, since I am only capable of operating the chopsticks using my dominant hand. And the remaining utensil, the spoon, would be delegated to the left hand. So here’s what we have:

Left = spoon; Right = chopsticks

So what did I do when I ate noodle soup in restaurants in the United States without chopsticks? I just replaced the chopsticks with a fork in my right hand. So we have:

Left = spoon; Right = fork

So, in the noodle soup situation, the fork goes in the right hand. Also, if I was just eating with just one utensil, I would simply use it with my dominant (right) hand. Moreover, the fork was sort of established as the replacement for chopsticks. It was then given the status as the main eating utensil, and it was the one that was more complicated and delicate to operate than the spoon. Therefore, fork was always in the right hand. So what would I do if a knife was added to the mix?

Since I was never formally taught the etiquette, I just did what was logical to me: since the fork was already in the right hand, the knife would go to the other side. So we got:

Left = knife; Right = fork

And that happened to be what was only done by left-handers. I got so used to it that when I tried to do it the “correct” way, it would feel really awkward to me. I got pretty used to cutting with my left hand that sometimes I would use my left hand when I am chopping vegetables on a cutting board, if there’s something in the way that makes cutting with the right hand inconvenient.

So am I ambidextrous? Not really. I can’t write with my left hand. It feels awkward and my aim is everywhere when I throw a ball using my left hand. However, I can sometimes bat left-handed in softball games, but that comes and goes. I can bat really well with my left hand one week and have a hard time hitting the ball the next week. It’s really inconsistent. The only other thing that my left hand does better than my right hand is cutting the fingernails on the right hand, but then again, duh.

But I guess a part of it is just me being me, coming up with weird ways to get things done.

Are you right- or left-handed?

No, it’s not some kind of metaphor. I literally barked at a dog tonight.

I was driving back from work at night. When I was opening the gate to the parking garage of our apartment complex, I saw an animal. It was most likely a dog, but I wasn’t sure because it was dark.

“Is that a stray dog?” I thought. While stray dogs are quite commonly seen when I was growing up in Taiwan, I don’t really see those in Southern California. I parked the car and went to the entrance to see whether it was actually a dog.

Yep, it was. You know how I knew? Because it was barking and running towards me. I was walking away but then thought that would just make it chase me more. I decided to stop. It stopped too, hesitating.

I thought about my options. I could get into a staring contest with it until it got bored and walked away (maybe). Or I could try to open the door into the apartment complex that’s a few feet away, so if it decided to chase me, I could just lock it behind the door. I would have to move towards the door and use my key to unlock it first though, so it wasn’t the fastest option. This was when the dog barked again, pressing me to make up my mind, I guess.

So like any normal person, I decided to bark at the dog.

Now, I have a low-pitch voice, so when I bark, I sound more like a big dog than a small dog. Also, I’ve done college theater without microphones. I could go really loud if I really want to.

So I barked once. The dog got that “Oh shit, what’s going on?” look on its face.

It seemed a little intimidated, so I barked some more… this time, way louder.

And then it got really scared and hurriedly ran back out.

What a useless dog! Oh, and it wasn’t a stray dog. It was wearing a collar but wasn’t on a leash. When it ran out, a woman with another dog on a leash walked by.

I asked her if that was her dog. She apologized. Before I walked away, I shouted to her, “I won!”

So that’s my story of beating a dog in a barking contest.

So, what should I do? And then it hit me. I’ve seen recipes on so many blogs, many of which not even food-related. These blogs can be about making money online, personal development, parenthood, or whatever, but they all have recipes from time to time. That’s why I decided that I got to put some recipes here too!

So here’s the first installation: how to make Caesar salad. And of course, I am going to take it up a notch and provide some information that you won’t see in other people’s recipes because I am such an awesome blogger.

Ingredients: romaine lettuce, croutons, parmesan cheese, lemon juice, olive oil, egg, anchovy, Worcestershire sauce, black pepper, eggplant, corn starch, uranium

Steps:

1. Carefully clean each leaf of the romaine lettuce. Chop it up.

2. Peel the parmesan cheese, and then finely dice it. Then, use a buttering knife to crush it into a paste. Put this paste on the croutons.

3. Next, we make the dressing. Mix the lemon juice, olive oil, egg (beaten, not stirred), Worcestershire sauce, and black pepper into two tea spoons of water. Stir until it has an even consistency.

4. Fillet the anchovy. Add it to the romaine lettuce and croutons. Put the dressing on it. Set it aside.

5. Next, put the eggplant, corn starch, and uranium into a baking pan. (You can buy uranium at your supermarket’s baking supply aisle. I buy the organic stuff from the farmer’s market.) Put this into the oven and bake it at 500 degrees for about an hour.

6. Open the oven. The chemicals released by the eggplant, corn starch and uranium should create significant energy vibration. This is called a tri-sprintec reaction and it will generate a black hole. This enables you to time travel. Take the salad you set aside and step into the black hole. (Caution: You want to be careful, as the oven might be hot.)

7. Make sure you step into the black hole at 23 miles per hour in the north-east-west direction. This brings you to Rome of year 50 BC.

8. Find Julius Caesar and give the salad to him.

And that’s all the steps it takes. You now know how to make Caesar salad (and bring it to him too).

Nope, not apologizing for the lack of postings, but I do want to check in with my regular readers.

In these past few weeks, I’ve spent more time making an RSS reader (which is a part of the iPhone app) than actually using an RSS reader. My inbox exploded. Also I have quite a few puppet videos sitting there waiting for me to watch, so next week I’ll be playing catch-up with those. I will also be attending a four-hour workshop taught by puppeteer Allan Trautman. Don’t know if it’s going to be good, but I definitely am looking forward to it.

By the way, when I first saw this video, I feel like my two worlds had collided:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VcEBxbaNYk

Oh wait, he’s coming back, isn’t he? Never mind.

Who cares about Jay Leno? I mean, What I really want to talk about, is something a lot more important: Power Rangers. Last year (2009), it is announced that there will not be a new season of Power Rangers in 2010, and that, marks the end of an era. Fourteen years (from 1995 to 2009) is a long time for any show. In fact, I’ve just took a stroke down the memory lane by watching the opening of all the Power Ranger series in 14 years. It took about 17 minutes. From the music and the way the characters look, you can see how the idea of what is cool has changed over the years. It’s quite interesting to see. Watch it here: Part 1 (Zordon Era), Part 2 (Post-Zordon), Part 3 (Disney Era).

When we first came to the United States, we watched quite a few kids TV shows. One reason is that they are scheduled to show after school let out (as in, between 3pm and 5pm), and the other is that they are easier to understand than, say, court drama. And one of such shows is Power Rangers. Okay, maybe those are not the real reasons. Maybe I just love Power Rangers because watching robots and alien monsters (both clearly men in rubber suits) beat the crap out of each other amused me to no end. But hey, this show taught me important English words such as “morph”, “sabre”, and a gazillion things that you can yell out when you think your weapon / armor / robot / victory is really awesome (“That was awesome!” “Cool!” “Right on!” “Yeah!” “All right!”).

The series that we watched the most episodes are Power Rangers In Space and Power Rangers: Lost Galaxy (because they came out in 1998 and 1999, respectively). Now here’s what I loved about them.

Power Rangers In Space

Ah, look at the video. Aren’t they a good-looking bunch (even the villain)? I liked the dynamics of this group. In the series before this one, the main story line consisted of teenagers given the power to protect the Earth. However, at the end of Power Rangers Turbo, the villains managed to destroy the Turbo Megazord (the Rangers’ robot), capture their wizard mentor Zordon, and blow up the Power Chamber, causing the Rangers to lose their power. The Rangers had to flee into space, where they encountered a Power Ranger from a different planet who gave them different morphers so they could have powers again. The four old Turbo Power Rangers plus the Astro Ranger from the different planet became the Space Rangers.

This series was unique in that instead of living on Earth (each going to school and having their own life and so on), they are living on a spaceship. This created many more opportunities for them to interact. Also, the spaceship allowed them to explorer the universe more. The fact that four of them were Turbo Rangers before, while another was from another planet also created interesting dynamics.

Also, the Rangers in this series had all suffered some kind of loss. The four old Turbo Rangers had lost their old power and Zords (robots) before. The Red Ranger (the one from another planet) had been forever looking for his sister, who was kidnapped when she was just a child. And also all of the Rangers were searching for their captured mentor Zordon. Although still mostly light-hearted (it’s Power Rangers after all), the series was less slapstick than previous series and took on a more serious undertone. This series also wrapped up a long story arc six years in the making. At the end of the series, most of the universe was taken over by the villains and several Zords were destroyed. The battle at the end spanned episodes and was epic. At the end, Zordon sacrificed himself to use his essence to wipe out the force of evil. At the end, the villains were defeated (after six years) so that’s definitely major pay-off. It was an awesome series.

Power Rangers: Lost Galaxy

Power Ranger In Space was more polished than the previous series, in my opinion. However, the series that followed it, Power Rangers: Lost Galaxy, looked even better. Maybe the cameras improved? Everything just looked a lot newer and sharper. Prior to this series, the cast changed gradually as the plot lines progressed and everything followed an overall story arc. But as mentioned before, this was wrapped up. Starting in Power Rangers: Lost Galaxy, each series had its own team of Rangers and a self-contained storyline.

To be honest, I do not remember the individual characters as much as I do with Power Rangers In Space, but this series had a more complex story and more twists. For example, the Pink Ranger Kendrix sacrificed herself to save the Space Ranger Cassie. Later Kendrix’s spirit saved Karone, who was the Red Ranger’s sister from the previous series that was kidnapped, raised, and brainwashed to become the Power Rangers In Space’s main villain Astronema. And Kendrix made Karone the new Pink Ranger. Also there was this mysterious ally, Magna Defender, who was really cool because he had his own costume, armor, music, and Zord. Magna Defender was an ancient warrior who was seeking revenge for his son. He was sealed away in a pit until he decided to take over the body of Mike, who fell in by accident, and was the Red Galaxy Ranger Leo’s brother. Later in one battle, he sacrificed himself to save the space colony. Mike was freed from his control and the spirit of Magna Defender officially passed the power to Mike. Okay, see? I told you it was complicated.

One of my favorite thing about this series was the fight scenes. The Rangers in this series all used sabers. That made the fight choreography a lot more interesting than, say, having people shoot lasers at each other.

Power Rangers: Lightspeed Rescue

Unfortunately, after those two strong series, Power Rangers: Lightspeed Rescue just didn’t do it for me. It was about this team of Rangers consisting of a fire-fighter, a life guard, and so on, that came to rescue when villains terrorized the city. I was fine with that premise, but the way the power was given to them just didn’t do it for me. Since the oldest series, the power sources were mythical. For example, the Mighty Morphing Power Rangers got their power from the five Power Coins. The Space Power Rangers used Astro Morphers whose power, presumably, was derived from something extraterrestrial. The Galaxy Rangers got their powers from five mystical swords, known as the Quasar Sabers. All of them derived the power from some kind of mystical source.

However, for the first time in the Power Rangers series, all these things were man-made. The robots, the morphers, the suits, and everything else were made by humans using advanced technology. And then a captain recruited some of the best people to become Power Rangers to fight crimes. I called them “the artificial rangers”. That really didn’t do it for me. People have different preferences, I guess, but that premise really killed it for me. Where’s the myth? Where’s the destiny? What’s so special about a team that’s chosen by some random guy? That just killed it for me. I stopped watching.

Of course, there are a lot more Power Rangers series after that. Some of them were considered good too, I think. But I got busier and no longer had time to watch TV in those hours. I still catch an episode or two every now and then, but since I am not that familiar with those characters, I am not as invested and don’t care for them as much.

And wow, that has got to be one of the most researched blog post on this blog. And it’s about Power Rangers, of all things. Oh well, who knew?

For example, I would be reading about someone using “I just need more space” as an excuse for breaking up with his girlfriend, instead of thinking “man, what a lame excuse!” (okay, maybe I did) or “that’s a load of crap”, I thought “You know who would love to see more space? Astronomers and astronauts!”. And then I would proceed to chuckle to myself cuz that thought amused me.

Maybe the fact that English isn’t my first language has something to do with it. I often see weird associations between words that other people just wouldn’t see. I remember once I was playing an improv game where there’s a cast member hosting a party and has to guess the identities of his guests. One of them was Sherlock Holmes. When the party host was having a hard time guessing it, I did not come into the scene to do detective stuff, or talk to some Dr. Watson or anything. Instead, I came in as the landlord and said, “I heard you will be going on a vacation, so I want to give you this reminder: be SURE to LOCK your HOMES.” See? Nobody else would come up with something like that.

So, since there are weird ideas (often play-on-words) that pop into my head all the time, I figure I would put down those thoughts somewhere. And Twitter is perfect for that. So here’s a collection of some of them. If you already follow me on Twitter, you’ve probably seen many of these and hopefully found them somewhat amusing.

• An astronaut said he wanted to break up with his girlfriend. Girlfriend asked why. He said he just needs more space.
• A juice blender was broken. When you turn it on, all it does is vibrate and does not blend. It was sold to James Bond.
• Charlie was a baby boomer. He escaped from prison one day but cops are not worried, They knew that when a boomer ran, he always came back.
• Bob always have lots of dead lines to meet. Bob is a telephone line repairman.
• The package has arrived and the online tracking system said it’s signed by “front door”. Teaching my door to write finally paid off.
• A forbidden fruit a day keeps the doctor away.
• When you say “hehe”, it’s a very light laugh because it has a combined mass of 8.005204 amu.
• I am bad at geography but at least I don’t think America is India. How come he gets a day named after him?
• Did you know? You can’t spell “fine art” without “fart”
• Also, you can’t spell “bar food” without “barf”
• Don’t talk to walls. They don’t have ears. Try corn instead.
• A donkey cloned himself. A horse saw it and said “nice ass”. The donkey said “Yep, I totally made an ass out of myself.”
• The book title “The Old Man and the Sea” provides subtle linguistic cues that makes old people want to go on a cruise.
• If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a fake picture is equivalent to an one-thousand-word lie.
• I am a radical person. I get to the root of everything, no matter how complex, whether real or imaginary.
• Just realized that “Connecticut” contains both the word “connect” and “cut”.
• What is love? Good question. The answer is, of course, “baby, don’t hurt me. Don’t hurt me, no more.” Simple.
• The dive board is an invention based on humans’ primitive desire to jump off a cliff.
• When musicians look at the FACE, they can read between the lines.

And I will write more whenever I am inspired.

Year 2009 hasn’t been that great for me and many of my friends, from what I’ve been hearing. The economy was bad, the two parties were fighting in the congress (and everywhere else), and the country was gloomy overall. I was laid off at first, and then brought back the next day to see if we could come up with a product to keep the company going. Before that was finished, we got a client and I started doing iPhone application development. I am making relatively steady income now, but for a span of several months, I had no income. At least things worked out now. November and December was crazy busy but it should get better.

I have no new year resolutions, since I know I don’t tend to keep them. The ones I do get done usually has nothing to do with whether I started doing it at New Year’s time or not. So I am not going to make any new year resolutions here. I do have a few plans in mind. You will know when I put things into gear.

As for puppetry stuff, I only did one video this year. I did, however, finally took a TV puppetry class. It was fun and I learned a lot. I highly recommend it for whoever wants to learn about this stuff. I would also like to put it to use in 2010 and make more videos. Oh, and I got the DVD for the student film that I puppeteered for. Will post footages once I get my editing software problem fixed. Also I saw myself on TV for like a fraction of a second. And I recorded bus safety instructions. Those were some of the random things that happened in 2009.

Many bloggers list their favorite posts for the year. My favorite posts this year are actually not the puppetry posts, but the silly stories that I started posting on this blog. Back in college, I wrote a bunch of comedic scenes that were performed on stage. And now, I am writing more silly stories and posting them on my blog. I simply have a hard time writing stories that has a normal plot line. In fact, I was already writing silly sketches in elementary school. I would write them and give them to my classmates to read during recess. I still have those sketches on my shelf. I can’t help it. Somehow everything I write came out sort of goofy. Maybe it was me. Actually, it was definitely me.

So here are some of my favorite posts from 2009:

The Origin of Slutty Halloween Costumes
Yes, there is an explanation, a historical one. Yes, I made it up. Duh.

Sledgehammer
This is a story about the joy of sledgehammers. I love writing stories that look silly but are kind of meaningful if you try to assign meaning to it.

Play Him Off
This is a story inspired by Keyboard Cat. It’s full of stupid puns. Oh, how I love stupid puns.

Why Old People Take Cruises
Again, I love explaining things and sharing my (strange) insights with you.

Friendster Messages from Quintuplets
This has got to be the kinkiest post on this blog. I mean, how often do I write about sexy quintuplets, right?

Entering Puppet-Design Contest
This was fun. And I am evil. And I would like to thank all that helped out.

On December 31, 2009, I tweeted for the 2000th time. It wasn’t intentional. I just realized that I had 1999 tweets when the year was almost over. I did not know I tweet so much.

And finally, I would like to thank everyone that commented here throughout 2009, especially Melissa, Na, Vered, and Michelle. Can you believe we’ve been visiting each other’s blog for a year (and most likely longer than that)?

Hope 2010 is a good one!

Merry Christmas!

Lately I just feel too tired to do anything after work. I haven’t been doing much besides watching TV after I got off work. I am beginning to understand why some people watch so much TV. It takes no effort. You don’t really need to think. See, reading takes so much more energy. You have to turn on your imagination to translate words into images. You have to move your eyeballs to scan the pages. What’s more, you even have to to use your fingers to turn the pages! So much effort! TV, on the other hand, allows you to be lazy and to stare passively at a story as it unfolds. That’s so much easier than, say, going through my Google Reader, which, as you can see in the picture, has more than 1000 unread posts. Going through that thing is simply too much effort.

The show that I’ve been watching lately is Lie to Me. I’ve been curious about the show after seeing the commercials, but haven’t had periods of time of feeling so lazy until lately. So I started watching it. The show is about a group of experts in lie detection that assist individual clients and FBI to investigate who is telling the truth. I watched it and ended up liking it. I’ve already gone through all 10 of the episodes currently on Hulu (the whole season 2 so far). I wouldn’t say it’s a show that’s so clever that it totally blew me away, or the story is so deep that it makes me think about the meaning of life. Some people criticized it for copying TV shows like Psych and The Mentalist, but eh, what do I care? I just want something that entertains me without too much effort on my part. See? A show that makes me think too much would not be something I want to watch when I am tired. Also some people compared the main characters’ use of detailed observations of human interactions to what Sherlock Holmes does. Well, I like Sherlock Holmes stories so I guess that worked for me as well.

Before any of you starts telling me that I should get off my ass and stop watching all that TV, well, you got nothing to worry about. I am currently going through Season 1 of Lie to Me, and I only have six more episodes left to go. Once that’s done, I’ll have nothing to watch for a while and get back to something that involves not as much blank staring. And I am still somewhat active in my TV watching anyway. For example, tonight I saw one of those scenes in which two people walked through a hallway/corridor while talking about a case they were working on. These kind of shots are common on TV and they are often shots from different angles spliced together. I rewinded (rewound?) a few times to see if they repeated or skipped any part of the hallway to make sure the length of the hallway matches the time it takes to finish talking and go from the starting point to the destination. And yes, they did match up correctly. I wonder if they tried it out in rehearsal to figure out if the hallway is of the right length. See? I am doing something.

My friend just had a birthday party this past week and we also did an White Elephant thing. It was quite fun. The rule was that the gifts had to be used items and no new wrapping was allowed (so I wrapped mine in ad paper). You could either pick a gift at random or steal someone else’s. With more than 30 presents there, it was quite entertaining with random gifts like mugs that look like a snowman, etch-a-sketch, Aspirin, coffee-flavored vodka, and some interesting looking books. The game ended when the final present was unwrapped and it was… post-its. What a great way to end the game after all the anticipation! So what did I get? Well, you could see what I got here: a book and some beans in a fancy container. The book is Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin Abbott Abbott. I’ve never heard of the book before, but it called itself a “romance” and yet it was full of geometric diagrams. It even called itself “unabridged” while it was less than 100 pages long. I think it would be an interesting read. And the beans… I honestly have no idea what to do with them (now that’s a true white elephant), but I already said they will make a repeat appearance at the next potluck. Eh, I’ll figure something out.

So that’s what I’ve been up to lately. Hopefully work becomes less crazy soon!

Traditionally, families hang out outside to watch the moon, and eat delicious moon cakes. There are other customs but they are not worth discussing because they don’t involve food. And people tell stories about the moon. And by that I mean stories about mythical characters and creatures that went or lived on the moon and has nothing to do with Neil Armstrong. Of course, nowadays there are tall buildings and it’s harder to see the moon. But don’t worry, people still eat moon cakes.

Thanks to the traffic on the 101 freeway, I got plenty of time to look at the moon. I was going southeast on the freeway so the moon was right in front of me. It was indeed bright and beautiful. I don’t know if it was the biggest or brightest of the year, since I don’t usually measure and write down the size and luminance level when I look at the moon. But it was nice to look at. (And in case you are wondering, I didn’t eat any moon cake.)

If you’ve missed it, well, some people actually think the moon on the 16th is generally better than that on the 15th. (We are talking about lunar calendar here, of course.) So tonight might actually be a good time to take a look. You will need to make a few small steps to go outside, but it will be a huge step for mankind. Think about it. If people all do this, they can appreciate the beauty of it and have more peace in their mind. The world will be a better place. Some people might also accidentally discover alien lives. Or they might gain useful insights about neck pain. I don’t know. There must be some good, right?

And of course, here’s my favorite song about the moon from Sesame Street.

(And this will probably be runner-up.)