Dear Margo

I’m taking a break from work today. I’ve been down with a cold since last Wednesday, and sitting in an office all day with the AC on isn’t really good for me. As soon as I step in there my nose stops up. So anyway, before I get in bed for some more rest, I thought I’d introduce another one of the agony aunt columns I read. This one’s Dear Margo, written by Margo Howard. It’s updated every Thursday and Friday at wowowow.com. I’ve been following Margo since she wrote Dear Prudence for slate.com (before the current one took over), and to be honest I’ve never much liked her advice. She’s a little too permissive – anything pretty much goes, and even when the writer is clearly an idiot she comes down very gently on them. Much of her advice is fine, just not as tough as I would like. Stylistic differences, maybe?

Pros: Has a comments part for readers to give their opinions.

Cons: Only comes out twice a week, advice a little too namby-pamby

Japanese e-book treasure trove

Remember I posted about Swedish a while back? Yeah, I wasn’t really serious about that. And I’m having second thoughts about the Swedish company anyway, firstly about whether I even want to work for them and secondly about whether it’s worth learning a whole new language for a company I’m not planning to work at for very long. I hear most Swedish people speak excellent English anyway.

So it’s back to my first love: Japanese. Learning Japanese may be time-consuming, but the pay-off is almost immediate in terms of the fun you can have with it: not just anime and manga but also tons of good books, music, movies, dramas, comedies, etc. Today I hit a mini-goldmine of books about learning Japanese. Unlike the results I occasionally get on mininova, these are all uploaded on free file-sharing sites, so no need to worry about seeds. I found them here: Japanese e-books, but since you need to register to see the links (which I recommend you do because they have lots of other great stuff), I’ll just list the results below:

Nihongo Notes
Teach Yourself Beginner’s Script
A Short History of Japan From Samurai to Sony
Japanese Children’s books – Practice reading Hiragana
Remembering the Kanji I, II, III
Remembering the Kana I, II
CultureShock! Japan: A Survival Guide to Customs and Etiquette
Read Real Japanese: All You Need to Enjoy Eight Contemporary Writers
Knuckles in China Land! (it’s a video game, not an e-book)
Guide to Reading & Writing Japanese: Third Edition
Kana de Manga
Kanji Mnemonics – Instruction Manual for Learning Japanese Characters
101 Japanese Idioms
An Introduction to Japanese Syntax, Grammar and Language by Michael Kamermans
Japanamerica
Making Sense of Japanese Grammar

Think we’ll all be experts by the time we’re done wading through this giant pile of books? We can only hope! See you next time!

RIP Michael Jackson

I guess every blogger in the world must have blogged about this in the hours since the news hit. I was too shell-shocked in the beginning to think about writing anything. Actually I didn’t even believe the news to begin with, I thought my brother was bullshitting me. I checked CNN, same thing. BBC, same thing. Yahoo, same thing…realization slowly started to dawn. RIP Michael, I’ll miss you.

I don’t have a “how I met Michael’s music” story. I was born listening to Michael Jackson. My father, my mother, all my older siblings were huge fans. We would blast his music at full volume and dance around the living room all evening long, who knows what the neighbors thought! We watched ‘Moonwalker’ over and over again until the tape tore, then patched it together and watched it some more. We would reenact his music videos in our rooms, we would try to do the moonwalk. And it wasn’t just us: I remember in third grade just after the Dangerous album was released my teacher made us all learn to sing “Heal the World.”

His legal troubles never meant much to me. Were the accusations true? We’ll probably never know. And to be honest now I’ll never care. All I’ll care about is the legacy of amazing music he left behind. All I’ll care about is the way he changed the face of pop music universally forever. Rest in Peace, Michael. Maybe in death you’ll find the peace you never had in life.

Update: chocolate cake

I posted yesterday about how disappointed I was in a chocolate cake I made and how I was going to throw it out as soon as I got home.

So I got home and it was sitting on the counter, still in the tin the way I’d left it. And so I decided to cut a slice before I threw it away, just to see how bad it is and to remind myself never to use bad ingredients again.

Mmm, it was delicious! It may have been flat, but it was cooked through and through. The edges were a bit dry, but the middle was nice and warm, and leaving it for a day had made the top yummy and sticky. Sweet! Of course I’m exaggerating a bit since the difference between my expectations and reality was huge, but it really was a good cake. With a nice buttercream frosting it might even edge closer to fantastic. I gave a piece to anyone who would try it and we all agreed it was great.

So the moral of the story: don’t make dumb mistakes in the first place, but don’t knock something till you’ve tried it. The cake is all gone, btw. I might make another one this weekend and this time I’ll be sure to take a picture.

When comfort eating goes wrong

I’m even more depressed today than I was yesterday. In an attempt to cheer myself up and forget about the coming Monday, I decided to make a chocolate cake last night. This is the recipe I chose, Dark Chocolate Cake I. Looks delicious, right? And I had all the ingredients ready, no problem.

Or so I thought… It turns out there was a Judas in my food cupboard. Yes, I’m talking about the baking soda. I’ve had that thing for years, never thought twice about it. Until today. So I measured and mixed everything according to plan and put it in the oven. 30 minutes later, it was cooked alright, but it hadn’t risen an inch! Instead I had this hard, solid, pancake thing skulking at the bottom of the pan, looking up sheepishly at me. I almost took a picture of it, but then I’d have to mosaic it out, it looks so disappointing. I was so pissed off I didn’t even try the cake. I just covered it with a cloth and left it on the counter. It’s probably still there even now. When I get home I’ll throw it out. And how was your weekend?