Yahoo! / Reuters: U.S. “Outraged” by Myanmar’s Response to Cyclone. The United Nations estimates 1.5 million people have been “severely affected” by the cyclone that swept through Myanmar and the United States expressed outrage on Thursday at the delays in allowing in aid.
“It’s clear that the government’s ability to deal with the situation, which is catastrophic, is limited.”
5 points if you guess correctly whether the person speaking was talking about the U.S. response to Hurricane Katrina or the Burmese response to Cyclone Nargis.
The ScanSnap S510M Scanner is awesome. In one night of use, I managed to clear most of the documents off my desk that had accumulated over the months and, shamefully, even years! The scanner comes bundled with Fujitsu ScanSnap Manager, Cardiris 3, ABBYY FineReader for ScanSnap and Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional. It also comes with all the necessary cables (i.e., power and USB) as well as a carrier sheet for problematic documents. Basically, the carrier sheet is two transparent pages that may be used for torn or other damaged documents that may jam the automatic document feeder.
Assembling the scanner was a snap. Next, I installed the ScanSnap and ABBYY FineReader software. I already have Acrobat installed and I don’t have an immediate need to scan business cards. With that completed, I place a document on the feeder, tap the scan button on the scanner, and the scanner scans the document. The ScanSnap application then prompts me on how I would like to process the image. The choices are Scan2Folder, Scan2E-mail, Scan2Print, iPhoto and ABBYY Scan2PDF. I’ve only used Scan2Folder and ABBYY Scan2PDF. The difference is that ABBYY Scan2PDF will OCR the scan and make it searchable. Scan2Folder just saves the scan as an image inside a PDF file without performing any text recognition. I didn’t see any option for scanning to Adobe Acrobat. However, when I checked the “Do not show this menu again” box in the ScanSnap Quick Menu, the scans defaulted to Adobe Acrobat.
If you want all your documents to be searchable, then running them through ABBYY or Adobe Acrobat makes sense. However, character recognition takes time. So, at first, I routed a few documents through ABBYY FineReader. However, in the end, I used Scan2Folder because the OCR was taking too long and I had too many documents to process.
Speed. The ScanSnap S510M is an extremely fast scanner. It also scans in duplex in one pass; i.e., it can scan both sides of a sheet of paper at once. Simply amazing.
Settings. If you right-click or control-click on the ScanSnap Manager icon in the dock and select Settings, you can change the default save folder for the files. You also would want to change the Paper Size setting by clicking on the “Scan mixed paper size” box. This allows you to place a stack of different sized papers into the feeder and have them all come out as one document. Not sure why this setting is not the default.
Auto Straighten. Don’t worry if your document wasn’t feed in perfectly straight. I ran a receipt through the scanner that got pulled through slightly askew and the software straightened it out without any user intervention.
We reported last Saturday (April 19th) that Costco was rationing rice purchases. At the time, we didn’t realize that we scooped the regional and national press.
KPIX issued a similar report on April 21st, two days after us. The Huffington Post/AP reported on the Costco rice shortage on April 23rd.
The first time I opened up My China by Kylie Kwong, I was underwhelmed. It had none of the mouth-watering glossy photos found in Simple Chinese Cooking. Now that I’ve actually tested out some of the recipes, I’m sold.
Yesterday, I tried out the Stir-Fried Rice Noodles with Coriander, Ginger and Chilli. Sort of. I substituted Shanghai noodles in place of fresh rice noodle sheets and ditched the red chilli since I am not a fan of spicy foods. The noodles were absolutely flavorful. Interestingly, the recipe called for cilantro (or coriander) stems, which is the part that I usually throw out. Shows what I know.
I also made Pumpkin Fritters for dinner. Absolutely delicious with great flavors and a crunchy exterior, but a total pain to make. Peeling a pumpkin is no easy task. I had to first cut the kabocha into smaller slices and then remove the peel with a vegetable peeler. I’m sure there must be a bettery way around this. Next time, I’ll bake the kabocha and then scoop out the pumpkin flesh. That surely has to be easier than trying to remove a hard, waxy peel from a hard squash. The recipe also has a continuity error in that it describes how to make the pumpkin cakes and how to make the batter, but omits the part about putting the pumpkin cakes in the batter before deep frying. Fortunately, I didn’t follow the recipe literally or else havoc would have ensued.
I already have an Epson Perfection 2450. The scanner works admirably when scanning an isolated document here and there. However, I’m finding stacks of receipts, statements and invoices cluttering my desk. To avoid getting boxed in or even buried alive in paperwork, I need a scanner with an automatic document feeder. I’ve been reading reviews for the ScanSnap S510M, and so far so good. However, for $400, can’t they at least make the scanner look presentable? It reminds me too much of my fax machine that always read “Paper Jam.”
The sky is falling! As if $4.00/gallon wasn’t bad enough, we now have food rationing. In America! At Costco!! The local store of abundance in the land of plenty ran out of rice this afternoon. Just a lonely note standing guard over two empty pallets. Although the store had no jasmine or calrose rice, it had plenty of basmati rice on hand. I spotted a customer with three bags of basmati in his shopping cart, perhaps in anticipation of the contagion spreading to the next pallet over.
ForbesLife has an article about watches for the 21st century. Unfortunately, the online edition lacks the photos contained in the print edition. So, you have to look elsewhere to catch a glimpse of a $1 million plus Franck Muller Aeternitas Mega 4 watch. Actually, I don’t get it. Not just the price tag, but watches in general. I think watches and clocks are obsolete as stand-alone products. Well, except for the alarm clock. Other than that, I can track the time throughout the day by looking at the microwave oven, thermostat, car dashboard, cell phone, computer, etc. Haven’t worn a watch in years, and I don’t think I’ll be going back any time soon.
I saw a free performance by the Firebird Youth Chinese Orchestra this weekend at the Stanford Shopping Center. These young musicians really put on quite a performance with a full complement of Chinese instruments. As the Chinese population expands in the United States, I am seeing new opportunities for the Chinese American youth to rediscover the culture and heritage of their ancestors through music. A group like this would have been unheard of 3 decades ago. Basically, music lessons then consisted of learning Western music on Western instruments. However, this slowly matured to learning Chinese music on Western instruments, and finally learning Chinese music on Chinese instruments.
The Firebird Youth Chinese Orchestra will be performing a Chinese Operatic Music Concert at California Theatre in San Jose on May 10, 2008. Visit their website for details.
Senator John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, admitted that he was wrong in opposing a national holiday in honor of the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. I am glad that Senator McCain admitted his misjudgment because Dr. King is not just a Black hero. He is an American hero and a Chinese-American hero as well.
As Chinese Americans, we owe a debt to our parents and grandparents for all they have given us. To say that the 20th Century was a difficult time to live in China would be an understatement considering the perpetual state of conflict, war and turmoil that wracked the country. Despite all of this, somehow, our parents or grandparents managed to survive and eventually immigrate to the United States so that we could take advantage of opportunities that may not have been available to them.
However, we would be remiss if we did not also acknowledge the sacrifices of Dr. King and the other participants in the American civil rights movement. In fighting against racial inequality, Dr. King opened doors not just for Blacks, but for people of all color, including Chinese Americans.
60 years ago, the US Supreme Court ruled in Shelley v. Kraemer that the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibited state courts from enforcing racially restrictive covenants. These covenants were private agreements to exclude persons of certain races or colors from using or occupying real estate for residential purposes. In the case, the convenant read as follows:
[T]he said property is hereby restricted to the use and occupancy for the term of Fifty (50) years from this date, so that it shall be a condition all the time and whether recited and referred to as [sic] not in subsequent conveyances and shall attach to the land as a condition precedent to the sale of the same, that hereafter no part of said property or any portion thereof shall be, for said term of Fifty-years, occupied by any person not of the Caucasian race, it being intended hereby to restrict the use of said property for said period of time against the occupancy as owners or tenants of any portion of said property for resident or other purpose by people of the Negro or Mongolian Race.”
The property at issue was in St. Louis, Missouri. And, Mongolian refers to East Asians, including Chinese. Let’s look at a racially restrictive covenant from the State of Washington:
That neither the said premises or any house, building or improvement thereon erected, shall at any time be occupied by persons of the Ethiopian race, or by Japanese or Chinese, or any other Malay or Asiatic race, save except as domestic servants in the employ of persons not coming within this restriction.
If you ever saw those photos from the South with the signs for Whites and Coloreds, the racially restrictive covenants listed above should tell you where Chinese Americans fit into the mix. And, it ain’t the White group. Now, if a presidential candidate trivializes a man who was instrumental in opening up so many opportunities for Chinese Americans, I am not sure that this candidate best reflects my values. What do you think?
I really liked Kylie Kwong’s Simple Chinese Cooking, so I picked up My China: A Feast for All the Senses as well. First impression. My China is a huge book! 484 pages. However, I wouldn’t exactly call it a cookbook. Only 15-20% of the book is devoted to recipes, and the rest is about her travels through China. So, if you are looking for an anthology of Chinese recipes, this is not the book. Secondly, she shows us a lot of photos of regional dishes, like that mouth-watering pot of steamed buns on the book cover. However, feast with your eyes only because you won’t find recipes for all those tempting dishes in this book. And, if you loved the glossy photos from Simple Chinese Cooking, all the pages in this book have a flat finish.
The real test will come when I have a chance to try some of the recipes. The malt vinegar present in all recipes from Simple Chinese Cooking have been replaced with brown rice vinegar in My China.
is awesome. In one night of use, I managed to clear most of the documents off my desk that had accumulated over the months and, shamefully, even years! The scanner comes bundled with Fujitsu ScanSnap Manager, Cardiris 3, ABBYY FineReader for ScanSnap and Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional. It also comes with all the necessary cables (i.e., power and USB) as well as a carrier sheet for problematic documents. Basically, the carrier sheet is two transparent pages that may be used for torn or other damaged documents that may jam the automatic document feeder.
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