Overseas Chinese Web Guide

Made me look, but was that really the point? Everyone receives credit card offers. People with excellent credit. People with horrible credit. Maybe even people who have previously declared bankruptcy. Everyone gets credit card offers. So, what can the marketing department at a credit card company do to make their offer stand out? Well, one company decided to send me a padded envelope: a large manila envelope that contained the usual gibberish plus a small sheet of bubble wrap.

Made me look. But, then again, I always open the envelopes because I shred the pre-filled applications just in case. If the bubble wrap was protecting a free pen, pencil, key chain or letter opener, I wouldn’t be annoyed. However, the bubble wrap was just there to make me look and annoy me. To reciprocate the friendly gesture, I mailed back the Walgreens circular from this week protected by the bubble wrap. At least I’m sending them something useful. I hope the coupons are good wherever their processing center is located.

I finally made the Sweet and Sour Spare Ribs recipe that I had found in Fuchsia Dunlop’s Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook. The flavor was spot on; however, the ribs ended up a bit dry and overcooked. I found the recipe instructions to be a bit vague in terms of cooking time. In her recipe, I boiled, fried, and braised the ribs. Not sure which step caused the problems. Next time, I will omit the optional frying step and see what happens. Coincidentally, I order this same dish from a neighborhood Shanghainese restaurant, and I always think that their ribs are dry and overcooked as well.

Microsoft made a bid for Yahoo last Friday. This move should prove beneficial for Yahoo if it can escape from the clutches of the Redmond behemoth. Yahoo has been wandering for a few years now, and it really needs to focus and execute again. Hopefully, this will accelerate their turn-around plans.

Yahoo used to be my #1 destination for news, e-mail and maps. Now, Google and Yahoo divide my attention equally for news and e-mail, and Google has completely taken over for maps. For me, the turning point for maps was Google’s introduction of draggable maps. That was when I switched over to using Google exclusively, even though Yahoo now offers something similar.

I still prefer My Yahoo over iGoogle, though it took me forever to switch over to the My Yahoo beta. I kept switching back-and-forth between the classic My Yahoo and the My Yahoo beta for the longest time. I simply didn’t feel that the beta was an improvement, hence the back-and-forth.

As bad as Yahoo is struggling right now, I think Microsoft is faring even worse. I still keep a hotmail account, but I really don’t check it all that often. I don’t visit any of Microsoft’s online properties, and I don’t know anyone else that does. If Microsoft took over Yahoo and imposed their kludginess on Yahoo, I might have to switch to Google exclusively.

I usually use Pearl River Bridge soy sauce. However, because I have been busy as of late, I had to send others to shop for groceries in my place. As a result, we have started to venture into other brands of foodstuffs, like Haday Superior Light Soy Sauce. Not being familiar with this brand, I took a quick glance at the ingredients as saw some familiar ingredients and some foreign.

I understand water, soy beans, wheat flour, salt, and sugar. That’s the plain English ingredients. Yeast extract may sound like yeast, but it isn’t. Instead, yeast extract contains glutamic acids, and is used as a flavoring like monosodium glutamate (MSG). Next up is Disodium 5′-Inosinate and Disodium 5′-Guanylate. These are flavor enhancers used with glutamates (from the yeast extract) to create 鲜味 in Chinese cooking. Finally, sodium benzoate is a common food preservative.

Next time I am at the grocery store, I have to see if the Pearl River Bridge brand contains the same ingredients.

The Fed’s second interest rate cut in just over a week really confused me. Instead of being merely aggressive, it appeared a bit desperate. Perhaps, the national economy is faring much worse than I had believed. The problem for home owners and real estate investors is that our perspective is often local. Easy to tell how we are doing, but difficult to see clearly how others are doing. So long as we have a roof over our heads and a steady job, any recession does not seem too bad.

If you live in an area tha has not been affected by the sub-prime crises, you might be thinking that your area is different. However, it is difficult living on an island and eventually what happens to others may also happen to us. Make sure you have sufficient savings to ride out this storm.

Last night, as I was cooking dinner, I received one of “those” phone calls. The ones you usually hope to avoid by signing up with the National Do Not Call Registry. As the seller started her sales pitch, I didn’t hang up. This time, I responded enthusiastically and placed a sizeable order. The difference? I knew the seller.

Americans love to overcomplicate their understanding of the Chinese. They turn ordinary human friendships and relationships into a complex set of social norms that mandate the provision of certain favors based on several millennia of Chinese tradition, customs and culture. It’s not that complex, really.

When banks send unsolicited credit card offers, I mail back the empty prepaid envelopes. If someone shows up at the door to sell magazines or newspapers, I don’t answer the door. If someone calls to switch my long-distance service, I hang up. However, if my friend’s daughter calls up and asks if I want purchase Girl Scout cookies, I’m in. That’s Guanxi 101. Guanxi marketing is relationship or word-of-mouth marketing. If you know the buyer, you will have a leg up on the competition because the natural distrust that buyers exhibit for salespersons will be absent. I don’t have to worry about the pitch being a scam or some form of telemarketing fraud. The discussion starts out with which cookies I will buy, instead of deciding whether or not I will buy.

Amazon just sent me Fuchsia Dunlop’s Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook. This cookbook exhaustively covers Hunan cuisine. Literally. I was exhausted from reading the cookbook. The introduction? 43 pages. Four paragraphs on bean curds. Two paragraphs on garlic. It all adds up.

The first recipe is Sweet-and-Sour Spare Ribs. All recipes include the name in Chinese characters (e.g.,糖醋排骨) and in pinyin (tang cu pai gu). The author also includes an interesting historical note of the dish or how she came across the recipe. And, of course, the list of ingredients and the cooking instructions. If I have time, I will test this recipe during the coming weekend.

The largest shortfall in this cookbook is the lack of photos. While the photos of Chairman Mao memorabilia fit well with the theme of the cookbook, the home cook will be better served with a photo of the finished dish. I don’t need a full-page photo for every recipe. I have had enough sweet-and-sour spare ribs to know what that dish should look like. However, for her relatively more obscure dishes, such as Beef Slivers with “Water Bamboo,” I really need a photo. I have no idea what water bamboo (交白 or jiao bai) is. And, after reading her explanation, I still have no clue. A good photo motivates the cook to recreate the dish. I need photos in my cookbooks.

I was looking for a cheap alarm clock. Real cheap. I found the Sony FM / AM Clock Radio Dream Machine on Amazon for $11.00. Yes, that cheap. Who needs a stereo alarm clock that plays CDs? Anyways, their marketers are good. On Amazon, the product is called an Automatic Time Set Clock Radio. That’s just what I need, not that I don’t know how to set the time to a clock radio. But, it’s really a drag to reset the time whenever a power outage occurs. Sometimes, it’s really simpler to wait until 12 midnight, pull the plug, and re-insert with the time magically set correctly. Voila! Of course, it didn’t make sense to me that a clock that featured “automatic time set” would also include “battery backup ensures correct time.” If the clock automatically set the time, why would I need a battery backup?

Here’s why. On the box, “Automatic Time Set” has a footnote. Uh, that wasn’t on the Amazon web site. It says, “The current EST/EDT (Eastern Standard/Daylight Saving Time) has initially been preset at the factory.” So, the Sony Dream Machine is not one of those high tech clocks that are synchronized to the NIST Radio Station WWVB. And, if the power goes out, the clock radio needs the battery backup to kick in because that automatic time set is a one-time only deal.

I stopped by the local farmers market this morning and was bombarded by all the political activists hawking their own candidates. Among the Democrats, representatives from Hillary, Obama and Kucinich were present. For the Republicans, I only spotted the Ron Paul contingent. For the most part, all the reps kept to themselves, except for the Kucinich supporter. His pick-up line was a question asking whether I supported the war. I was going to say that I supported the war before I was against it, but I bit my tongue.

The truth is that the war doesn’t affect me. There may have been a time, say 40 years ago, when everyone watched the coverage of the Vietnam war on the evening news and had friends or family members involuntarily serving in the Armed Forces. But, that day is not today. First, the end of the draft cut most of our ties to the Armed Forces. I don’t have a close stake in the war because there is no threat of being called up. I check the scores every morning to see how my sports teams are doing. I don’t check every day, week or month to see how we are doing in Iraq. In traditional warfare, the civilian population could tell who was winning or losing the war. In modern warfare, I can’t tell whether we are winning or losing in Iraq. I have no idea whether the surge is working or not. Iraq is pretty much like gymnastics or ice skating. It’s totally subjective and you see what you want to see.

The other matter is that news is so personalized today. I subscribe to the news feeds that interest me. You won’t find an Iraq War RSS feed in my reader. So, I know everything that is happening in the world except what happened in Iraq yesterday, last week or last month. And I am fine with that.

Time: Kentucky Fried Rice. Starbucks has the gall to sling its lattes for coffee connoisseurs in Vienna, and Budweiser peddles its brew in Belgium. So why shouldn’t Yum Brands–the Louisville, Ky.-based company that owns KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and more–sell dumplings in a fast-growing market where Chinese food is just called food?

In an attempt to squeeze in a lame joke, Time really missed the mark. Sure, at one time in America, going out for Chinese food meant a visit to the local Cantonese restaurant which served the same item as every other Chinese restaurant. However, this is 2008 and most major American cities offer a more diversified Chinese menu that now includes Hunan, Sichuan, Beijing, and Shanghai cuisine. So, Time should know that when Chinese people go out for lunch or dinner, they have choices as well. Chinese people don’t go out for Chinese food. They go out for Cantonese dim sum, Taiwanese food, Shanghai xiaolungbao, Northern Chinese cuisine, etc. Just like American food in America isn’t just called food. You have burgers, steaks, California cuisine, salads, Philadelphia cheese steak sandwiches, seafood, pizza, etc.