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Probably the best Chinese place I have found in Salt Lake City. Szechuan Garden is located at 8700 S 1300E. It’s a new place recommended by one of my husband’s colleagues.

There are two menus. A “chinese” one and a “regular” one. I looked at the chinese one and did not recognize a thing. It was authentic Szechuan fare that I have never tried before. I guess the Szechuan food I am used to is Cantonified.

We ordered from the regular menu. Sesame Beef, Tea Smoked Duck, 4 Season green beans, Spicy Fish, and Ham Fried Rice (we were with some white folks.)

All the food was good. The beans were a little salty. But I am so happy to have found this place. This is a place that I would bring my mom.

I was wondering if there is a place that offers northern Chinese cuisine in Salt Lake City. And there is, Golden Isle (the Chinese name is Dragon City). It’s at 700 W 5300 S.

I was disappointed. But I think my standards are too high. I am expecting food I would get in Oakland Chinatown. The soy milk was good. The chinese donut was good. The onion pancake was REALLY greasy. The xiao lung bao was pretty good. The skin was more bun-like than dumping-like. Maybe that is the way it is supposed to be. The noodle was ok.

Pretty much the food was on par with Golden Dragon’s dim sum. It is not are good as what I can find in Chinatown, but it is pretty good.

It was a beautiful weekend, 65-70 degrees on both days. My husband, daughter and I went to the Hogle Zoo.

My daughter loved it. She especially liked the orangutans. The mama was swinging on her ropes and the baby was hanging onto the gate. My daughter tried to pry the window open to play with them. So I had to tell her she could watch, but she couldn’t get in.

She also loved the elephants. She kept turning to me and saying, “Cheung”, Chinese for elephant. And when she saw the bears, she would turn and say, “Raer”. That’s the sound that bears make.

We were there for about an hour and a half and she was exhausted. She sat in her stroller kind of glazed. We ended up saving our train passes for our next trip. We got season passes to the zoo.

When we got her into the car. I asked my monkey whether she liked seeing the elephants and monkeys. She looked at me half asleep, nodded and said “Ee, Ee.”

I was surfing the internet on Friday and found a few sites that will make being Chinese in Utah a little easier.

First, http://www.hkvpradio.com. It is a streaming audio radio station that focuses on Cantopop from the 70′s, 80′s and 90′s. That’s the stuff I grew up with. The great thing is that it was started by a Chinese American who missed the Cantopop from her youth. The funny thing is that she is at least 4 years younger than me so I don’t know how much she actually knows.

Second, eHit.com and ClubVCD.com. Both are Asian versions of Netflix. They have movies from, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, China, and TV series as well (that’s what I want.) I didn’t start a membership though. The 10 days they allow for the TV series is not enough time for me. So I started a membership at Share Video at 1300 S and State St. I am currently watching Family Man. It’s pretty funny, but it took 7 chapters for things to build up.

A friend of a friend submit his profile to eHarmony and this is what he got back:

eHarmony is based upon a complex matching system developed through extensive research with married couples. One of the requirements for successful matching is that participants to fall within certain defined profiles. If we find that we will not be able to match a user using these profiles, we feel it is only fair to inform them early in the process.

We are so convinced of the importance of creating compatible matches to help people establish happy, lasting relationships that we sometimes choose not to provide service rather than risk an uncertain match.

Unfortunately, we are not able to make our profiles work for you. Our matching model could not accurately predict with whom you would be best matched. This occurs for about 20% of potential users, so 1 in 5 people simply will not benefit from our service. We hope that you understand, and we regret our inability to provide service for you at this time.

Then I find out that eHarmony doesn’t match gay couples, so really, this guy is in the bottom 10%. How sad. And no one in the 10% wants someone in the 10%, so they remain alone. How REALLY sad.

Last night my husband, daughter and I had dinner at the Porcupine Cafe (Wasatch and Fort Union). We got the Blackened Shrimp Bruschetta appetizer, the Greek pizza and the Thai Chicken on Rice. Oh and beer.

The bruschetta was yummy. The had a spicy coating, but was kind bland on the inside. But the tomato topping and pesto were really good. There was also a white, creamy dip that my husband thought was sour cream, but I thought was cream cheese due to the texture.

The Greek pizza was yummy too. My daughter actually ate it. She has lately become less of a fan of pizza. It was lightly covered with sauce and had olives and feta and basil.

The Thai Chicken dish was not so good. I expected the peanut sauce to taste like, well, peanuts. It tasted more like a cross between sweet and sour and bbq sauce. We can pass on that one.

Now last, but definitely not least, the beer. You can get a shot of beer for $.50. We tried two. One was too bitter and less memorable, which is why I already forgot its name. The other was the Uinta Gelende, a seasonal beer. It was amber and smooth with a little taste of hops. Definitely a buy or three at $2 a pint.

I was listening to a panel discussion on the Economics of Sharing and the last thing they were talking about was sharing of contacts. They started talking about MySpace and blogs and such where people can express views and create relationships outside the public scrutiny. Or rather there is scrutiny, but not on the actual person. There’s a difference between blogging that Hitler had it right and shouting it from a street corner.

So that started me thinking about this morning’s The View. Apparently, the deputy press secretary for Homeland Security was caught in a sex sting. He was arrested for propsitioning an undercover cop posing as a 14 year old girl. Now he didn’t get that he shouldn’t have given the “14 year old” his full name and home and office numbers. But it scares me to think how many out there are smart enough to be incognito.

Does internet anonymity makes us less safe? I watch those CSI and Law & Order shows and swear that will not let me daughter leave the house ever. But she isn’t that safe in the house either. And we are less protected from misinformation. I was reading Amy Tan’s memoirs and the amount of misinformation is staggering. That she was married 3 times each time for 15 years, etc. And with the internet, this misinformation is traveling and growing at, well, internet speed. We have to train ourselves to not assume that things in print are accurate. We have to look at the source, and sometimes the source of the source. And I thought that research would be easier with the internet. I am trading the time traveling to the library for time validating and revalidating information.

But back to the point. Anonymity breeds irresponsibility. You don’t know who I am so I can say whatever I want. If someone comes across my blog and reads the entry about some sucky restaurant, they may take it at face value and not try it. But I could be lying. Who knows? Maybe I own my own restaurant and want to slowly poison the minds of all Salt Lakians so they only come to my restaurant. The point is, you don’t know who I am, so there are no repurcussions for my online bad behavior. Do you trust me now?

I am still reading Amy Tan’s memoirs. In the chapter about language differences, she mentions that there is a dance in chinese culture. Her aunt and uncle were visiting and on their last day in town, she asks if they are hungry. They say no. Then ask her if she is hungry, she says a little. She saved them face by admitting that she was hungry, even though she wasn’t, but they were. She then asked them what they wanted to eat, so they asked her in return. She suggested Japanese and they said they could eat that. Their body language said no, but their words said yes. She brought them to a chinese restaurant.

I was thinking that this is not only in chinese culture. Even americans are this way. My in-laws are this way. They will not say what they want, but they will ask me and I will state what I want, at which point they are disappointed and frustrated. I amnot always like that. I was not always like that. I think that people do the dance and try to understand the nuances of language and politeness when they care to.

I don’t like my in-laws. But it was not always so. I think the turning point was a few years ago after my husband and I got engaged and they came to visit. They were not gracious about differences and actually ambushed me with religion talk. I think from that point on, I subconciously decided to not be gracious myslef.

I do not respond to their hints. I take everything at word value. I am capable of seeing the underlying meaning, but I choose not to. I have become the unpolite chinese person by wearing the mantle of a straight talking american. It drives them crazy. Because by hinting at the real meaning, they can retreat into ambiguity. If they were playing by chinese rules, they could hint and I would hint back and we would still do what was good for the other. Because they are trying to be polite, but not gracious or sincere, I do not allow them the benefit of my chinese upbringing.

I am reading Amy Tan’s memoir, The Opposite of Fate. In one chapter she talks about how a society is influenced by language and vice versa. Because she is Chinese American, she falls into the gap that results from an imperfect matching of languages between two cultures.

Her parents speak to her in Chinese and English and she responds in English.
“Amy-ah!” they’d call to me.
“What?” I’d mumble back.
“Do not question us when we call,” they’s scold in Chinese. “It is not respectful.”
“What do you mean?”
“Ai! Didn’t we just tell you not to question?”

She didn’t know what hit her. It reminds me of this conversation I had with my mother. I was going to see my dentist (who was also my brother-in-law. Chinese people keep the money in the family) in Oakland and I lived in San Jose. My daughter was about 6 months old at the time, so I called my mom to ask if she wanted to watch the kid for me. I did not have a huge need, I could have left her with my husband. I did not want her to feel obligated.

She got really mad at me. Apparently I should not have you used the word shang, want in chinese. She asked me sister who I thought I was that my daughter was so special and that I was doing her a favor. What? I had no clue what happened. I did a direct translation and that was a problem.

Like this other time, right after I had my daughter. She told me in chinese not to eat cold things. Then she starts yelling at me for drinking room temperature water. What? Apparently, anything that is not hot is cold. Ah. Who knew? And my mother does not have the patience to explain, so I am always bewildered. I can understand chinese fine. But I do not know the nuances of the language.

My husband was so upset last night that he was considering moving back to CA and getting out of academia. We have these two sets of friends, husbands and wives. All four of them are his coworkers. It’s sad that these supposed friends are the ones he is having a problem with.

One of them was hired as a means to hire her husband. Because of this, her package is smaller and she was not assigned a lab. Since my husband has a lab with a fume hood and because they were so gracious to us when we were house hunting, my husband offered to share the lab space with her. Her student and her stuff has since usurped the lab space. She and my husband had an agreement on what space they could use and either her student will not listen to her or she is ignoring the agreement. After many hints and an outright request, she agreed to clear out the equipment she trash-picked during spring break. No progress was made. He is at his wit’s end. He asked me if he should give her an ultimatum that if she didn’t clear it out by X date, that he will kick her out. I told him to just kick her out. Say that it’s not working. She is taking advantage of their friendship and disregarding their agreement. He raised a point that she will likely run to the chair, so I told him to go talk the chair about it first under the guise of seeking advice. He thinks that she is too nice to be Machiavellian. I disagree. Just because she doesn’t do what she is asked rather than outright questioning it doesn’t mean she is cooperating.

Then there is the other problem. My husband went through a lot of work to get SolidWorks at a highly discounted price for the department. Now it seems the implementation is at risk because the one teaching the first design class does not want to use it. The one teaching the class is the wife in the other set. She actually said that if my husband created her course materials, she would use Solidworks in her class. He is worried that if this falls though, he will be blamed for wasting department money, so he is going to do the course materials for no public credit. I told him don’t. She is the one not willing to do what was best for the department. And he should make it clear to the others that if he was creating the course materials, that he was doing it for the greater good.

It’s bullshit. My poor husband is too trusting. And he is continually giving people the benefit of a doubt. He values friendship and expects everyone to do the same. He is always thinking about how to advance the team, not himself, while he works with a bunch of people who only think about advancing themselves. He will be eaten alive.