Technicat

Topic

Asian

Or Asian American.

How to Hide an Empire

In a bit of karmic retribution for all that personal pandemic overspending on consumer appliances, I'm now TV-less after my robot vacuum knocked over my 4K LG TV (seems there should be market for anti-robot-vacuum defenses). It was just as well, my sporadic monthly netflix subscription expired the day before,

Julia Child

My latest pick from the Writer's Block bargain bin is the Julia Child installment in the Last Interview series. It's actually a few interviews, still a fairly thin book, but enough to expand on my flimsy knowledge of her, consisting of dim memories of seeing her show in my youth

Taco Stand

Las Vegas Chinatown is known locally as Spring Mountain Road. Chinatown is really more of a marketing term. It's a stretch, a long stretch, of continguous strip malls featuring Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Malaysian, Filipino,Vietnamese, European, Middle Eastern, Argentinian and...Mexican food. One that you might miss because it's

Wikipedia

My latest distraction was a three-day wikipedia editing binge. It's addictive: you see something to fix, then see some interesting related articles which also have items you can fix, and so on...kind of like coding. For example, I started out editing the article on the Salt Lake City Chinatown,

Cedar City

The Las Vegas summer heat, nation-leading covid numbers, and my neighbor's subwoofer impelled me to take a road trip into Utah. It's my first time in that state, so I experienced a bit of culture shock after I crossed the state border into St. George and saw the speed limit

The First Lady of Physics

Stamp prices are going up soon, so it's not a bad time to stock up. Even though I only use one stamp a month (I don't understand why my biggest bill, a mortgage payment, can't be made online), I picked up some of their latest commemorative sheets, and one of

Chinese Breakfast

#99 on the list of reasons I left social media is white people dissing Chinese food. I'm not a big fan of tripe or chicken feet, but I don't get the reaction toward congee (in Cantonese it's pronounced jook, so I never got used to calling it congee). The condescending

Sea Sirens

My sister Amy Chu has written enough comic books by now that I haven't kept up with them, but of the ones I've read so far, my favorite is Sea Sirens, a take on a Frank L. Baum story (which I haven't read, although I worked my way through a

Happy Dragon Boat Festival!

Some of my Chinese colleagues informed me last week that this is the time for the Dragon Boat Festival and it's traditional to have zongzi, sticky rice and other fillings wrapped in bamboo leaves. And when I got takeout from the Taiwan Deli yesterday, indeed they had a pile of

Racism in Boston

What's surprising to me about the recent reaction to Kyrie Irving's mention of racism in Boston is that anyone's surprised about it. I mean, just google "racism in Boston" and you can find a list of resources. Personally, when I think of Boston, I think of Boston seafood (clam chowder,