I have been eating this stuff for the last few years whenever i get myself a bubble tea. Because i am not really a big fan of the tapioca pearls in the tea, i usually substitute that with nata de coco. I didn’t have any clue about what nata de coco is until now. Gaurang and Meng-Hua got me a jar of nata de coco when they found out that i was trying to make it. I bought a pack of agar agar hoping that i could make that at home. Even though i reduced the amount of water needed by half, the texture of the final product was nowhere near the real thing.
I did a wikipedia search on nata de coco and found that it is actually a by product of coconut. It is made by the bacterial fermentation of coconut water and the process appears to be pretty tedious. It only costs me about a buck for a jar of nata de coco - i ain’t making it at home, that’s for sure.
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I have not stopped laughing since i saw the hilarious lip-syncing effort by these two Chinese art college students. Thanks to Smelly for the link.
Update 2005-11-01 01:20
Apparently these dudes are pretty big in China now, at least in the online community. Tian, creator of the Hanzi Smatter blog, has more information about them, including most, if not all, of their other videos. If you can read Chinese, sina.com even has a site for them, calling them the Back Dormitory Boys.
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I have upgraded the OS (Redhat Fedora Core 4), web server (Apache 2), PHP (php 5) and MySQL (MySQL 5) on my server in one fell swoop. It’s finally done! One of my major concerns with the old setup (Redhat 9) was that patches had not been released for the last two years or so. Instead of upgrading my production box directly, like what Brandon did, i first tested the upgraded stuff on my test server. After validating that most things were working correctly, i upgraded my production server. I had some problems with getting imap working correctly but eventually i got past that. It’s done.
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“In our system of government an accused person is presumed innocent until a contrary finding is made by a jury after an opportunity to answer the charges and a full airing of the facts. Mr. Libby is entitled to that opportunity.”
Dick Cheney, in a written statement responding to Libby’s resignation. Apparently, this does not apply to the detainees at Guantanamo. It also does not apply to Syrian-born Canadian Maher Arar, who was deported to Syria while on stopover in New York (Maher was tortured while incarcerated in Syria and was released without any charges more than a year later). An accused person is presumed innocent? What a bunch of bull crap.
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How important is knowing the directions in which baggage claim carousels at airports rotate? Apparently, it is important enough to garner a page of its own here. Do you know that the baggage claim carousels at the Helsinki airport in Finland rotate counterclockwise? Looking at the stats shown, it appears that i have more than 300 potential clients for my Hog Buster system :).
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Yes, my car got hit again. This time i was in it. Right after i dropped off my sis in the New Holly neighborhood, i was heading back home to West Seattle. There was a roundabout, one of the many in Seattle, near my sis’s house. I was already in the roundabout (see #1 in figure) getting ready to turn south when i noticed this eastbound old pick-up truck that came barreling to the roundabout. I knew for sure that the driver was not going to stop for me judging on the speed that he was entering the roundabout so i slowed down and let him entered, even though i had the full right of way. According to the page 32 of the 2005 Washington Driver Guide, “approaching vehicles must yield to the traffic in the circle.”
The pickup truck, which was in front of me, and i headed south toward the intersection of 32nd Ave S and S. Myrtle St (see #2 in the figure). At the stop light, for no damn reason, the pick-up truck driver started backing up! I honked at him but to no avail - he backed his truck right into mine. Thank goodness for the sturdy Audi bumper, there was no visible damage other than a slightly bent license plate. I reminded the pick-up truck driver to be more careful in future and i told him that i had the right of way earlier in the roundabout. He apologized profusely and so we continued on our ways.
One thing i have noticed about the New Holly neighborhood is that there seems to be a lot of bad drivers. A few weeks ago when i was heading to my sis’s place going northbound on 32 Ave S, this lady in her Toyota Camry was coming from the opposite direction driving in the middle of the freaking street! I had to slow my car down immediately and drive to the extreme right to avoid being hit head on.
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I have had it! This is the third time, twice in the last three months, that this side of my car has been hit. When it was hit back in July while parked somewhere in Ballard, at least i could hear the collision and know who hit my car since the Isuzu Rodeo that hit mine was not drivable. Last Sunday, while parked at the Bellevue Square parking garage, the car - i remember it was a SUV-type vehicle - that did the damage shown in the picture above did not even leave a freaking note! Whoever did it better pray that the security camera at the parking garage did not capture it because you really don’t want to know what i will do to the hit and run bastard if i ever find out who he or she is.
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It’s been foggy most of today. As the sun was setting, i noticed this dream-like view of the Olympic Cascades and the sound right in front of my work desk so i went to the the roof top deck of the condo and took a few pictures.
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