Well, I figured that I would have gone for dim sum today to celebrate the Chinese New Year. But my family decided to go for noodles instead today because of the crazy crowds that would show up at any Chinese restaurant. We did walk through the malls overstocked with New Year merchandise. Red. Red. More red. A serious overload. That’s a typical Chinese New Year though! Red and gold. Can’t get enough of those two lucky colours. Design wise, it works and has continued to work for many many (many x nth #) years. I guess that’s an interesting aspect of applying colour, culture and “superstitious beliefs” into design.
My father came over to Canada in his teens to study at University of Alberta more than 30 years ago, and he often comments on the drastic change of options in the variety of Chinese food available to us today. It is rather amusing knowing that almost everyone I know continues to seek out the mysterious dish of sweet and sour chicken balls with rice. Of course this North Americanized food is not actually Chinese food! Fortunately or unfortunately, it is now forever associated with the Chinese cuisine. So I guess that means it is Chinese food … in North America. So why is it that frankfurters became hotdogs in America, but sweet and sour chicken balls which really is a North American creation has become part of the Chinese cuisine? ha! Very odd tangent thought eh? On second note: Wikipedia suggests that Chicken balls is in fact somewhat of a Canadian creation. Indeed if that is true, not only do we have Rick Mercer suggesting to Americans that we eat beaver balls, Canadians can also put forth the claim towards chicken balls, though we may have to fight the British on that one.
Anyways, the point was that my father only had a mere two or three dishes for dim sum, but now there are an odd 30 or more dishes to select from! The fact that there are now small little checklists with English translations makes it so much easier for a bona fide jook-sing to order dim sum at all Chinese restaurants. Go figure…
But aside from the festivities which will continue on for the week, my course in Systems Analysis and Design is driving me up the wall with workload not to mention all the projects up my sleave. Why do I jump into all this? Oh well . . . keeping life interesting I guess.
Just for the sake of another random topic change for the New Year, I am really enjoying the fact that artists like the Barenaked Ladies are offering their albums for purchase electronically via download. Old news, yes. What’s the big deal you say? Well the difference is that they don’t have the extra annoying digital rights management (DRM) protection that iTunes and all the other major labels put on their music files! It means I can make as many copies of the file as I want and I can put it on to a cd with other music without dealing with the obstacles that DRM sets up to merely hinder people who don’t want to deal with additional barriers in technology. Greatest thing is that all the money goes towards the artist so you know you’re not paying a big corporation to just sit there and collect.
Tomorrow, perhaps I will finally get to my post about taxes and their potentially astonishing effects on us.
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