Living in exile

I did not even realize that today is February 29, 2020. Apparently today is leap day and we should “take the leap” or “record an activity” for this day. I did not have time to take the leap as I did not even realize that today is leap day. So I will just try to take leaps every chance I get this year.

So today I only did a few things. I spent time resting, eating chips, giving feedback again, having a Skype call with a colleague to work on a “novel” dataset, and catching up on some games and readings. It is somehow just like any day. But just so I could take a leap today, I finally inserted a blog name. More on the meaning in another entry.

Yesterday, I cooked a Dutch dish called zuurvlees (essentially soured meat sweetened with sweet-herby bread and apple molasses; we had the latter but replaced the sweet-herby bread with crumbled pieces of rice-cooker banana bread), mashed some potatoes with carrots, seared a couple of beef slices for the bibimbap, and made two versions of pickled radish. That took a big part of my day already. The good news is that it seems I do not have to go out this coming Sunday to buy stuff. There is still enough to last us another week without stepping out too long.

A couple of thoughts I left lying around in my brain are Chinese language related. First is the narrative building nature of the words 出现 and 发源 in the context of the coronavirus. I wonder what could be gained by doing this distinction, especially if the more pressing matter is accountability. In a top-down hierarchy, reshuffling or firing people does not seem to add value.

Second, I saw an article that debunks some claim as a rumor or 谣言. What I usually see is a screenshot of some document, chat session, picture, web page extract and then there is a watermark (in the spirit of a seal of disapproval) saying that the screenshot is a rumor. But the watermark is delightfully (or annoyingly, depending on your situation) ambiguous. The watermark has 谣言 but there is a stop sign embedded on top of it. I am not sure what the watermark means then. Is it “This is not a rumor” or “This is a rumor, so stop it”?

Another is an article where I saw the words 说大实话. I forgot the context already but the combination feels weird and is once again delightfully ambiguous. When I see 说实话, I think of it as “tell the truth”. When I see 说大话, I think of it as “tell an exaggeration, or even a lie”. So when I saw the combination 说大实话, I am at a loss. What sort of double-talk is this?

Finally, on a lighter note, one of my favorite brand for dishwashing liquids (and apparently could be used to clean vegetables called 食品用洗洁精) is 雕牌. I like this brand not because I have evidence of its effectiveness but because its packaging always features some funny, weird, strange, or curious quote on the packaging. The very first time I bought this brand had this quote: 细菌不可怕，失去对世界的好奇才可帕, which roughly translated says “Germs are not scary, but losing curiosity about the world — that's scary.” That quote made me a loyal buyer of their brand. This time their quote is something strange: 先定小目标，一起洗碗一起烧. I am not really sure what this means but literally it says, “First set a small goal, wash dishes together, burn together.” I am not really sure what is going on here.

Finally, I was faced with a question last night which asks, “If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, about life, the future, or anything else, what would you want to know?” It took me some time to form the answer but my answer was

“The recipe for a dish that I will love so much but will never have a chance to encounter.”