Menu: Job Restaurant

[ziasudra]

Breakfast:
- Rice crepes
- Stir-fried vermicelli noodles
- Curry fish eggs
- Radish and beef (or more accurately, "cow parts")
- Tea egg (which I didn't eat any because omg so full)
- Coffee

Lunch:
- Ten-dish lunch, family style
- Moon cake (I chose the smallest piece I could find, which was still quite sizable)
- Tea

Afternoon "Snack":
- Red bean soup (didn't eat... decline was successful!)
- Cheesecake

Food to take home:
- Chicken in garlic sauce baked rice, leftover
- Stir-fried vermicelli noodles
- Tea eggs (I guess I'll end up eating some after all...)


I really think I should update my resume to include "eat excessively throughout the day" as one of my job descriptions ;p


ETA: Success! I've given the tea eggs for co-worker J to take home :D

Comments

[sad1225.livejournal.com]

You know, sometimes I wish I were Chinese. When I worked in Dr. L.'s lab the moon cakes were delicious...

Maybe I ought to go to 99 Ranch.

[ziasudra.livejournal.com]

I'm sure you can find plenty of moon cakes this weekend :)

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival!

[lynkemma.livejournal.com]

Om nom nom. I googled "Curry fish eggs" with no luck, so what is it and how do you make it?

Also, i must somehow make it to the city centre and buy myself some mooncake soon! I'm having cravings...

[ziasudra.livejournal.com]

Hehe, "curry fish eggs" are just fish meat (with the consistency of those fake crab meats in California rolls) rolled into small balls. The "egg" part is basically descriptive of the shape rather than of the substance.

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival! May you get to taste some moon cakes soon :)

[mac-tunes.livejournal.com]

oh my goodness!! that's a lot of food. it's a wonder you hadn't bloated. like Aunt Marge :p except that she was fed by Dobby's magic. :p

[ziasudra.livejournal.com]

Hahaha, Boss Lady keeps saying "I'm going to go on a diet next month!" Only, there's some sort of holiday every month and she's been pushing back her diet days for months now... ;)

[lynkemma.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I've been meaning to ask you something. I'm planning to sort of maybe possibly try to learn a bit of Japanese, and I'm currently grappling with the logic of Chinese characters. So, to take an example:

朽, according to the dictionary, means "decay/rot" or "decaying/rotting". When, however, I look up "decay" (the English word) in a dictionary, 朽 does often turn up, but invariably in combination with other characters, to make up a variety of words relating to death/decay/crumbling/dying in seclusion (!).

So, my question is: does 朽 actually mean "decay" in the same sense that the English word "decay" means it, or is the meaning of 朽 closer to "a character, which, when taken together with other characters indicates a state of decay or rot"? In other words, does the character actually mean something on its own, or does it depend entirely on the context provided by other characters?

And is my question making any sense? :-P

[ziasudra.livejournal.com]

Yup, your question makes sense.

I'm not sure how qualified I am to answer this, because I know Japanese characters, even the kanjis, can change meaning from their Chinese counterparts even if they look the same. So what I say here might be totally wrong...

As far as I know, 朽 can mean decay as a standalone word in Chinese. It's also commonly used in two-word and four-word phrases, and can also be used paired with any other number of characters. Think of it this way: in conversation, it's really unusual to just use 朽 by itself without attaching it to other words, but it doesn't automatically excludes 朽 from being a standalone word.

So say if you have to choose only one character as a motto (like 忍 for ninja seen in some anime/manga), you can just write 朽 and people would go: Why did this person choose that as a motto?

[lynkemma.livejournal.com]

Aw, thank you for taking the time to explain all that! I'll take the difference between Chinese traditions and kanji traditions into account, of course, but the logic of it makes more sense now. ♥

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival to you, too!