Text 18750, 75 rader
Skriven 2008-12-30 20:47:21 av Nancy Backus (1:3634/12.0)
     Kommentar till en text av Glen Jamieson
Ärende: DO I HEAR AN ECHO 81229
===============================
-=> Quoting Glen Jamieson to Nancy Backus on 12-29-08 11:47 <=-

 GJ>> The crab stock, otoh, tasted quite evil, so was consigned to the sink,
 GJ>> while I used the orange juice to get rid of its taste.  Next item I
 NB>> Good riddance to that...

 GJ> I won't try keeping that kind of stock that long again!
 
Now you know.  :)

 GJ>> found was a roo tail.  In fact as I found 2 of them, one will do for a
 GJ>> meaty soup for Christmas dinner or Boxing Day lunch.
 NB>> Sounds good.  :)

 GJ> In fact I cooked both together, to last 2 meals as my daughter and
 GJ> family arrived fairly late Christmas Eve and there was little time for
 GJ> extra cooking.  Reheating for the second meal allowed the flavours to
 GJ> meld and improve.

Good thinking.  :)  And that second meal sounds quite tasty.  :)

 NB>> That's part of what I was thinking, too.  What good is it to you if
 NB>> the map shows the name in English, and all you see on the signs is the
 NB>> other language... ?

 GJ> Best of all are bilingual maps - and a magnifying glass so elderly
 GJ> travellers can read the necessary small print.
 
Good point.  I haven't found any maps that come with the magnifying
glass, though.  ;)  Guess one just has to add it to one's travel stock.

 GJ> The Olympics were in Beijing, so I would expect English signs around
 GJ> there, but I have an invitation from a friend who is teaching in an
 GJ> English school at Suzhou, inland from Shanghai, quite a distance from
 GJ> Beijing.  I would not be so optimistic about street and railway
 GJ> station signs there, but if she managed, I suppose I could...

If she can get you started, it might not be too bad.  And if you get a
useful enough "cheat sheet" with the street and railway station signs
you need to be looking out for on it...  :)

 GJ> When I was courting my late wife, in the Philippines, she took me to
 GJ> meet some of her relatives back in the "barrios", who spoke
 GJ> practically no English - only Filipino and the local language. 
 GJ> Fortunately someone had a flagon of tuba - the coconut wine common in
 GJ> rural areas around SE Asia - and by the end of the evening everyone was
 GJ> communicating well. As was usual there when having drinks, spicy
 GJ> nibbles of "pulutan" were provided, which I found I liked.
 
Nothing like tuba or the like to loosen things up.  (G)  The nibbles
sound good, too.  :)

 GJ>> necessary to take a later turn. Then the machine would request our
 GJ>> patience while it feverishly re-calculated our route.  Although we
 GJ>> expected some exasperation after a few of those episodes the machine
 GJ>> kept its cool far longer than a human navigator would have.  :)
 NB>> It's the human recipient of those instructions that loses the cool..
 NB>> :)  I'm not much of a gadget freak anyway... I can see maybe someday
 NB>> having one to use in conjunction with my usual maps and direction
 NB>> sense.. but I'm in no hurry to get one yet.  :)

 GJ> I have tried one in a local area I know well, and found I could easily
 GJ> beat it, using my own knowledge of short cuts.  The machine prefers
 GJ> main roads to side streets.

We used the one in my son's cell phone in an area of the city that I
travel all the time... In that case, the machine was considering some
roads more main than the ones I would have...  I'm sure that real
knowledge of the area would beat the machine most of the time.  ;)

ttyl    neb

... Brains by Tequila, body by the table on the floor

 * Origin:  (1:3634/12)