The unofficial vegetarian guide in the Zhejiang province

Take a print out and carry this -

I tasted some chinese dishes today. Theye were "interesting" and really tasty to say the least. By mistake I ate duck's egg..Quack quack. Remember "egg" can mean any egg - that's where I got misled.

Step 1: express your preference to the waiter- Show him this sentence

English: I am a vegetarian（I only eat vegetable）, I can take eggs/milk but NOT meat．|
Chinese: 我是素食主义者（只吃素菜），我可以吃各种蛋／牛奶但是什么肉都不吃。

NOTE: please NOTE vegetarian is really rare in China, so in some rare cases it might be possible some servants can NOT understand what does vegetarian mean, though I suppose the above statements should be clear enough

Step 2 : Spoon and Fork - unless you are a chopstick master

English: I need spoon and fork.
Chinese: 我需要刀和叉作为餐具。

Step 3 : Menu
English: please show me the menu, with English OR with pictures.
Chinese: 请给我菜单，有英语或者有图的。

Step 4: After burrrp

English: please show me the bill! How much is it?
Chinese: 买单！多少钱？

2: typical words used in the restaurants:

#	English	Chinese	pingying
1	fork	叉子	Chazi
2	Spoon	调羹	Tiaogeng
3	Chopsticks	筷子	Kuaizi
4	menu	菜单	Caidan
5	Vegetable	蔬菜	Sucai
6	Meat (the things you want to avoid, e.g. pork, chicken, lamb, etc)	肉	rou
7	Flying cake	飞饼	Feibing

3: what I had today

#	English	Chinese	Pingying	Estimated price
1	Pickled duck’s egg	皮蛋	Pidan	~ 12 CNY
2	Chinese Date (jujube)	枣	Zao	~ 10 CNY
3	Sweet lotus root with sticky rice	蜜汁糖藕	Mizi tang’ou	~ 10 CNY
4	Pumpkin covered by egg yolk	蛋黄南瓜	Danhuang nangua	~ 18 CNY
5	Boiled souliecai （Vegetable）and tofu NOTE: sorry there is NO English name for手捏菜 I am afraid, thus I put the pingying here	手捏菜（青菜）豆腐	Souliecai doufu	~ 20 CNY
6	rice noodle with egg and cabbage (without sea food）	海鲜炒粉丝（不要海鲜）	Haixian cao fensi (buyao haixian)

9 Nations of China

The nine nations of china.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/11/the-nine-nations-of-china/7769/

Now, I stay in the Zhejiang province. "THE METROPOLIS" according to the article.

suddenly i am totally unplugged from the happening India....need to dig into this anna hazare news...

regarding corruption - I really cannot take a concrete stance :I think it is impossible to eliminate corruption at ALL levels.

When we hear abt corruption, first we think about bribes.The biggest unaccounted sum I had paid was Rs.12,000 for which I received no receipt. This was while getting the house registration - This I learnt would be shared among all the workers working in the sub-registrar's office including the computer data entry boy and all the odd job workers. Of course, I am sure some portion would also go to sub-registrar. But then - some amount of bribe could be legalized - By having a STRICT demarcation between a GIFT and a BRIBE. For eg. anything < 5000/= could be a legal gift. More than that, would be a bribe. According to the current law, both the bribe taker and the bribe giver are criminal offenders - NRN's idea => Make Bribe GIVING as legal and make bribe taking as illegal. I dunno how it would work.

Regarding the Jan Lokpal bill, I seriously do not know whether any other country has such a model of policing the Indian State. Any fleeting/ serious thoughts ? Our India seems to be becoming absolutely intolerant towards corruption - what a very good trend!

These days, our blog has become sooo inactive- Hope I will find time to re-vitalize it!

hello hz

one week in china.....having bitter sweet experiences here....I wait for the internet connection @ home with bated breath.

Grading subjective answers using a program

An Optical Marker Sheet can be scanned and computer readers can detected the shaded spots and detect a correct / wrong answer based on an answer key.

But consider this challenge:-

a) A student can write an exam on a paper => Which can be graded by a computer.

b) A student can type an exam on a computer => which can be graded by a computer.

So, is this solution a) or b) possible ? At least for the option b) I am just wondering what would the software architecture of the system be like ?

Some professors are already using such software : Here is one such software - SA grader from Idea Works.

Just wondering what could be the applications for such a program : subjective grading - checking against a template and evaluating. There must be a "semantic component" in this software which "understands" the text - Just wondering whether it could be used in web search (for longer queries) ?

Reference article : http://chronicle.com/article/To-Justify-Every-A-Some/128528/

Has the post 2008 crisis economy peaked?

It doesn't seem really good as to what we are heading towards - stagnation in the western world which is influenced by a debt crisis in Europe and a deficit driven craze in the US. The Asian region still seems to be okay, with inflation being the main concern. Asian countries still have some levers to keep the domestic economy propelled by adjusting the interest rate downwards. And we have China which still wants to build excess stuff in almost all sectors which will keep demand going for a while.But not sure for how long Asian tigers can sustain with the help from the Western demand as most of them rely on exports.

The West seems to have lost the recovery race. And the banks are taking note of this by shedding jobs in Europe and NA. Oil is rolling back towards $90/bbl, leading indicators are slumping again, gold's hitting a record daily and interest rates on European bonds are on a massive rise. Or

This is all just a massive market scam to force US to go for a QE3 as most of the instruments above (stocks, bonds, oil, gold etc) are controlled by financial institutions and having milked $1.5 trillion out in profits from the treasury and setting record profits in 2009 and 2010 (not to forget massive bonus payouts), the profitability is on a decline.

The only neutral indicator "Unemployment" rate which the banks do not contribute much to hasn't improved that much.

Now we shall hear requirement of stimulus drumming up from the banks, Fed comes out with statement, followed by treasury and then Mr. Obama will sign for an another stimulus. But wait, he cant do it so directly this time as the Republicans will be vying for his blood. So where do we end-up ??