The best part about Engrish is not simply that it exists, but it destroys the English language in ways that you’d never think of:

“Ustensils” you can almost convince yourself, “Well, that’s just a typo.” I’m not exactly sure how one transmutes “with” into “wight”, a dreadfully uncommon word in English.

Last night, I returned to Hong Kong Food Market to purchase an electric rice cooker. The cashier there was friendly and helpful, although a tad hard to understand since his English was middling. They had several brands, and he recommended the “Tiger” brand as the best. I requested the 10 cup version, and after he put the box on the table, I saw the price tag of $105. “No, this is too expensive,” I laughed, so he offered the 8 cup version which was “only” $99. (Note: It had better be one heck of a rice cooker for me to be paying triple digits for one.) Eventually, I ended up getting a $30 brand, which is closer to what I’d envisioned on spending. We will see how long it lasts before it explodes.

In any case, I couldn’t get the sign hanging by the rice cookers out of my head: “3 days to return all eleclric merchandies”.

If you want to explore something a bit different than international chess, I’d highly recommend taking a look at Xiangqi (Chinese Chess). It’s a wide-open and more unpredictable game, focusing more on tactics than strategy.

You’ll notice some interesting features, starting with the board itself. The board is considered to be 9×10, since the pieces are placed on the line intersections. In the middle there’s a river that affects gameplay, and each side has a 3×3 palace out of which their Generals (king) cannot exit.

The Red side I’ve always seen colored as red, but the Black side can be black, green, or blue. In fact, green’s been used in about a quarter or third of the sets I’ve seen.

The pieces are represented by a Chinese character, and sometimes, different words are used for different sides! This set is unusual in that most of the time, the Cannons (located on the rank behind the pawns) usually use slightly different characters. My set does have a picture representation on the back, but it’s not helpful in the long-run because most sets don’t have anything except the Chinese!

The Cannon is a Rook-like piece that moves like a Rook, but to capture, it’s required to jump over exactly one other piece (friend or foe).

One of the most striking and important aspects is the lack of a solid rank of pawns. There are only five, which means there’s a lot of wide-open action pre-made for the Rooks and Cannons. “Pawn structure” is meaningless, and according to various sources, there’s not even a real struggle for control of the center. (If you recall, in chess, the Rook is the only piece that can control as many squares from the corner and side as from the center.)

There’s even a “fool’s mate” in Chinese Chess that’s four moves long (I lost to it my very first game), where both Cannons are lined up on the same file as the general.

Some links:

Peter Donnelly gives an excellent introduction to Chinese Chess here.

Normally, I don’t like linking Wikipedia, but their Xiangqi article is very well done.

A lot of basic strategy and tactics here. The English is imperfect, but comprehensible.

This guy has a freeware Xiangqi program Qianhong (According to the site: The name Qianhong (”chyen hOng”) means “Light Red”. It is a play on the name of IBM’s “Deep Blue” Chess computer and refers to this program’s weak computer AI.)

I’m going to have to go to one of those rotating blogrolls really soon.

Most of the chess bloggers may already be familiar with the newly added chess bloggers…coincidentally, these guys are all last alphabetically in the chess blog list. Patzer’s Corner sorta reminds me of chessloser. Samurai Pawn is the new Knights Errant secretary, so is supposed to be doing a good job. Tacticus Maximus is the originator of the Wilson Gambit and introduced me to the Moron Defense. Wahrheit has some serious chess introspection, as well being a contributor to Eternity Road.

Carson Sasser is a counterexample to my original hypothesis of 55+’ers not blogging. I have no clue how I found his site or why I keep going back. It was the first site I saw with the Thinking Blogger Award. (Incidentally, Carson, feel free to pick up a Worthless Blogger Award if you want it…)

Nor do I have any clue how I stumbled on Dinosaur Mom’s site. She apparently works for the government (a “federal wage slave”), so I briefly considered sticking her under the Enemies list. But it’s probably not her fault. [The Mascot says: Her avatar's hot! I think I'm going to ask it out!]

One of several resolutions I’ve had since moving is an increased proportion of home-cooked foods. Last night, I had a hard time deciding what to make (once of the disadvantages of a full refrigerator), and decided to come up with this little experiment.

I’d already had a couple fillets of skin-on trout defrosted. These were quick-fried in an olive oil/vegetable oil combination (non-sensical perhaps, but olive oil’s ’spensive!) The grape sauce was created from a combination of grape juice, soy sauce, vinegar, and something else I think, using corn starch as a thickening agent.

The fillets were served on a bed of brown rice, covered in the grape sauce, and garnished with the remaining green sprigs from a rapidly wilting bundle of cilantro.

The taste was, unfortunately, rather average, and decidedly inferior to the palak paneer that looked like dog excrement.