There is something not quite right to me about having your food approve or appear happy about you eating it. I have mentioned this before with Mr. Cow. Now on the street in Taipei, outside KFC, I find Mr. Shrimp lounging in a deep fat fried shrimp ring??? What??? That could be his friend, or his sister, or even his Mom that he is so casually lounging on (ew, gross). Doesn’t he have any remorse or did he sell his friends out to KFC for a lil R&R? How does he know he is not next? Do you really want to eat the shrimp now after seeing how cute he is?

BTW: What is he reading? KFC manual on how to cook shrimp? Learn from Chik-fil-a and let the cows sell the chicken.

I’m off to have a word with Mr. Red Lobster…

So,YouTube has a few strange policies that are affecting me a bit. If you haven’t seen my famous Tiger video you need to check it out. Now, for the record, all I did was take the video. I have NOTHING to do with the comment section which is out of hand underneath. There is everything from the stupid to the crass. My biggest complaint is when people cannot figure out how to comment correctly and end up emailing me directly. Besides that it is quite an interesting read.

Now I say “famous”, but don’t take my word for it. YouTube constantly updates stats. I have even made the #1 most viewed video on a given day. Here are the latest stats.

I was also featured on the BBC. There is even a Korean blog site that has provided over 300,000 clicks! Now with all the depravity that occurs around this video, you would think that it would come down, right? Nope.

So, what does Beuk.tv post that gets blocked? Why pictures of his baby daughter shaving her legs in the tub like Mommy. Most of my videos have ~200 views. Usually, my dad one time, Jack one time, and me 198 times, BUT the two videos of G in the tub jumped to 4000+ views before YouTube took it down. I get it. It hit some sick depraved website and all of a sudden a lot of sickos posting crazy comments caused the YouTube police to take notice (still talking about the baby here, not the tigers) The reason?

Rejected (content inappropriate)

Let me see if I get this right. Babies in tub=BAD, Tigers eating cow=GOOD. Sort of a sad commentary on today’s society, don’t you think?

Not sure if you are going to find this one in the guide books. Amazing lil 3 chef, reservation only, restaurant on a street in Ebisu filled with great restaurants. This is NOT a veggetarian stop. Menu items were: cow tongue, pig intestine and horse nape fat! (the tongue was mouth watering :)

Yeah, what he said… funny enough it is true. I love it. See this post for more!

So,I am discovering a new problem in my Chinese studies. I routinely run into phrases where I understand all of the words except for a just a few. The problem is I can no longer just ‘ask’ what do those words mean. A good example is yesterday Rebecca was “just dying” for some noodles. So, we took 10 steps out our back door to find some delightful places down an alley. When we were there they offered us Dan Dan noodles. Specifically they are called Cai Rou Dan Dan Mien. Of this phrase Cai Rou means vegetable and meat mixed and Mien means noodles. So, that begs the question what they heck does Dan Dan mean? Rebecca thought it meant egg. A good suggestion as Ji Dan is egg, but the Chinese would not refer to egg noodles as egg egg noodles. When I asked my teacher today, she smiled. Turns out Dan Dan… (wait for it)… has no meaning. It is just some space filler for a nice sounding words.

Typing this up got me wondering if this is actually where P.F Chang’s gets their famous Dan Dan noodles. It seems there are a lot of English words that come out of their Chinese equivalent.

So, if my teacher thought Dan Dan was funny she was not prepared for my NEXT question. After eating I had some Boi Ba Nai Cha. Again the same problem. I knew Nai is milk, most commonly used with Niu Nai, for cow’s milk and Cha is tea. Nai Cha = Milk Tea (as opposed to Red, Green, Black, Oolong, Flower, etc… they are kinda serious about their tea here :) Now Boi Ba, what could that mean? It sounds kinda like “bubble” and that is what the tea is! It is bubble tea (see picture). There are little black pearls or ‘bubbles’ of gelatin placed in the bottom and then prepared hot or cold. You can have different colored pearls and different sizes. It actually is quite common in the States, so you should be familiar with it to some extent. If not, check out this great link on how to make bubble tea and all its components (note: check out the line that says, “your choice of pearls or___”. Close, but not quite :)

So… if the story ended here it would not be so exciting. Note: I did not say that Boi Ba means bubble. When I encounter a word or phrase that I do not understand I ask , “What is ___?”. Now imagine me asking , “What is Boi Ba?” to my 50 year old Chinese teacher. Come to find out, it means BOOB! Not just normal boobs either, but VERY large boobs! On a side note: “boob” (the normal sized ones) is Nei Nei which sounds surprisingly close to Nai (milk) or Nai Nai (grandma). Don’t get those two mixed up! So, the name of this drink? Big Fat Booby Milk Tea! I am not kidding you as that is the direct translation. It is really just a cutesy name, but the English translation to “bubble” leaves something to be desired. Seems to me that if you are going to sell this product it should come in packages like this:

Overheard at a party regarding Chinese zodiac signs…

“I belong to pig, my sister is a chicken, and my husband is a cow. We are basically everything that can be served at the table.”

(Thank goodness no one was born in the Year of the Dog!)

If the cow says it is good, it must be good.

The interesting part is that the cow is approving the meat that is made by this company. Somethings not quite right about that.

Maybe they need to have a talk with the Chick-Fil-A cow union.