MJ’s Favorites

Household items whose English names were unknown to me for a while

step stools are called bing bongs in my family

My elementary school encouraged my parents to speak English at home, so that we wouldn’t be totally lost when we went to school. (That was bad advice – we could have grown up bilingual! But I’ll save that rant for another day.) So my parents spoke a little less Chinese and a bit more English to us, and eventually we were responding exclusively in English. But a few English words eluded me for a long time, and even today, their Chinese names come to mind before their English counterparts.

a feather duster is a tool for asian parents to beat children

If you don’t know about this, ask your ABC friends. I was surprised to learn that it wasn’t just our family. Yay, we can all bond over the absurd feeling of running with your hands over your butt! I never processed that those three characters are basically “chicken fur sweep” because it just meant “time to get an ass whoopin'”. I don’t know when I even learned that the thing was actually for dusting stuff off. Ours was so dusty living atop Mommy’s Fridge that it probably wouldn’t have actually cleaned anything.

gu hon gwaat / miser scrape is such a better name than rubber spatula

This one followed me into adult life. In fact, I’m still not satisfied that it’s just referred to as a generic ol’ spatula. That’s so boring and unspecific!! It’s a scraping-device-for-frugal-misers.

Operation Help-Max-Get-Chickens, part 1

I spent the last week in New Jersey, helping my sister get started with chicken-keeping.

This was the plan. It was supposed to be easy.

the original chicken tractor-building schedule

But of course, things don’t always go as planned.

the actual unfolding of chicken preparation events

We originally meant to get a flock of Orpingtons and/or Rhode Island Reds, but the farmer lady had an Ameraucana. I hadn’t recently researched it, but I remembered it was a favorite of many. So after the hour-long high-speed chase, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when I read this:

ameraucanas love to escape, apparently

So that was my week. With a haircut by my sisters and a trip to New York squeezed in there somewhere.

Next time I’ll go into detail about the tractor itself.

Planing lesson

I shall open with some Plain ol’ Taichi moves:
plain ol' taichi steps

BUT WAIT! That looks familiar!
Compare with Plane ol’ Taichi moves:

plane ol' taichi steps, luthier style

When you plane, you’ve got to MOVE YO’ BODY!!! … and not forget to breathe and concentrate and stuff, etc etc.

But really, planing taichi-style puts the strength of your legs and the weight of your torso behind the plane, which will slow down arm fatigue and let your arms focus on controlling the plane. So, today’s lesson in review:

shaolin planing vs. cabbage patch planing

You don’t even need the check mark and X to tell you which is the right way – obviously you’d choose Shaolin Planing because it makes you look way cooler. But make sure you’ve got good footing, or else:

kung fu planing gone wrong