You need to switch your language setting to Chinese (Big5) need to be able to view Unicode to see the symbols correctly in this table:

The numbers beside the phonetic spelling represent tone “shapes”. There are 9 tones and 3 tone levels.

I was at a friend’s house on the weekend and he had a jar of ‘peanuts only’ peanut butter (I don’t remember the brand name but it was fairly unique to one of his neighbourhood grocery stores).  I’ve tried other ‘natural’, ‘no sugar added’, ‘peanuts only’ peanut butters and they usually really translate to ‘no flavour’ or ’stick in your craw’ peanut butter.  This new one was actually decent.  I bought a few bottles — I have peanut butter and jam sandwiches everyday and I thought this would be a good way to decrease the amount of sugar that I inhale on a daily basis.

To my surprise, when I did the side-by-side nutrional information comparison with my usual sugar-full peanut butter, the differences in total sugars and calories were minimal (the sugar-full butter had 1 gram more sugar per 30 gram serving than the peanuts only).  The peanuts-only actually had more calories per serving.  So I ask, what up?

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Tags: nutrition

O.k. this past weekend had the crappiest weather of the entire winter (yes, apparently even though we are past the equinox, it’s still BLOODY winter!). I think it snowed/rained/drizzle/slushed/puked for 48 hours straight. And it thunderstormed too! Lightning and snow at the same time was very strange. And the slush-rain was bizarre — these huges globules of slime fell from the sky on Saturday that completely bonded to everything it fell on. I swear, when I cleaned the car, it took only half a dozen more “rain drops” to completely smear up the windows again. Yuck!

And the kicker? Monday was absolutely gorgeous!

Tags: climate change

One of my favourite poems is the karmic irony of a faded and forgotten king:

Ozymandias

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whos frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my words, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

Tags: poetry