This was the view from my window on Sunday.
We threw a lot of snowballs at windows to get people's attention, but then that backfired on me when I finally went inside and some people I had been targeting began retaliating. By poking my head out my window, I was actually able to catch one of their snowballs and return fire, which was pretty cool. Too bad nobody got a picture of my three story warfare!I went to a digital anthropology lecture last night out of curiousity. It was a presentation by a lady who is currently following around a class of 13 year olds observing their digital activities both in and out of school. I am afraid I learned far less about their digital behaviours and more about the wacked up school system here. The kids are assigned "levels" depending on how well they do. She showed us a picture of their art projects on the wall, and they all had big stamps on the bottom saying "Level 3," "Level 5," etc. The higher the level, the better the achievement, which seemed odd especially on something as subjective as art and expression. "What did you learn today?" she asked one student. "I answered a level 5 question in maths," he responded. Also, they have recording equipment in all of the classrooms and on school computers, and people whose job it is to monitor kids' behaviour and make a rating of it for each day, which the teacher then reads out at the end of school in front of the class. That is way too Orwellian for my liking, but I guess it explains why there is CCTV monitoring systems in place everywhere in London!
I am about to head to the grocery store, because I am pretty much all out of food. I was going to go heat up some oatmeal for dinner last night when I accidentally stumbled across a Chinese New Year party (the 15 day celebration came to an end last night). I helped them cook and tried to contribute a few ingredients, but they were nice enough to basically treat me to a gigantic meal. There were only five of us, but besides a slow cooker sized amount of rice, there was also "Chinese Risotto," a ham/bacon pepper dish, soy-style chicken legs, a hamburger-type dish with peppers, a chicken broccoli dish, chicken soup, and a dessert of peanut buttery dumplings. It was all very good, and now having observed how they cooked it, I think I could replicate it assuming I could find a few ingredients from chinese grocery stores. I think it is very funny when they explain to me why things are healthy. They can be pouring a cup of salt into some broth made with salty bouillon and tell me that "this dish is very healthy, because the soup will restore your age, invigorating!" The girl from Mexico was cooking with them too, and so she made quesadillas which were really good. The Chinese watched her making them over and over, and kept requesting more, because they liked them so much. Mariana is a good sport, but she is very proud of her heritage and it bugs her when Mexican food is compared with Americanized Tex-Mex stuff. She was a tad bit put off when one of the Chinese guys complimented her quesadillas and added, "Oh yes, I love Mexican food, like taco salads and nachos! And, how do you say? Sour cream? On burritos!"
I had a good time helping them make dinner, but at the same time, I feel like I put my life in their hands a little bit. The idea about washing your hands is pretty much non-existent, and knives and cutting boards are treated with little regard as to their previous passengers. "Oh, you chopped the raw chicken on that? Great, I will use it for the broccoli which is not going to be cooked." And a few parts of the meal like the meat had been cooked in the morning and then left out on the counter all day to wait for dinner. I tend to try to avoid eating the foods that I saw were not necessarily, um, safely prepared? But it's rather impossible when the chefs want to make sure that you have tried and liked everything that they made, haha. So far I haven't been sick this year, so maybe I've just been raised in a culture that is hyper-sensitive about proper food preparation, or I've just been dodging bullets. All I know is I am not looking forward to being ill in these bathrooms, because that is a very sad fate indeed!
Here is the recipe for "Chinese Risotto," as my friend was calling it. He said that it could almost be considered fried rice, but once he got here and tried Italian food, he realized that because it is so wet it is more like risotto than it is like anglicized fried rice:
1. Beat 5 - 6 eggs while heating a large pan / wok on high heat with a bit of oil
2. Throw the eggs in and beat them furiously for 30 seconds or so
3. Pour them back into the original bowl
4. Put 5 tomatoes (diced) in the wok and add some sugar, stir for a while, add some cups water
5. Add the eggs back in and mix it all up, still over high heat
6. Remove from heat and add freshly made rice (around 4 or 5 cups worth)
7. Mix, serve
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