Americanism.

I'm sure Americans are proud to tell the world that they're the founders of many somewhat "original" things. A perfect example of such is the American football, which really doesn't use the foot. They call it football because the English has soccer. America is also one of the few nations in the world that drives on the other side of the road, or uses an whole new set of metric system, which engineers have to spend the extra effort of converting before applying it to equations. Even the language they use has to be English Version 2.0, because Americans can't spell, but refuse to admit that fact, and insist that "aluminum" is the correct spelling instead of "aluminium".

Today, I discovered a whole new American invention - the American-style Mahjong set!


I'm still pretty convinced that it really is a mini chopper, and it doesn't cost USD$39.99. The worst thing is the cashier lady, a chinese, didn't think anything was wrong even when I pointed it out 2 times, since that's what the machine said! Not only that, the guy who came over to helped her with the cancellation (cos it's probably not wise to pay $40 for the American Mahjong set that functions like an electronic chopper) didn't realize anything wrong either. Of course, being the stubborn me, I went back to the store after loading my stuff onto the car, and took that mini-chopper to the customer service for payment. I got a 66% discount on that and got that chopper for $13.59 (it said on the receipt that I saved $28.41.

On to a different note. Kids.
There were 2 occasions today when I had interesting experience with kids. Not that I want one, in fact, I think I really am not ready for one.

Well, the first encounter was at this vietnamese restaurant. There's this kid who keeps turning around to look at me. Initially he wasn't doing anything, then I started making faces at him. Soon, he started some punching actions towards me, and of course I entertained him by doing the same back. After some time, I started using both hands to do the punching action, and guess what, he started doing the same soon after that, and was laughing happily away, feeling entertained! Of course I felt quite happy with myself that I was able to entertain that kid and get that smile from him.

But the more important thing I experienced is how easy a kid could be influenced by another person, even a perfect stranger like myself. It really is kind of scary, cos that's what I have to be aware of when I'm a dad and it's impossible to control the influence of another person over your own kid.

Well, talking about entertaining kids. My brothers, especially my second brother, really have a way with kids. They really can entertain my nieces and nephews really well. I really suck at this. Gotta learn more tricks from them.

The second encounter was at Mitsuwa Japanese Marketplace. I was having my dinner there, and there's this dad with 3 kids sitting at the next table. The dad really can entertain all 3 of his kids really well. They were playing this Action-word game, whereby one person does one action for each word in the sentence one thinks of, and the other person has to guess each word and form the sentence. It really was an interesting sight, and anyone can see the happiness in that family. Of course, the person I admire most is the dad, cos he really makes the effort to entertain his kids even though what he's doing really is boring to him as an adult. This is something I will learn.

Yupz, that's all for my updates. Have been spending far too much $$ lately, even though I didn't even go traveling! Just spent $635 on auto insurance and quite a bit on food, both eating out and home-cooked. Bought quite a bit of expensive meat. And the worst encounter was buying ginger. I ran out of ginger and had to get it from a not-so-nearby American supermarket. Yes, I went to 3 different supermarkets before I manage to find this rare root. And guess what, 3 ginger roots cost me a blardy 4.04 bucks! I wonder just what these ginger are fed. ok, next time, only Asian markets.