Today, I had this idea of recording a normal morning on the way to work. Â This idea comes from a university friend asking me sharing some photos of the streets in tokyo. I thought this also could a good source of photos to reminisce about a normal working day in Tokyo in the future.
这个汤是从我一个法国朋å‹é‚£é‡Œå¦æ¥çš„，上个周末自己在家里试了一下。
在法è¯é‡Œå«potage,原æ料一般用洋葱和 西è˜èŠ±ï¼ˆbroccoli） 或者å—瓜。是一ç§åœ¨æ³•å›½ä¹¡ä¸‹æ¯”较普é的家åºæ–™ç†ã€‚
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Mom… There was time when I was annoyed by your nagging about things.
But no matter what we went through, I want to say “I love you so much”.
Thanks for everything you have given to me.
Food has always been an important part of my family, or I would say every Chinese family. My mother comes from a small village in China, where simple but a large variety of vegetable are usually cooked. When I was young, I sometime complained about the food she prepared for the lack of variation. Then I grew up, and left home for university and I had to cook for myself. I started to realise that I should have never said such things to people who prepared food for you.
Mother’s day is around the corner, and I am very prod of her.She is the best cook of Chinese food in my heart.
The best way of refining yourself is learning from your mistakes; the second-best one is from somebody else’s mistakes. So from tomorrow, I will endeavour to read a book each month.
But why not reading blogs? Blogs are like McDonalds, which can be finished quickly without intense and heart-searching thought, whilst books are like 5 star fine dining restaurants, which require author’s deep reflection. Therefore, I am going to read a book every month from tomorrow. Start with
今天的èœé¢œè‰²ä¸é”™ã€‚
酱油，麻油，葱和大蒜先拌好。把茄å，番茄，é’椒和西葫芦（Zucchini） 分别在锅里ç¨å¾®ç…Žä¸€ä¸‹ï¼Œç„¶åŽæµ‡ä¸Šä¹‹å‰æ‹Œå¥½çš„酱，直接盖在米é¥ä¸Šã€‚
秋葵在水里煮两分钟，与纳豆拌一下。
这两é“èœ20分钟æžå®šï¼
æ•·æ–™
1 ä¸ªå¤§æŸ æª¬ï¼ˆæ±ï¼‰ 2 汤匙红酒醋 四分之一æ¯æ©„榄油 1瓣大蒜（切碎） åŠèŒ¶åŒ™ç› 干绿æ‰è±†å’Œå¹²è—œåˆ†åˆ«åœ¨æ°´ä¸ç…®15-20分钟，å–出放在一æ—晾干，待用。 把其他的切æˆç²’的蔬èœå…¨éƒ¨æ”¾åœ¨å¤§ç¢—里，æ…æ‹Œå‡åŒ€ã€‚然åŽæŠŠæŸ 檬，醋，橄榄油，ç›ï¼Œå¤§è’œæ··åœ¨ä¸€èµ·çš„调味料放进去，å†æŠŠåˆšæ‰ç…®ç†Ÿçš„干绿æ‰è±†å’Œå¹²è—œæ”¾åœ¨ä¸€èµ·ç»§ç»æ…拌。
哒哒，完工：  
Where do I get my fresh coffee beans in Tokyo? The answer is that it’s not very easy if you don’t live in places where there are loads of coffee snobs like me. Most of the coffee beans you get from the coffee shops here only have the “best consumed before this date†tag on their package, from which you don’t know when the beans are roasted.
Having said that, you will find some cool café selling fresh roasted coffee beans in the trendy area like Harajuku and Shibuya. There is a place called “Rostery” between Shibuya and Harajuku, where you can find fresh roasted coffee beans on the same day. This cafe is spacious, and with its modern decoration, you can enjoy a coffee, cappuccino or latte with very comfort and relax atmosphere. There were staffs there tasting a line of coffee brewed from different beans when I visited there, making them really look like professionals.
Added to the in-house roaster, the lighting, the finishing, the wood interior and cozy terrace all create a fantastic atmosphere for café lovers.
My bottomless portafilter ordered from www.naked-portafilter.com has finally arrived home this morning from Hungary! Over the last a few weeks, I have been trying to figure out the problems why I am not able to produce rich crema of my espresso. Now  I hope this is the tool for me to find out the problems, whether is dose or channeling or something else! At the moment, I suspect that uneven tamping which results in uneven extraction could have attributed to the lack of crema. But let’s see what I can observe from this tool.
I am all agog to see my perfect extraction with it! Please stay tuned with my extraction video.
This Hungarian company www.naked-portafilter.com is quite an interesting one, of which the website featured a quite professional video promoting their bottomless portafilter. The video is somewhat reminiscent of Apple’s promotion videos for their Macbook. Take a look the video below see whether if you find it interesting.
(You can’t see this video from China, as Youtube is blocked in mainland China)
Today, I bought a Bluetooth 4.0 dongle to connect my Logitech K760 keyboard. But I could not get it working with my Ubuntu system. Initially, I thought the Bluetooth adaptor does not support Ubuntu, as the product description says it only supports Windows… But lsusb shows the below output, which to me does not look like an OS issue.
xinquan@:~$ lsusb Bus 002 Device 003: ID 03f0:0324 Hewlett-Packard SK-2885 keyboard Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 001 Device 007: ID 0b95:772a ASIX Electronics Corp. AX88772A Fast Ethernet Bus 001 Device 006: ID 0a12:0001 Cambridge Silicon Radio, Ltd Bluetooth Dongle (HCI mode)
After attempting to connect via the Bluetooth GUI, it gave me a passcode to type in on my wireless keyboard, which I proceed to do. It immediately gave me this error: ‘Logitech K760 failed to connect’.
After some googling, it turns out that the passcode from the Bluetooth GUI was bogus, the correct passcode can be obtained from the command tool hcidump! Goshi… After I typed the passcode from hcidump, it connected successfully!
sudo apt-get install bluez-hcidump
sudo hcidump -at | grep -A 1 "User Passkey"
2015-03-27 11:29:29.787512 > HCI Event: User Passkey Notification (0x3b) plen 10
bdaddr 00:1F:20:3E:53:A2 passkey 359872
For an hour or so, I have been debugging an SQL error thrown by the PostgresSQL in my CakePHP application. The error message was also not really helpful. Below is the SQL generated by the CakePHP update function
UPDATE "public"."posts" SET "value" = asap WHERE id = (1)
SQLSTATE[42703]:
Undefined column: 7 ERROR: column "asap" does not exist LINE 1:
The culprit turns out to be that how quote is used to identify a string in SQL.
I have to explicitly put the single quote in the string value ‘asap’ in the CakePHP function below when updating a record of the Model Post.
The below is the signature of the updateAll function from CakePHP library.
public function updateAll($fields, $conditions);
The tricky part is you can’t quote strings in the conditions, but for the updating value of the fields, the string has to be single quoted.
$this->Post->updateAll(
array('Post.value' => "'asap'" ),
array('Post.key = ' => "when"));
A further discussion can be seen at the stackoverflow page
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1992314/what-is-the-difference-between-single-and-double-quotes-in-sql
If you ask westerners, who have been to Chinese weddings, about their experiences, the feedbacks will probably be something like this
The wedding was great, except for the smoking!
Yet, smoking in a Chinese wedding in mainland China is still ubiquitous. Traditionally, although not sure from when, the bride is supposed to light up cigarettes for the elder guests and the groom makes the toast when they greet the guests. This cultural mores may be great for the smokers but can be horror experiences for non-smokers like me.
What’s more is that the children and women who do not smoke are not aware the harm of secondhand smoke in China, or they are inure to this environment, Â like the heavily polluted air.
Over the last a few weeks, I have tried very hard to push and convince my parents to put off the cigarettes at my wedding reception in China, and I have encountered numerous obstacles.
“The guests will think you are penny-pinching”, “ungenerous”, one of my friends advised.
“Do in Rome as Rome does (入乡éšä¿—)”, Another one of my relatives suggested.
However, it is my belief that this kind of social mores in China are not necessary to be followed. One day, hopefully, not far from now, people will recognise that tobacco is harmful and should not be part of social occasions and gift-giving.
An image from Shanghai government website
