Fast Food Nation

Fast Food Nation talks about fast food, and a lot of negative aspects of its production and cultural impacts.

Given that the intent of the narrative implies the negative impacts, I found some of the discussion on the various entrepreneurs to be politically charged.  While it doesn't bother me, it makes me wonder if there is a political slant to the information provided, and if conservatives would be turned off to this book.  There also seems to be a presentation of fact as negative, when perhaps some of the connections or implications are tenuous.

Regardless, a lot of the information is very interesting and revealing to the uninitiated.

Update 3/1 - I finished the book, and I take back most of what I said above.  As the author states at the end, he is just stating the facts and allowing the reader to draw his or her own conclusion.

The subject matter was very interesting.  He started by writing about how McDonalds started and changed the way food was made and marketed.  He wrote about fast food workers' rights and wages, and the political lobbying to maximize profits at the top while keeping costs low.  Next he tackled the subject of the science behind the mass production and standardization of the food, primarily the beef and fries, and then the consolidation of the meat cutters industry and the dangerous conditions in the slaughterhouses, and how the translate to foodborne pathogens that become widely dispersed through mass distribution.  He concluded with the globalization of McDonalds and other fast food chains, and the resistance that some countries have to McDonalds, as McDonalds represents American imperialism.

I thought it was a good book that touched upon how a free market society can go bad when left unchecked, the political lobbying and corruption of politicians by large corporate interests, how agribusiness destroys small, more environmentally friendly food production, the potential for public health outbreaks attributed to cost cutting, and the resistance of other countries to McDonalds, while the American public (literally and figuratively) eats up McDonalds.

Regarding the last subject, the popularity of this book does give me some hope for America.

Paul Gilbert

Paul Gilbert is an incredible guitar player.  I love the fluidity in his playing.  He is a true fan of music, and isn't shy to express how much he loves other people's songs.  He's one of my most humble and personable professional guitarists that I've ever seen.  Though he can rip incredibly fast, he also has beautiful phrasing and his timing is great.

I don't know what's more influential to me - his playing or the fact that he's such a cool guy.

The ending of this next video is probably my favorite 30 seconds on YouTube, ever, where Marco Minneman drops a stick but still plays in perfect sync with Paul:

Yesterday was President's Day

In honor of President Trump's taking a phone call from the Taiwanese president at the start of his presidency, I made Taiwanese food all day.

Is that a tenuous connection?  Trying too hard?

Nah, the actual reason was that I had a nice free day, so I decided that I wanted to try some Taiwanese recipes.  In my mind, I had this romantic notion that I'd just constantly cook and constantly eat all day, but my meals ended up following more conventional meal times.

I started in the morning with sheng jian bao, which are pan fried ground pork filled buns.  They were like a cross between bao, siu mai, and Japanese gyoza.  Bao because of the milk flour outer wrapper, siu mai because of the ground pork filling, and gyoza because of the fry/steam preparation.  These came out really good - the tops and filling were cooked nicely, and the bottoms had a nice brown seared caramelization.

 Next I made Taiwanese popcorn fried chicken with deep fried basil.  These tasted a little like Japanese chicken karaage with five spice.  They were yummy with the fried basil.

I also made a bouncy pork ball in soup.  This was good too!!  The meatballs were very bouncy and springy, and I'm sure if you threw one on the floor, it would bounce.

I made Ching He Huang's Three Cup Chicken, and served with baby bok choy, pickled mustard cabbage, corn and rice.  This was really simple, but tasty.

Finally, I made Taiwanese shaved ice, with lychee jellys, mango, pineapple, peach preserves, condensed milk, tapioca pearls, and shaved ice.  It was actually very light and refreshing!

The Way The News Goes

I need to learn how to play this...  such a beautiful guitar riff

Too much to do.....

I have way too many things I want to do, and I need to find a way to balance all of these things.  I think I need to schedule my free time, after doing chores and spending meaningful time with my children.  Here's my list of things that make me happy (insert Candy Crush sparingly :)

Read library books
Review "The Art of Happiness" by the Dalai Lama
Continue to listen to "The Book of Joy" during commutes
Exercise
Cook new recipes
Work on guitar assembly for various guitars
Finish up album
Learn difficult songs with tab

The Diary of a Young Girl - Anne Frank

I finished this book this weekend.  It was an interesting read....  though at times, I was confused because I wasn't keeping track of all of the people that were coming to help them.

At times, the book got very mundane, but I understand why - in hiding, the only things that she could talk about were her relationships with people in the house, her fears every time they thought they might be discovered, and what they were eating.  Between these entries, though, she was discovering her independence, and her self-awareness regarding happiness.  Those parts were very inspiring.

She figuratively wrote to Peter, though she was just writing in her own diary:

"This morning, when I was sitting in front of the window and taking a long, deep look outside at God and nature, I was happy, just plain happy.  Peter, as long as people feel that kind of happiness within themselves, the joy of nature, they'll always be able to recapture that happiness.

Riches, prestige, everything can be lost.  But the happiness in your own heart can only be dimmed;  it will always be there, as long as you live, to make you happy again.

Wherever you're feeling lonely or sad, try going to the loft on a beautiful day and looking outside.  Not at the houses and the rooftops, but the sky.  As long as you can look fearlessly at the sky, you'll know that you're pure within and will find happiness once more."

She also contemplates love, where she says:

"Love, what is love?  I don't think you can really put it into words.  Love is understanding someone, caring for him, sharing his joys and sorrows.  This eventually includes physical love.  You've shared something, given something away and received something in return, whether or not you're married, whether or not you have a baby.  Losing your virtue doesn't matter, as long as you know that for as long as you live you'll have someone at your side who understands you, and who doesn't have to be shared with anyone else!"

And again, regarding happiness, she says:

"At such moments I don't think about all the misery, but about the beauty that still remains.  This is where Mother and I differ greatly.  Her advice in the face of melancholy is:  "Think about all the suffering in the world and be thankful you're not part of it."  My advice is:  "Go outside, to the country, enjoy the sun and all nature has to offer.  Go outside and try to recapture the happiness within yourself; think of all the beauty in yourself and in everything around you and be happy."

I don't think Mother's advice can be right, because what are you supposed to do if you become part of the suffering?  You'd be completely lost.  On the contrary, beauty remains, even in misfortune.  If you just look for it, you discover more and more happiness and regain your balance.  A person who's happy will make others happy;  a person who has courage and faith will never die in misery!"

This third passage was interesting.  On face values, it seems to go against the Dalai Lama's teaching that compassion is the key to happiness.  I think her mom was not saying that she should feel compassion for the people that were being sent to the gas chambers; rather, her mom was saying just be glad you're not being sent to the gas chambers.  Whereas Anne was saying that rather than counting her blessings for what she wasn't subjected to, she was counting her blessings for finding the beauty in the world.

I believe that her philosophy did follow what the Dalai Lama says - that happiness within will lead to happiness around you.  Anne discovered this at such an early age, and given her close quarters to people she didn't get along with, the constant fear of being caught and sent to concentration camps, and her confinement in hiding and inability to grow up free, I'm inspired by her character and spirit.

Though the book was long and at times mundane, it inspires me in many ways.

The Rainbow Comes and Goes - Anderson Cooper and Gloria Vanderbilt

My digital holds from the Hawaii State Library have all become available within the past few weeks!!  It's almost too much to handle.  Fortunately this is a really easy read, and it's relatively short.

The first half of the book (what I've read so far) focuses on Gloria's early life, and how her inheritance money was a source of struggle between her grandmother and mother, with her nanny and Aunt thrown into the mix.  She was unfortunately caught in the middle of all of that.

The book is a series of e-mails between Gloria and Anderson, and though the primary focus is on Gloria, Anderson also reveals details about his upbringing, his disappointments and accomplishments, and his feelings about his family.

2/17 update:  There is a wonderful passage where Gloria explains that forgiveness comes with understanding the reason why something happens, not accepting full responsibility, and acceptance of  others' failings.

Another passage echoes what the Dalai Lama says:  "It is very easy to simply define yourself by your job, your title, your salary, but these rarely give you feelings of long-term success and happiness."

In her final letter to Anderson, Gloria says "We are told the fable ends with a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.  But does it?  I have no answer, except to say, the rainbow comes and goes, and really, isn't that enough?"  What a beautiful outlook.

Select Difficulty - Periphery

Here's a band that I rediscovered after looking at guitars and amps.  The leader of the band, Misha Mansoor, has a new import signature Jackson guitar coming out, as well as a new amp called the Peavey Invective.

The specs on his guitars look awesome, and his new amp looks like something I'd want too.

Anyway, I've heard some Periphery before and liked it, but since I was listening to much heavier music at the time, I didn't listen to them much.

I recently started listening to Select Difficulty, and it's such an amazing album.  The vocalist reminds me a little bit of Chester Bennington from Linkin Park, Brandon Boyd from Incubus and Corey Taylor from Slipknot.  The guitar work is incredible.  Misha, Mark Halcomb and Jake Bowen are super creative guitarists and composers.  I love the orchestration and the super melodic guitar lines.

"The Way The News Goes...." has a beautiful and difficult intro guitar part that I'm trying to master.

Between this album, the latest Chthonic, the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu audiobook, and Anderson Cooper and Gloria Vanderbilt's book, I have way too much media to consume, but I'm in a blissful state of sensory inundation!  Lucky thing it's a three-day weekend!!

Update 2/22 - I'm now completely obsessed with Marigold and The Way The News Goes...  I think I've listened to those two songs about 5 times a day.  Everything about those two songs is perfect.

Bù-Tik - Chthonic

I have to admit, I discovered Chthonic only because I was researching buying a new guitar, and the specs on Jessie Liu's signature model E-II JL-7 seem very close to what I want (and different from all of my other guitars).

The only thing is that I had no idea who Jessie Liu is.  A quick google search revealed that he's the guitar player for Chthonic, so I decided to check them out.  I know that Doris Yeh, the bass player, also has a signature model, and I figured they must be pretty influential if they have their own signature model guitars.

In the past week, I've been listening to their latest album, Bù-Tik.  To my ears, they sound like a cross between melodic death metal like Arch Enemy, newer black metal like Abigail Williams, and symphonic death metal like Fleshgod Apocalypse, while incorporating what sounds like very classic ethic Chinese instruments and melodies.  I find it to be a very sophisticated and "smart" sound, for lack of a better word.  They are very talented musically.  Lyrically, they are very political, and touch upon historical events in songs like "Supreme Pain For The Tyrant".  In fact, the lead singer, Freddy Lim, recently won a seat in the Taiwanese legislature.

Bù-Tik is a great album from start to finish.  I love the melodicism in the instrumentation, contrasted with the extreme metal vocals.  I think this is what sets me apart from most musicians that I know....  they usually hate extreme metal vocals and dismiss them as Cookie Monster.  It's with a deeper ear that one can hear melody in extreme metal....  and I think that comes from shifting the focal point of the vocals as melody, onto the instrumentation.  I also think that's why I can appreciate the musicality of non-melodic instruments like drums.

Anyway, this album makes me want to explore Chthonic's back catalog, as well as read about the history of Taiwan as reflected in their songs.  I love how music can expand your horizons.

My Taiwanese obsession continues

....through tying together disparate things that have influenced me....  Ching He Huang, who I discovered via her cookbooks, and Eddie Huang, who I discovered primarily through Huang's World on Viceland, and also Chthonic, the politically charged Taiwanese metal band.

I'm not sure if there's a big Taiwanese metal scene, but I'll have to look it up.  It seems like the international bands that I love are pretty isolated geographically - Sepultura/Max Cavalera from Brazil, Behemoth/Nergal from Poland, unlike some other areas where there are huge scenes, from Swedish Melodic Death Metal, Norwegian Black Metal, Northeastern U.S. Metalcore, or Bay Area Thrash.  I'm guessing Chthonic falls squarely in the former camp.

Reading (actually listening) to the Dalai Lama talk about Chinese annexation of Tibet, and President Trump taking a phone call from the president of Taiwan being a breach in protocol, in addition to the recent news of territorial control of certain islands near China, make me reflect on China's influence and geographical / political domination.  I think it's important that bands like Chthonic write about historical events and take a political stance.

On a completely lighter note, I had Taiwanese beef noodle soup for lunch yesterday!  Food is unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it) the easiest way to experience other cultures, short of traveling.

The Book of Joy

I just got downloaded this audiobook from the library and am really looking forward to listening to it on my car rides to and from work!

Update 2/17 - this is a really good listen.  I'm about halfway through the audiobook, and it's very easy to listen to.  It's kind of funny that the book is subtitled "Lasting Happiness in a Changing World" because early on in the book, a distinction is made between "happiness" and "joy", with "joy" being much more spiritual and a state of being that engulfs "happiness".

The first half of the book talks about the Dalai Lama's struggles with suffering related to his exile from Tibet, and Desmond Tutu's struggles with the atrocities of Apartheid and his battle with prostate cancer, and how they both achieve joy through compassion and the recognition that we are one with the seven billion sentient beings in the world.

Listening to this book brings me joy.  I think about how the subject matters relate to the things I'm going through, and I find myself smiling as I'm listening to this.

Update:  3/13 - I've been practicing  meditating upon waking about how I want my day to be filled with doing nice things or at least not harming anyone, and also exercising thoughts of gratitude just before I fall asleep.  They are very good lessons and help to bring me peace of mind and happiness.

Since it's Valentine's Day, here are a few of my current "crushes"

Music is life, and right now I'm obsessing over Periphery's "The Way The News Goes...", Letters From the Fire's "Worth The Pain", and the Bu-Tik album by Chthonic.  I don't know where I'd be without music.

My obsession with cooking Korean food has waned a little, and I've cooked a lot of Japanese dishes that I've wanted to, so my cooking obsession is moving towards Chinese food.

I just discovered Ching He Huang, an ethnically-Chinese Brit that grew up in Taiwan.  I happened upon her by borrowing one of her cookbooks from the library, and love her recipes, many of which have a Taiwanese influence.  I also watched her YouTube series on finding the best chefs in Hong Kong.  It's always cool when someone that knows how to cook appreciates other good chefs.

A Man Called Ove: A Novel

I rarely read fiction.  I can't remember the last fiction I read.....  I think it might have been Mitch Albom's "The Five People You Meet In Heaven".

I also can't remember if I borrowed this book because a friend recommended it, or because I saw it on the New York Times list of must-reads.  I put a digital hold on this book months ago, and it finally became available.

It's a pretty good story....  as I read it, I kept picturing how it would translate to a movie.  The story bounces chronologically in a way that (I think) was started in movies like Pulp Fiction and Memento.  Overall, I found myself liking the main character.....  and in the end, I think I found the character relate-able to my life....  but at the same time, I wasn't moved so much by the significant events that happened.

I would give this a 4 or 5 stars, but I don't think I'll look up more books by the author, and I'm no more inspired to read more fiction than I was prior to picking up this book.

I actually read this book a long time ago.  I love Max Cavalera's voice and his songwriting and guitar playing, but didn't know much about his life other than the fact that he formed Sepultura in Brazil with his brother Iggor.

What I find interesting and inspiring about Max is that despite his stature and influence in the history of metal, he is always interested in the ways that metal is constantly changing and evolving, and like his friend Dave Grohl, is always interested in promoting the music that he hears that he loves.

This autobiography tells the story of his privileged background getting ground to a halt after his Italian embassy father suddenly passed away, growing up in Sao Paolo, Brazil, and spanning his career with Sepultura until he ultimately left the band over disputes about band dealings because of his marriage to the manager, his time with Soulfly, and his reuniting with Iggor in Cavalera Conspiracy.

I love the energy and enthusiasm this guy has, and he's definitely one of my biggest heroes and influences.

Dave Lombardo

Dave Lombardo is not only one of my favorite drummers of all time, but he's actually one of my favorite musicians of all time.  For a non-melodic instrument, he plays his drums with so much passion, energy and creativity that watching him play is so inspiring.  He has a great sense of time, his tempo is steady, he hits pretty hard, his thrash beats are so driving, and the parts that he plays in the original Slayer songs are so creative.  I wish I could write music with this guy!

Pinch harmonics

(Warning:  guitar geek alert)

A week ago, I finished up enough of my black Les Paul guitar to make it playable (I've since completed everything except for screwing on the truss rod cover, but I'll tweak the truss rod for a little while before I put the plate on for good).

When I first plugged it in to give it a good play through, I immediately started playing Dio-era Vivian Campbell licks, because Vivian played a black Les Paul in Dio.  As I played through his licks, I started playing through the licks of his contemporaries like Warren DiMartini from Ratt, Jake E. Lee from Ozzy's band, George Lynch from Dokken, etc.

It occurred to me that the one technique that unified a lot of those guys was the artificial pinch harmonic, that they incorporated into a lot of their leads and rhythms.  Because these guys came out just a few years after Eddie and Randy, I consider them to be sort of disciples of Eddie.  But though none of them really copied EVH's tapping per se, they all used his pinch harmonics as an expressive tool.

I noticed that in my playing, pinch harmonics are very prevalent as well, no doubt because I was so heavily influenced by both EVH and the guys influenced by him.

I believe that guys who are only sort of moderately interested in EVH get the whole tapping thing, but the guys who have really studied that style incorporate the pinch and artificial harmonics way more as an expressive tool....  so much that when they say tone is in the fingers, this aspect drives the point home.

Hiroshima okonomiyaki

Most people I talk to don't like okonomiyaki.  I've had regular okonomiyaki and I'm not a big fan, but I love Hiroshima style, which is different.  The cabbage is not incorporated into the batter, and there's a lot of finely ground katsuo bushi, which gives the okonomiyaki a very smokey flavor.  Thinly sliced pork belly provides the meaty flavor, and yakisoba gives it body.  The okonomiyaki sauce adds a rich tartness, and kewpie mayo makes the whole thing creamy, with aonori providing more umami.

Kung Hee Fat Choy

For Chinese New Year, I decided to make Lo Bak Gow, which is turnip cake.  A lot of people that I talk to seem to think that it's difficult to make, but it's not....  it just has a lot of steps.  You need to grate a daikon (I grate about half, and cut the other half in chunks), then boil for 10 minutes in just a little bit of water.  Then you stir fry some green onion, dried shrimp, lup cheong and shiitake, all minced finely, and add to the boiled daikon.  Next you need to incorporate rice flour until it's thicker than pancake batter, and pour into a well oiled pan.  You steam this pan for 50 minutes, and remove and let the cake rest before flipping over to remove the cake onto a cutting board.  Cut into blocks, and fry in a cast iron pan until a crust forms.

I borrowed this cookbook from my mom.  This is the first cookbook that I've read from cover to cover.  The introduction describes Morimoto's early life and how his career developed.  In between recipes, there are sections devoted to different things like dashi stock, rice, cooking tools, etc., and I learned a lot by reading these.

Reflecting on his drive, creativity, and humility, I have a great deal of admiration for him.

I love his recipes, and have made a couple from this book already.  As with any cookbook that I am influenced by, I love to read and absorb the general concept, and modify the recipe to reflect my own tastes.

I had the good fortune of meeting him at Williams Sonoma, and he signed a book for me.  We look like brothers...  but I wish I had worn a hat like his to take this picture!  And though it's totally out of character for me, I had to do the requisite Japanese peace sign!!!