dragon boat festival

Yesterday was dragon boat festival, the big early summer festival in
Taiwan. Traditionally it involves watching boats with dragons on them
race and eating a food called jhong-tse. The jhong-tse are pretty
good - they are made by putting glutinous rice in a bamboo leaf with
pork, mushroom, peanuts, and egg. They are then steamed (in the north
of Taiwan they fry the glutinous rice before they add it so it has
more oil and a bit more flavor). The story of the dragon boat festival
is pretty interesting - long ago in a kingdom in China there was a man
who loved his country a great deal. He had many ideas about how his
great country should be run, but the king of the country would not
listen to him. This made him so depressed that he through himself
into a river to his death. So symbolically, the dragon boat races
represent trying to rescue this man from the river. And when he was
in the river, people were afraid that the fish would eat his body, so
they made the jhong-tse for them to eat instead. Anyway, I got the
day off, which meant my first 2 day weekend in months (yay!).

what's new?

Really, not too much is new. Richard's dad came into town last night,
and I have enjoyed talking with him. He was in the u.s. military here
in the late 60's and early '70's, speaks Chinese pretty well, and
generally seems like a nice and interesting guy. I have been watching
the show Firefly (Richard is a fan) recently, and that's pretty fun.
Work continues to be about the same. I eliminated all files from my
computer that don't pertain to internet, listening to music, and
watching movies, so things are running a bit better (though I still
can't access many sites). Chinese class is shrinking again and I will
be sorry to leave, though I'm thinking about doing 1/week private
lessons to keep myself honest as I try to review (depends on the price
and my work schedule). And that, is really, about it.