Sound of Freedom

The plane touched down without a hitch. When I had imagined the desert I did not have a great deal of reference for anything between srubby brushland and the National Geographic pictures of Sahara dunes. This place was neither. Rolling dust stretched long distances with the horizon broken by giant spikes of bare dark rock.

"Woah," a coworker says behind me, "look...missiles."

They are sitting on a rack in the dust, probably only the casings in reality. I'm slightly disgusted with my smug sense of pride to not be involved with those devices. The plane ceases to taxi and we begin getting out and getting our equipment.

"Only one person on the stairs at a time," the pilot says calmly. I reach between the netting on the cargo area behind the last seat and walk down the stairs in the door of the plane holding the prototype.

You don't sweat in the desert, you simply suddenly realize that your throat is dry. The sweat evaporates from your body long before you notice it. Thankfully we concluded all the mandatory tests early. We were driving at one point for fun but then a gear box stripped out. This is the perfect failure for a software test bed: completely not software, and the mechanical design was just a quick mock up and never meant to take that kind of damage anyway. We would have run it until it failed anyway, and this is a perfect failure mode.

"So you want to see Dryden then?" Crash asked.

We all nodded.

We weren't badged for Edwards so we wound up slipping in with a tour. One of Crash's friends met up with the group and removed us from it. We wound through corridors until we came out in a large room where a gleaming white robot greeted our eyes.

"This," Crash's friend said, "Is a MQ-9 Preadator B, also known as an MQ-9 Reaper, although we can't have things named Predator and Reaper around NASA so we call it Ikhana."

"And...what's it for?"

"Earth studies," the pilot says, "during the forest fires last year the governor estimates that this device saved 100,000 homes from fire with the data it gathered."

I'm terribly torn about my feelings on the existence of this object. In war we rarely even care to talk about the question of what we are spending money to buy for the troops anymore: we simply brag about how much we are spending. Then, at the same time, we hear reports of troops being killed in Iraq because their Humvees are unarmored.

Who cares about the dollar amount but not overly so much about the result? The manufacturers do. The military industrial complex frightens me in many respects, and the Predator is doubtlessly a product of this complex.

Yet, this is the way things are aren't they? The military develops technology which eventually is adopted and betters the quality of civilian life. This Predator is undoubtably doing good things. If you separate yourself from this cycle do you really lessen war any, or do you just make it so that less technology filters down to the people?

We're walking again into a room where another gleaming white plane greets us. The wings are so long that a spare set of wheels hangs from the undersides of them half way down their length.

"This is a U2, it flies 70,000 feet and... perhaps higher."

Another military plane that does scientiffic work.

Walking out the door to the hanger the heat hits you like a wave. Motion in the distance trains the lens on a coworker's camera to the sky.

"No cameras in that direction," the pilot says, "that's where the F22s are."

Bah-boom

One of my coworkers looks up somewhat incredulously at the sonic boom. The pilot laughs, "You know what that is?"

The pilot doesn't even wait for a response as he looks at the banking fighter in the sky, "That's the sound of freedom."

The More You Know

Sys sits at his computer behind me looking puzzled, "When did XKCD start getting dirty?"

"What are you talking about?" I asked "XKCD has always been like this..."

"No, its always nerdy...not dirty."

"Nerds tend to be pretty dirty..."

Sys shakes his head.

"No, here" I said as I started searching for previous less than family friendly editions and rattling them off.

Sys shakes his head but views the evidence I present. Sys has been the designated high school bitch of my lab for just over a year now, but realistically he's treated like any college intern in my lab despite being only 17. Since he can handle the workload of a college kid he has earned all the privileges that come with it. I sometimes wonder how it is for him to return to the real world where his underlings, the designated high school bitches of other labs at my work, are his classmates.

We're expected to mentor our high school students in exchange for the coffee and copies. On a technical level Sys has probably gained more education than any other student. However, most of the life lessons I hand him are, normally completely inadvertently, more than a little unconventional.

Sys clicks quietly through the links and nods, conceding the point made. I hear the mouse fall silent as he tilts his head and stares at the screen for a moment.

"Pika, I don't get this one."

"Huh?"

"What's a furry?"

Across the lab Bobby chokes a little on his water bottle laughing. Drummer looks at me wondering how I'm going to handle this.

"Well," I said, "this is one of those things that if I tell you it won't make you any happier a person...but you do have an Internet connection so if you're really determined you can look it up yourself."

"What kind of an answer is that?"

"You ever heard the story of Pandora's box?"

Sys sits for a minute and then returned to his work. He typed for a good 120 seconds or so before his typing slowed and he stared at the screen. Then suddenly, he leaned forward and the tempo of the strokes quickened. There was a very slight pause before he leaned back again and shouted to the room, "Ohhh NASTY!"

The whole lab bursts out laughing.

Sys is pretty irritated, "Why did you show me that?"

"Dude," I said, "we totally warned you."

The lab trolled him briefly with a discussion of furries and then the laughter died down. Eventually work resumed. It wasn't until several hours later that I caught Sys shaking his head out of the corner of my eye.

"What's wrong man?"

Sys shakes his head again, "Fuzzies are so nasty."

"Man," Bobby laughed, "at least get the title right."

"There really are many worse things on the internet," Drummer offered cheerfully.

Sys opened his mouth for a moment to ask a question then shut it again and went back to work.

Academia will tell you that the pursuit of knowledge is the pursuit of happiness. The Internet has taught me that there are rare sets of circumstances where I beg to differ.

Eighths

When my brother was young he lacked the insight that other people were people too. When he hurt himself he caused himself physical pain which his body told him was bad. When he caused physical pain to others it did not hurt him. Thus, his mind never added up that it was bad.

This resulted in a two year old child who would grab a fist full of hair and pull it as hard as he could to get your attention. From a standpoint of a logical human who completely lacked empathy this was a very effective tactic: all his mind saw was the cause and effect that causing people pain would promptly get their attention. I understood that there would be strict penalties to hitting my brother, so I didn't, and so in my brother's perception there were no negative consequences to this action.

He and our dog, a very mild mannered part German Shepard part yellow lab, had the same favourite beanbag chair. This was a major source of inconvenience for Issac who frequently wished to remove the dog from the chair so he could use it. Issac would toddle up and begin kicking the dog, pulling on its ears, and yanking on its tail until she got up and left. The dog tried to express her dislike of this procedure politely by growling and snarling but my brother blew past these warnings for the same reasons he had no problem pulling my hair or hitting me. One day the dog simply decided to not put up with it anymore. She lept up and with a single paw the 60 pound dog swatted my two year old brother to the ground. She used the paw to hold him there and began gnawing on his hair, moving across his scalp like she might clean a puppy's fur. My brother howled and screamed but was unable to escape until the dog finished. At that point he lay bawling on the floor completely overwhelmed and baffled with what had just transpired. That was the day he learned that there were other things in the world which felt pain, that the rest of the creatures in the world were a little more than moving scenery. The dog served as his best friend well into my college years when it died.

***

Brown on one side, black with white spots on the other. I was wrapped from head to toe in this blanket with a portion of it looped up over my head like a hood. My mother lay in a large bed and next to her was a small bedside table with white sanitary plastic walls around the top.

"You want to see him?" my maternal grandmother asked.

"Mmm!" I said, extending both arms in a y above me as my way of asking to be picked up.

She picked me up and now I could see over the edge of the hospital crib. There was something small ugly and pink in it. "See?" grandma asked, "there he is!"

"Mom says we'll be best friends for our whole lives," I recited.

"That's right," grandma said.

"How long before we can play T-ball and tag?"

Grandma laughed a little, "not so long, but you'll have to be patient."

As it turned out my brother needed significantly more patience than anybody had anticipated. Even after he started preschool a firetruck or an ambulance driving within earshot would cause him to dissolve in a fit of tears on the floor from sensory overload. Any game which involved coordination was almost entirely out of the question, as a matter of fact his motor skills were so poor that my dad use to give him candy to practice playing catch with him in the back yard. When this failed to provide results he was sent to physical therapy.

Perhaps it was because my parents were at that age too busy for me or perhaps its because I have always been an attention whore but I remember being terribly jealous of my brother for getting to go to physical therapy. In my eyes it seemed like my brother randomly recieved the undivided attention of an adult for several hours a week for doing mind-numbingly easy tasks. Sometimes the therapist would meet us at a park and I would be told to go play while they worked, but sometimes I was permitted to stay and watch quietly. I remember watching him being handed playing cards back and forth and them discussing them. I remember them not even throwing and catching a ball but sitting down and rolling it back and forth to each other. Once or twice being I was permitted to play too. I blew through all the games, only to find that doing so did not result in candy or being lavished with praise and that it made my brother cranky and jealous of my progress. Once I went with my dad to pick him up from physical therapy and I remember being green with envy. Everywhere as far as I could see were giant balls to play on and large foam structures to climb on like at gymnastics class. It looked like the ultimate playground. My brother wandered out looking very tired.

"He did a great job today," the therapist said.

"That's great," my dad said, "Issac, you can choose what we have for dinner tonight."

"Pick soup!" I said as I ran up to the nearest foam toy and begin climbing on it.

"Now Pika," my dad said, "your brother worked very hard today and its his...Pika! Pika get down from there! You're not allowed up there!"

It all seemed so horrendously unfair.

***

"Now," my mother asked my brother as they sat on the floor with a poster of faces and a pile of candy. "Which of these faces is the annoyed face?"

It is a good thing one of my brother's greatest difficulties was non-verbal communication because I didn't do a whole lot to contain my eye-rolling.

***

"One eigff of..."

"Eighth," my mother corrected.

"Uh-huh."

"You must work to say all the letters in the words Pika."

I continued to draw on the piece of paper in front of me.

"Pika, are you listening to me? You never use to speak like this. You have gotten lazy recently with your speech. You are copying Issac."

As the days passed my mother found me more stubbornly lazy...and so I found myself sitting in the first day of speech therapy. I was terribly excited. I knew that my brother came here for an hour or so each week to recieve the undivided attention of an adult and then be treated to ice cream by our parents. It seemed that I was finally getting in on this scam too.

The therapist's name was Mrs. Buss. I remember thinking that a funny name for a speech therapist as none of her patients would be able to call her by name until they didn't need her anymore.

We talked for a little bit as she studied the way I spoke, when finally she held up a diagram and said "Now," said Mrs. Buss, "what fraction of the pie is shaded?"

"Three out of eight."

"And how else might you say that?"

"Not five out of eight."

Mrs. Buss was not amused. "Say three eighths."

I frowned. I had carefully learned to dance around hard 's' sounds and 'th's around strangers as I was aware that I would frequently say them inaccurately and I found the new lisp embarassing. As a side note, who decided that lisp should have a hard 's' in it? This seems about the equivalent of making the word "mute" in sign language require a verbal component to it.

The rest of the hour dragged on. Mrs. Buss had sheets of sentances littered with difficult words to say. It was not tiring of itself, but the humiliation of knowing that this sort of thing should be a cakewalk wore on me. For the first time I began to understand what a complete asshole I was for belittling how difficult my brother's physical therapy tasks were.

"Eighths," Mrs. Buss said.

"Eigffs."

***

Gilby's standing in the kitchen making himself a meal and so am I. Truth be told, its the only time we see each other normally. We don't have a lot in common to discuss otherwise.

"I've got no problem," he said, "With autistic people just so long as they work and overcome it."

"So, basically, you have no problem with autistic people who aren't autistic?"

"No, they can still have problems, but they have to be trying, and they have to improve. If that happens, well they're just doing their best..."

"And how will you know how far these people have come?"

Bruised

"Pikachu," my boss looks concerned, "did you get in another bar fight?"

"Another? When did I get in a first bar fight?"

Crash brushes past the comment, still pointing to my face, "You have a black eye, and its not the same one you had last week."

***

"Badge?" the guard says, "ID?"

I show him both and he nods, "Have a nice day ma'am."

I lean to one side to put the wallet back in my pants pocket and get some leverage on my bicycle to kick off.

"Uh, ma'am?"

I look back at the guard who seems to be struggling to find a polite way to ask this, "Is your...eye alright?"

"Mosh pit."

***

"Holy shit," Playlist says, "what the hell happened to your arms?"

I look down at my forearms blearily the morning after karate practice. They are black and blue on more than half the surface area.

"Conditioning drills,"

"You look like a battered wife."

Its a standard karate drill. Everybody who I know who has taken any martial art seriously has gone through this drill. Shihan always says that if you do not get bruises from it you were not working hard enough. For at least 500 years this drill has been a part of the training of every practitioner, and yet suddenly now these same marks on my arms are a source of concern.

***

Pacem sits on the couch across from me. The chain on his bike caught and threw him, using the right side of his body as a brake. His ankle is wrapped, as is his wrist on the same side. Just below his knee is a long strip of skin worn red from the friction burn and the asphalt. His toes on the other foot are wrapped from a separate incident. He must have had to explain it six or seven times in about 45 minutes over dinner.

***

When did we, as a society, begin living in an environment where our body's natural healing abilities became sources of distress? A few small scrapes can be considered a natural part of an active life. I might take this to excess, but I'm still somewhat floored at the way some people treat every little scratch like an emergency.

***

"I fell today," the IM flips onto my screen from 3Stack.

"Oh?"

"Yeah, the EMS came and everything."

"What?"

"And the firetruck came too."

"The what?"

The injury was a friction burn in gravel, small enough to be covered by a single band-aid within a few days. I had broken two bones and a black eye the same weekend.

***

"She's pissed because you bruised her," he said.

I was baffled, "how did I?"

"You gripped her shoulder too hard for the throw."

"Its judo sparring...don't these things happen?"

My friend sighed, "She found it upsetting, she--"

"Should grow up," I snapped.

"You need to take good care of your sparring partner. Your partner is your best teacher."

***

"Hey Magpie, you scream like a girl!"

There wasn't a response.

"Hey Magpie!" I shouted, getting out of bed to walk to the doorway of my room, "Did you hear me? You sound like the three stooges!"

There's a spot of something red and slick on the floor. More lead me to the kitchen where I find Magpie standing with his head leaned against a cabinet. One finger is held high in the air. with the opposing hand wrapped around it. The blood runs through his fingers and down his forearms.

"I can see the bone," he says.

"Uhh..."

"I want to go to the hospital NOW."

Four hours later Magpie is sitting back in the living room with five fresh stitches.

"Two weeks," he says.

"Until what?"

"Until I take them out."

I'm a little baffled, "Until you have them taken out."

"No, I'm going to do it myself. I would have put them in myself but the cut was at an angle."

"You're...kidding right?"

"No I'm serious... I've done it before."

Trust Magpie to find a cultural shift and run the other way.

***

I'm amazed how protective parents are of their kids now. I remember elbow and knee pads being available for roller-blading but I remember all the kids taking them off as soon as they rounded a corner. Helmets on bikes were a struggle.

I saw a kid today clutching the handlebars of her bicycle, teetering from side to side on her training wheels. Her little pink helmet matched the elbow and knee pads she wore.

"Slow down!" she called to her brother, "I'm scared to go that fast!"

***

My childhood dog sits wagging her tail at the foot of the cherry table. Her ears point up and swivel forward as the stranger talks.

"Yellow lab?" insurance man asks.

"Ah, mostly German Shepard part yellow lab."

"She looks like a yellow lab to me."

The dog's ears swivel again on top of her head. Yellow labs have ears which flop at the sides of their heads. As a matter of fact, aside from her coat, she doesn't look like a lab at all.

"Owning a German Shepard might impact your insurance. Its lucky she's almost entirely a lab."

When did a dog safe enough for police work become a liability?

***

"So you want to learn?"

"Yeah."

He looks at me skeptically, "technically we don't do submission wrestling here if anybody asks. The administration considers it dangerous."

"A 500 year old sport is suddenly too dangerous?"

***

There is a commercial on my television paid for by the county. Its on the dangers of mosquito bites and why wearing bug repellent is important.

Honestly, I do not think there is anybody out there who wants mosquito bites. I'd also be hard pressed to believe that people don't know that bug repellent repels bugs. This commercial, however, pales in comparison to the media hype that turned swine flu, a disease less deadly than the normal flu, into what was suppose to be a worldwide pandemic doomsday scenario. The entire setup reeks of a whole society that is too hyped up over very small physical dangers.

***

My mind snaps back to the corridor. Crash is pointing to my eye still. He's told me stories about bar fights he was in, about being a national champion. I've watched him fight. Why is a little bruise such a big deal?

"What did you do?"

"It was just a mosh pit man..."

Cooking with Omegle

So this is my latest project. I go on omegle and ask people to teach me to cook things.

Omegle, for those of you who are not familiar with it, is a javascript website chat client which randomly pairs you with another user completely anonymously.

This has been a ton of fun as I get people from all around the world, and also because most people on omegle aren't particularly ambitious cooks. This means I have a list of interesting dishes now which, for the most part, aren't very hard to make.

Here are a selection of some of the most interesting recipes I have gathered. I have tried, whenever possible, to list the original source of the recipe if it was not directly from an omegler's memory. Thank you so much to everybody who helped with this.

Northeastern China
Name Unknown

Boil sweet potato or bean noodles in water. Slice dried hot peppers into pieces and sauté them in the oil. The oil of preference is called “red oil” and apparently provides some of the flavor in this dish. Add water, salt and peanut butter. Mix this together. Add more peanut butter and red oil. Add white vinegar, sugar, and small slices of garlic. Mix this and enjoy.


Göteborg: Sweden
Smulpaj med Äpplen (Äpplepaj)

Combine 150 grams of butter, 3 desi liters of flour, 1 desi liter of sugar, and 3-4 apples finely chopped. Sprinkle cinnamon and sugar on the top. Bake for 20 minutes at 200C.


Florida: USA
Carne Guisado Columbian Stewed Beef

1 lb flank steak
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
4 garlic cloves
2 teaspoons ground cumin
6 roma tomatoes
2 medium onions
2 beef bouillon cubes (prefer Maggie or Knorr brand)
2 cups water
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper

Directions
Heat the oil in a skillet and sauté flank steak until browned.
Remove from the skillet and sauté chopped tomatoes, thinly sliced onions, minced garlic and cumin until veggies are tender.
Add the flank steak, water, bouillon, salt and pepper.
Allow to simmer on low until tender and meat pulls apart with a fork.
Pull the steak apart into bite sized pieces.
Allow the sauce to cook down to desired thickness for serving on rice, or add more water depending on how much it has cooked down.

Credit for recipe to: http://www.recipezaar.com/Carne-Guisado-Colombian-Stewed-Beef-104545


Brazil
Caipirinha

Get "cachaça", or vodka, lemon (preferably "tahiti" which are green), sugar and ice. Juice the lemon and add the vodka and sugar. Serve over ice. You can sub out strawberries for lemon, but lemons are apparently the classic version.


Vermont: USA
Maple Balsamic Vinaigrette Salad

Make a regular green salad. For a more Vermont spin add beets and roasted walnuts. For the dressing combine 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar, 2 tablespoons of pure maple syrup (no fake substitutes!), 2 tablespoons grainy dijon mustard, 1 tsp apple cidar vinegar. This makes a fairly small batch. Whisk all of this together until it is mixed. Serve over the salad.


Shanxi Provence: China
Meatball meal

Meatballs:
2 lbs. ground beef
1 c. corn flakes crumbs
1/3 c. parsley flakes
2 eggs
2 tbsp. soy sauce
1/4 tsp. pepper
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1/3 c. catsup
2 tbsp. minced onions

Sauce:
1 can jellied cranberry sauce
1 (12 oz.) bottle chili sauce
2 tbsp. dark brown sugar
1 tbsp. lemon juice

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix meatball ingredients together. Make small meatballs and fry in oil. Blend sauce ingredients in a saucepan. Heat and stir until melted. Place meatballs in a baking dish. Pour sauce over meatballs and bake in oven for 30 minutes. Serve in sauce over rice.


Göteborg: Sweden
Fattig Riddare

The name apparently means “poor riddle,” and the recipe is favourite way for poor people to use up bread which is getting old. In a dish combine 1 egg, 1 desi liter of milk, and one desi liter of flour. Dip the bread into this mix and fry it. A very similar recipe was submitted by an American under the name “French Toast.” The batter in that one had no flour and also involved nutmeg and cinnamon.


Indian Recipe picked up by a guy from London while traveling
Rogan Josh

Around 600-700 grams of leg of lamb - chopped into bite-sized chunks. GarlicGinger

2 teaspoons salt.
1 teaspoon haldi (turmeric)
3 teaspoons garam masala
2 teaspoons ground coriander
2 teaspoons ground cumin
2 dessert spoons of plain natural yogurt
1 teaspoon of red chile powder
2 medium onions - finely chopped Three-quarters of a tin of peeled plum tomatoes

First pour a couple of tablespoons of vegetable oil into the pot and heat on high until very hot. Throw in the finely chopped onions and stir fry until the pieces start to go soft and translucent. Then throw in garlic and ginger to taste. Add all of the ground spices and continue to fry. The mixture should be rather dry. Leave this for a few minutes frying and then add the lab. Continue to stir fry for around 5 minutes on somewhat high heat until the meat is browned. Chop tinned tomatoes into bite sized pieces if they don't come that way and add them. Stir more and let it cook for a few minutes before adding yogurt. Stir, then turn up the heat. When it boils immediately turn the heat as low as possible and put a lid on it. Half an hour later stir it. Half an hour after that take it off and stir it again. Continue this for an hour and a half. Add salt and chili powder to taste. The curry will now be thicker and redder/browner. Make sure the pieces of lamb are tender and not chewy. Then sprinkle on a generous handful of freshly chopped coriander leaf and stir it in. Let it rest with the lid on for 5 minutes and then serve with naan or rice. Also good with a salad of cucumber, tomato, onions, and carrots with a little lemon or vinegar.

Credit for this recipe to http://www.route79.com/food/rogan-josh.htm


Glasgow: Scotland
Angel Delight

1 part butter, 1 part eggs, three parts flour, one part milk, one part sugar and two parts chocolate powder. Mix these together and put them in the microwave for two minutes.


Canada
Cheesecake

Take graham cracker crumbs and mix them with melted butter. Coat the bottom of a pie dish with these as a crust. In a bowl combine 2 eggs, about 500 mLs of cream cheese, and 6 blocks of baker's white chocolate, two shots of rum and two tablespoons of vanilla. If it is too runny add flour. Mix it until it is an even consistency. Put this in the pie dish and bake at 350C for approximately half an hour until a toothpick comes out clean. We had a long discussion but the omegler is positive that this is 350 C and not 350 F. If your oven doesn't go to 633 F you can cook it on lower for longer.


South Korea
Sweet Potatoes

Wash three sweet potatoes. Cut them into square pieces and soak them in water for a while. Dry the water off the sweet potatoes. Put pieces in a bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Put the bowl in a microwave oven to heat. Fry the pieces in oil. Put an half a cup of water and half a cup of sugar into a pan. Boil the mixture until it turns brown. Put some almonds in. Top the sweet potatoes with sauce. Decorate it with some black sesame seeds.


Quebec: Canada
Veal Chops

Stranger: for veal chops
Stranger: i buy it smash the shit outta it, to tenderise it
Stranger: put it in some flower and fry it
Stranger: its good w/ mash potatos
Stranger: ooo do u fry often?
You: sometimes
Stranger: ok when you wat oil do u use?
You: olive oil?
Stranger: :O
Stranger: dont!
Stranger: use grape see oil

(Seriously? What was wrong with this kid?)


Russia
Borsch

Boil potatoes, onions, celery, carrots, and more vegetables as desired. Boil them until a clear broth is produced. Add sliced beetroot. Serve in a shallow bowl / deep plate. Approximate numbers for an 80 quart pot of boiling water: 3 potatoes, 4 carrots, and 3-5 of each other vegetable.


English kid currently in Holland
Chocolate Pancakes

4 eggs, 1 normal sized cup of milk, 1 normal sized cup of flour, half a cup of yogurt, 2 tablespoons of melted chocolate or chocolate syrup. You can also use heavily chocolate-powdered milk, but if you do the milk will need to be nearly a paste. 2 teaspoons of sugar, 2 teaspoons of baking soda. Mix this all and cook it in a frying pan. If you want little blocks of chocolate instead of chocolate flavor add the chocolate in as the pancake is cooking.


Bangkok: Thailand
Heaven Meat

Stranger: do you know heaven meat ?
You: what?
Stranger: that's my fav food
Stranger: in bkk
You: ok
You: how do you make it?
Stranger: just fried it in the pan
Stranger: with garlic and vegetable oil
You: what kind of meat?
Stranger: dog

(as it turns out this man is a fantastic troll. Dog meat is not legal in Thailand but the story was just too good to pass up, and I particularly enjoyed the graphic detail he later went through in describing me just how to butcher and prepare my pet dog for eating.)


England
Bourbon Biscuits

1/2 stick (2 oz) 50 g butter or margarine
1/4 cup (4 tbsp) 50 g caster sugar (superfine granulated)
1 tbsp golden syrup (substitute light corn syrup)
1 cup (110 g) plain flour (All purpose)
15 g cocoa
1/2 tsp Bicarbonate of soda (Baking soda)
flour for rolling out
fat for greasing 2/3 cup (75 g) icing sugar (confectioners sugar)
1/2 stick (2 oz) 50 g butter or margarine
1 tbsp cocoa

1 tsp coffee essence or 1/2 tsp spoon instant coffee dissolved in 1 tsp water 1. Heat the oven to warm, 160°C, Gas 3.
2. Cream the fat and sugar together very thoroughly; beat in the syrup.
3. Sift the flour, cocoa, and bicarbonate of soda together, and work into the creamed mixture to make a stiff paste.
4. Knead well, and roll out on a lightly floured surface into an oblong strip about 5 mm thick.
5. Cut into two 6 cm fingers.
6. Place on a greased baking sheet covered with greased greaseproof paper.
7. Bake for 15-20 minutes.


Washington DC: USA
Stuffed Mushrooms

Take regular white or brown capped mushrooms. Wash them in the sink and break off the stems. Then prepare the stuffing. Stuffing consists of a sausage (uncooked is acceptable), a finely diced green pepper, an onion (preferably yellow or red), and shredded cheddar. Mix with Italian seasoning salt , pepper and crumbled bacon. Stuff the caps of the mushrooms with the stuffing. Bake the caps at 350 degrees until the sausage is cooked. A broiler pan is recommended as there is a significant amount of grease in this recipe but a normal baking pan works as well.


Chinese student living in Sweden who got this recipe from a French friend
Chocolate Cake 6 people

Ingredients:
- 250g of black chocolate
- 6 eggs
- 120g butter
- 6 spoon of flour
- 75g sugar
- 3 big spoon of water

- to melt chocolate with water slowly
- to add melted butter, sugar and flour, mix them together
- to add just yellow of eggs
- to bear until white of the eggs become bubbly, and add carefully them to the preparation.
- to put some fat (melted butter) in the bottom of the container and pour the preparation inside.
- 25min on the oven 200℃
-the cake is ready when you put a knife in the middle of the cake, you have some chocolate on it but it's not liquid.


Shanxi Province: China
“The Tomato Fries the Egg”

Ingredients 3 Eggs 150 grams of tomato 4 soup spoons of vegetable oil salt MSG 1 soup spoon of sugar
Directions:
1) Clean the tomato with boiling water. Slice it.
2) Crack the eggs into a bowl and add salt. Whip with chopsticks.
3) Put 3 soup spoons of oil into a wok and heat.
4) Add tomato and watch the surplus oil disappear. Saute the slices.
5) Add the sugar and salt to the tomato slices.
6) Turn up the heat and pour the egg over the top of the tomato slices and cook this mixture.


Ireland
Smoked Haddock Fish Soup

2 onions
2 carrots
1 large potato
2 tablespoons butter
1 smoked haddock, 1 ½ to 2 pounds
1 bunch parsley
1 bay leaf
2 cloves garlic
6 cups of water or fish stock
1 sprig thyme
Cream
½ nutmeg, grated

Melt the chopped onion, carrots and peeled potato in butter. Add fish and other ingredients except the cream and the nutmeg. Simmer until the vegetables and fish are cooked. Remove the bones from the fish and return the flesh to the soup. Discard the parsley and thyme and bay leaf. Sieve the soup and reheat. Serve topped with the cream and grated nutmeg.


Brazil
Brigadeiro

Combine one tin of condensed milk, three or four tablespoons of chocolate powder and one tablespoon of butter. The mixture is then heated in a pan on the stove or in a microwave to obtain a smooth, sticky texture. If it is made on the stove, it's ready when the mixture doesn't stick to the bottom when the pan is tilted.


Poland
Neapolitanka

Cook macaroni in half a liter of boiling water. Without draining the pasta add salt, pepper, and a between 300 and 400 grams of heavily processed cheese. This Omegler recommends Hochland cheese but says any heavily processed cheese will do, and also notes you can use different pastas too. Fun fact: “to taste” as in “to prepare something according to your tastes” in Polish is “na oko.”

***

There were also many variants of “my dick your mouth, makes one good time” recipe, regurgitations of how to prepare kraft mac and cheese, and detailed instructions on how to call a for Chinese food / pizza delivery. There were also numerous kids who instructed me on boiling pasta. I got lucky with one of the “boil pasta” kids and a full recipe out of it.


USA
Pasta

Combine carrots, broccoli, mushrooms and a bit of lemon. One meal will use approximately half a lemon. Put a little soy sauce on the broccoli and broil the combination, but be careful to broil the broccoli very lightly. For the sauce buy any cheap tomato sauce from the store and add two teaspoons of salt and two of sugar. Add slices of tomato. Prepare the pasta by boiling water in a pot and then adding the pasta. 15 minutes before you eat grate two cloves of garlic per serving. If you are in a hurry you can slice or grind them, add lemon juice, and let them stand for only five minutes. Add garlic to pasta directly before eating. Serve pasta mixed with vegetable combination and the sauce, topped with basil and your choice of cheese.

***

You: can you help me with a project?
Stranger: if you say suck my cock i will beat u with something metal

Many recipes were set ups to jokes of varying hilarity. Apparently a traditional dish in Jamaica is a a scoop of peanut butter covered in oats and rolled into a ball of “go fuck yourself” followed by the user disconnecting. Other recipes could believably be recipes if taken from a heavily chemically induced mind. One very drunk man from the UK attempted to explain how McDonald's apple slices in ketchup tasted exactly like a strawberry milkshake. An individual from Pennsylvania recommends “Ultimate Oreos” which are oreos with chocolate syrup, Hershey's caramel, e-z-cheese, coffee mate, cayenne, ground pepper, omega 3 fish oil and applesauce.

Its worth noting that some portions of Asia have an aversion to the word “recipe.” When I asked for recipes I got called a pervert and a lot of sudden disconnects. I'm not sure what the language barrier issue is, and if anybody can explain this I'd be really happy to know what the hold-up is.

And, on a final note: google translator is fucking hilarious. Here is one of the more intelligible results of a time we had to resort to google translator for communication:

Shanghai: China
Bacon

1, will be a fresh cut to the 56 already long, and then placed on a large water jar (washed unavailable), sprinkled with salt,淋入some liquor, and then sprinkle some star anise, pepper, hot pepper, such as spices;
2, lid and then covered with large stones to salt above pressed. (Be careful Oh rats!) In order for meat evenly, every 12 days is necessary to turn the meat again. A week later, salt, flavor, aroma have penetrated into the meat, the meat and then check out this BBQ.
3, the farm households in Hunan intermediate central room, every winter there is a big fire is not extinguished. Fire ever mounted in a tree a big tree stump in the Root or combustion, fire above it, there was a large iron hook to take-off and landing, hanging pot or kettle tripod for cooking and water heating. Meat to be hung to dry in the beam high above the fire, the smoke rise in the use of fire to naturally be smoked meat. Smoke as a result of this process a long time, slow and full, in addition to burning a lot of tree stumps Root or have a special flavor, it smoked out of this is the real meat taste good!

So there you have it. Next time you have a tree stump you feel like burning in your living room for a whole winter and an iron hook for take-off and landing, you can apparently take the opportunity to make traditional Chinese bacon.

PS: a part of me really hopes somebody slipped a "stupid foreigner" title into one of those foreign language titles. If you tricked me sir, my hat is off to you!

Little Plant

"3 Dozen Roses for $20"

I had walked past this sign more times than I could count during my undergraduate time but never gone in the place. The metal bars across the door were hand-painted white in an attempt to make the anti-burglary device a bit more friendly-looking.

The inside of the shop was sparsely decorated. Fairly industrial buckets lined one wall, with a few dilapidated roses poking from the tops. Small shelves were mounted to the walls with a variety of vases, assumedly to sell with the roses. One florist's refrigerator sat adjacent to the buckets and another lined the back wall. In front of that a man in his late sixties sat at a fold-out table watching me in the doorway. He had the kindest eyes. I have never met either of my grandfathers, but I would imagine a grandfather would have eyes like that.

"You want roses?" he asked in a thick accent.

"Oh, no... I was looking for a little plant...to put on my windowsill."

"Ah yes, your boyfriend bring you your roses, no?" he laughed, "I have no plant, but my friend bring new roses in 15 minute. Maybe he have a little plant for you, yes?"

I shrugged, it wasn't like I was going anywhere anyway. A row of chairs sat across from the buckets of roses, and I took one.

Interestingly enough, the shop owner led most of this conversation. He asked me who I was, where I studied, what I studied, what I specialized in...

"Robots?" he asked, "You make robots?"

"Yeah."

"Interesting..."

Happy to find an opportunity to rant about something that nobody normally cares about I droned on after that point for a good five minutes. I'm not sure if Peter even knew enough English to understand most of what I was saying but he smiled kindly.

"So you found something you love?"

"Yeah."

"That's rare now. Too many people chase cars or money or attention but never really enjoy anything. Nobody find what they love."

Pete's friend didn't come in the next 15 minutes, or in the next hour actually. The conversation was interesting enough that sitting there was worthwhile.

Peter had moved here with his family from Albania. He had a daughter, which is probably part of the reason he was so protective of me, and another relative who I assumed was his nephew, who hit on me. My French is not what it use to be but at one point I realized he was scolding his nephew. I caught the words "like a daughter," and then Peter ran up and hugged me. It was rather surreal. I'll never understand why so many adults decide to "adopt" me.

The restocker finally arrived and Peter rapidly became absorbed in figuring out some sort of deal with him. The nephew sidled up to me and began talking at me. I made the mistake of listening politely. Most people don't really want to have a conversation with you, they want to enjoy listening to themselves talk, and this man was no exception. The problem being that once he decided my presense made him happy he became more active in pursuing me. He tried the subtle requests, I tried the subtle "no's" until he finally asked, "So, can we maybe do dinner Saturday?"

A polite girl is suppose to wait for maybe a second before rejecting a guy so she can pretend she was almost considering it. A point-blank "no" often hurts feelings. The nephew mistook my pause for interest and continued to advocate, "...and breakfeast too!"

***

Peter's restocker did not have a plant to sell him and I didn't agree to date the nephew. I did, however, periodically come back to see Peter mostly to chat but under the premise of looking for a little plant for my windowsill. I think by this time we both know Peter will not have a little plant, but we both really enjoy our conversations. Each time Peter let me select two roses and bring them home with me.

"I have to leave, I won't be back for a while," I said the most recent time. It was move out day. I was wearing the one pair of clothes I didn't mind packing away for a few months. The rest were in the washer. I must have looked like hell, but I really wanted to come say goodbye to Peter.

"Go away?" he asked.

"Yeah, I have to go across the country for a few months."

"And then?"

"Uh...and then I don't know."

He ran up and gave me a big hug, "Take care. What roses you want today?"

I smile.

"You have gained weight?" he asked.

"Ah," I laugh, feeling a little self conscious, "yeah, I was a vegetarian...but the food wasn't filling so I was always hungry and I ate junk food."

"When you come in December you so beautiful, so sexy. Go run and play outside again."

I can't explain why that isn't as creepy as it sounds. I partially chalk it up to Peter's gross bluntness and his limited English. Mostly I chalk it up to that this is how relatives that care talk: they say what they think you need to hear, not what they think you want to hear...for better or for worse.

"Ah, yeah, I plan to...don't worry."

"Good," he said, "you must be healthy!"

There's a quick pause.

"You have to come back," he says.

I nod and he hugs me again and then smiles, handing me a pair of beautiful yellow roses with red tips, "When you come back, I have for you, little plant."

Red Stuff, Parachutes and Sneakers

"Pika Pika!" one of the girls screamed as she banked a corner of the cafeteria at a full tilt, "Kelsey fell down and there is red stuff everywhere and everybody's flipping out!"

Following her back I rounded the corner of the cafeteria to the tray return and was met with the sight of almost everything being covered in red. When I found out it was just rather thick kool-aid I nearly killed that messenger.

My first real job at the fine age of 17 when, due to a series of incredibly bizarre events, I was "2nd in command" so to speak for a middle-school girl scout sleep-away science and engineering camp. If this was the government we'd wind up with the sort of acronym middle managers find a sexual attraction to out of that mess. Something like MS GS SASEC? If it doesn't make a word yet we can always add some vowels like "Advancement" and "Achievement" and "Excellence" until fluent English speakers have a chance at actually saying it.

Anyway, long story short, I was still young enough (and looked young enough) to be mistaken for a middle school girl in the eyes of adults and yet I was responsible for taking care of them. It was rather exciting.

I can respect why taking students camping on a campsite is such a popular activity. Probably the two most dangerous things that could happen would be students wandering away from the campsite unauthorized and playing in the campfire. If you leave one counselor near the cooking fire and take frequent headcounts both these risks can be mitigated. All that's left after that is slaying spiders and convincing spoiled brats that they do in fact want to eat the food you are providing them because there won't be more coming.

This event was held at a local university. It is amazing how much trouble students can get into on a university campus. Even simple things like handing students between the ages of 11 and 13 access to an infinite supply of Mountain Dew (read: the school cafeteria's soda fountain) can have very exciting results.

The program overlapped with summer courses there and the world peace conference, who was so mad at us they were filing complaints and coming up and shouting from time to time. I guess that says something about my charges when we managed to piss off a world peace conference. Personally, I never knew repeatedly doing the Cha-cha slide was such a grievous offense, although I do understand the contempt earned when we set off the elevator alarm the fourth time in a single week.

Often enough I was left taking care of the girls entirely myself for brief periods of time.

We had just been forced to remove some girls from the program prematurely due to a disciplinary issue and to say morale was low was a bit of an understatement. The head of the program took half the girls swimming and I was left with the task of cheering up the rest.

"So," I bounced into the room holding the official activity manual, "Who wants to do some science experiments?"

The girls turned and faced me with only the most basic gesture of interest they felt they owed to an authority figure. Quickly I flipped open an activity and pitched the description. They remained completely expressionless. I tried a second one. Their eyes reminded me of laser sights on a sniper rifle, all trained on me.

"How about," I grappled with a moment for an idea, "We make some parachutes and throw things out a window in them?"

The middle schoolers tried briefly for a moment in vain to sound like they considered this idea boring too before curiosity broke them down.

"Really?" one asked.

"Can we ride it?"

"No people," I answered, "we'll only put things are ok to lose on them."

"I've got a second pair of sneakers that are ratty and only for playing in the mud, can I send those?"

"Yeah that will be great."

Two carefully sliced and taped trash bags and a ball of twine later I'm leaning out of the 9th story window with our latest creation. Far below I can see some of the girls milling around excitedly and looking along my level I can see more heads poking out windows.

"Ready?" I ask the chorus.

"Ready!"

I released the contraption and it fell a few feet before the parachute properly plumed out. I could hear the kids cheering below. For the split second before the parachute abruptly changed course I felt like everything was looking up. After that there was a lot more eye-rolling on my part.

"Alright," I said to the girl who was looking rather forlornly at her sneakers dangling someplace near the 5th story window, "go get your other sneakers."

"What other sneakers?"

"The ones that made those ones ratty spares."

"Oh," she looked a little sheepish and nervous at this point, "I don't actually have a second pair of sneakers. I just really wanted to you to choose to send my stuff down in the parachute."

I handed her a pair of my flipflops and headed to the elevator with the other students.

The 5th floor is a somewhat bad place to get something stuck. None of us were strong enough to throw something high enough to knock it loose, and the only windows we had access to throw things down from was the 9th floor. I unlocked the sports equipment and sent two of the more mature girls up with a bag of soccer balls and basketballs. The rest of us had the duty of making sure nobody was nearby when she threw.

One of the students, Alex, was leaning out the window and scouting the area when a little old lady walkered her way past. Her badge read that she was from the conference below.

"Is that little girl going to jump?" she asked.

I assured her she wasn't and she went away, seeming content. The fact that campus police showed up about 5 minutes after she left makes me believe she in fact, wasn't. The officer didn't even really try to keep a straight face as I explained to him that we were removing a parachute of shoes from a tree, but he didn't seem annoyed by our activities. He was preparing in fact to pack up and leave when Alex poked her face out of the 9th floor window clutching a basketball in two hands. She wound up her throw the whole way so both hands were above her head before noticing the officer, at which point her jaw dropped and quickly withdrew into the room, still clutching the basketball.

"That little girl," the officer grinned, finding an opportunity to give me shit, "she wasn't about to throw that was she?"

"Of course not officer."

"You'd better make sure she knows that."

"Alex," I shouted, "don't throw anything out the window."

"I'm not sure she can hear you," the officer said, "why don't you make her come to the window?"

Alex didn't want to go to the window. Alex mostly wanted to hide up there and pretend that if she acted like the cop didn't exist that he wasn't there. After some significant time she finally peered out the window and the police man shouted at her for a bit, and then left.

At the end of the week it was time to return the students to their parents. I watched the shoeless girl, still in my flipflops, run up to her parents. Following her slowly I greeted them and then chose my words carefully.

How much would a new pair of sneakers for her cost me? Poor kids don't normally go to summer camp, was it a nice 70 dollar pair I had lost? The parents were notably well-dressed and seemed the sort of people who really cared about brand names. I upped my estimate to 130.

"I'm very sorry," I said, "but your daughter's shoes seem to have been misplaced during the course of camp."

The mom looked slightly confused, "Misplaced?"

"Well, actually I do know where they are, they're in a tree near the fifth floor of the dorms. We couldn't get them down." The mother's eyebrows crashed together for a moment and she looked at me skeptically. "I'd be pleased," I added, "to pay for a replacement pair of shoes since they were lost under my supervision."

"These were...white shoes? Red stripe on the side? Pink shoelaces?"

I nodded.

The woman suddenly lept forward and hugged me, "That's WONDERFUL sweetie."

"Uh...what?"

"We bought her new shoes simply ages ago and she just insists on wearing those old ratty ones because she likes them. We've tried everything, and its just an embarssment to have her running around like that you know? Makes it look like we don't provide for her. I can't believe this...this is wonderful...what an excellent job."

"Really...uh...it was nothing..."

"Oh no, no I need to talk to your boss. You did a great job this week."