One Clown Right After the Other

Great. George W. Bush left office taking creepy Dick Cheney with him, and now we've got another clown in the executive branch: Joe Biden.  Who can forget the classic idiotic quotes from Ol' Joe like, "You can't got into the 7-11 without an Indian accent. I'm not joking," or upon introducing his wife, he made some off the cuff remark about her having an advanced degree...and that he didn't want the audience to discredit her because of that.  And what about requesting Missouri state senator Chuck Graham to "Stand up, Chuck, let 'em see ya!" when senator Graham is wheel-chair bound?

Former President Bush had plenty of these moments, but at least when he screwed up, he knew that he screwed up. And you knew that he knew.  Mostly because his eyebrows arched a little bit higher, his eyes darted back and forth, and you could imagine him thinking "One third of America just saw that on live television. Crap."  Joe Biden's face remains stoney which is either a pretty good deadpan, or he's being absolutely serious when he's being absolutely idiotic.  Based on the way Obama discretely grabbed Biden's elbow, I'd have to say it was the latter: "Now, now, Joe. We've talked about this. Too many words, too much excitement."

"Sorry, Barack. Say, I still don't understand why you chose the more qualified Hillary Clinton over me."

"We all have our reasons."

At the start of the new year, Pat Robertson predicts with deadly inaccuracy what's going to happen in the year.  I praise the Lord everyday that I'm no Pat Robertson, but here's my prediction with Joe Biden and Obama:

Biden takes a trip to China to reestablish goodwill and open economic talks between the USA and China.  Upon seeing a senior party member over 5'6" he loudly exclaims, "Wow! You must be considered tall around here!"  Obama sees it on the morning news and races outside for a cigarette.

Biden prepares a speech for UN delegates meeting to draw up peace treaties for the Middle East.  Obama makes the secret service take an alternate route so that Biden arrives late and can only give 15 minutes of his hour long speech.

Biden goes to France and meets with President Sarkozy.  He leaves his microphone on and goes to the bathroom.  He spies a bidet and says, "What in the heck is that? Wait, I'll call Barack and see if he knows.  Hello, Barack? Joe here. No, I'm not having any trouble with the names again, I'm wondering what this thing is here in the bathroom. Probably a bidet? Ok. Yeah, see you later. PEACE OUT!"  CNN captures the whole thing, along with President Sarkozy stifling a laugh.

Right now I'm hoping that Obama will quit smoking and stay healthy enough for the next 4 years to continually remain stony faced throughout Biden's screwups.

Deep Thoughts

Often times I'll ponder the deep mysteries of the universe: How did we get here? Where are we going? Why can my beagle not stand the cold on a walk in the 28 degree snowy morning, and yet run for over an hour chasing a tennis ball with aplomb in the same weather?

Laptop Troubles

My laptop troubles started when I first received my laptop from UNC.  I first noticed that it was running slowly within 2 weeks of having it so I ran the craptastic anti-virus software that came with it.  

"Hmm, looks like you have some viruses," the IT guy said.  

"What?! How is that possible? All I did was download a bunch of music and TV shows from some Phillipean host!"

So I got that fixed. Then my hard drive crashed after 3 months of use. Then my screen burned out my sophomore year. And the problems piled up. I've been through 2 hard drives, 2 laptop screens, 1 fan, and 1 OS re-install because I deleted a good portion of junk that UNC puts on its hard drives (which they reinstalled when they put Windows back on the laptop) which caused some vague system error.  And now my fan's died and the stupid thing refuses to turn on.

I'd love to get it replaced, but the last time I tried to get it fixed in my hometown, the repair store took two weeks to completely determine that they could not install a fan on my laptop. Something about not being certified parts dealers for IBM or some other odd reason, though they're qualified to repair IBM's.

What in the HELL gives?

I have a dream that someday in the future computers will be disposable (and indispensable), so that when yours royally f's up your term paper or project, you can just pull out the tiny hard drive containing your data, get a hammer, and smash the stupid computer to bits, plop down $10 and get another computer that functions properly, and resume working.

But for right now I'll settle for the hammer.

New Teapot

I got a new teapot from Puerhshop. It's the real deal, so to speak.  Its pour is great, its lid fit is great, and I'll be able to tell in a couple of months if the clay is great.  All it holds is 120 ml, but that's plenty for me.

The teapot has a neat design which I chose because I figured it was better to have the tea leaves expand outwards rather than upwards.  It's squat and circular, and the lid fits flush with the top of the pot perfectly.

Xiaguan 2007 Xiao Fa tuocha 100g

This tuocha shu pu'er is quite attractive in appearance with a melange of tan, brown, red, and black tea leaves, and with a nice aroma.   However, the resultant tea is simple, with a nuttiness and sweetness standing out from a smooth background flavor.  The nuttiniess doesn't last very long and appears at the beginning of the sip, with the sweet taste appearing at the back of the tongue and a few seconds after swallowing the tea.  Different steeping times didn't cause any bitterness, which was a boon to me.  

For $4 this isn't really all that bad, but I don't think I'll buy anymore for the time being.  The taste is really just average, but comforting.  There's so much tea out there, that I'm still trying to figure out the tea that resides within my tastes. 

CCCI Yixing

I always planned to acquire another yixing teapot, but I figured it would be wiser to figure out what's wrong with the CCCI bug and gourd yixing I have now, and get a teapot that doesn't have those flaws.  Besides, teapots don't grow on trees nor does money.

But I've had the CCCI yixing teapot for a while and I can name all of its attributes, both negative and positive:

The negatives: It's a little larger than I'd like (180 ml) which means I have to limit my cups of tea per day to 5 (about 2 full sized cups or 500 milliliters), and miss out on tastes of the pu'er as it opens up to each infusion.  Which is kind of a bummer, since I've tried continuing infusions from previous days, but the resulting tea is always a little thinner and harder to coax flavors out than if I'd continued my tea session.  It also takes longer for the cups of tea to cool down between infusions, so having 5 cups of tea takes more than half an hour.  On the weekends and late afternoons, being able to enjoy tea for a half hour is great, but in the morning during the week it's impractical.  

Also, because of the time between infusions, the teapot cools a little which weakens the taste of some sheng pu'er-but not all.  The Kunming Guyi 2006 Jingmai Spring seems to be the most susceptible, with the Xiaguan 2007 Bao Yan being the least.

The biggest flaws are the spout and the lid-but from what I've heard, this isn't uncommon.  The spout is quite narrow and it has an internal filter.  This makes the pour a little slow at 10 seconds, but it's something that can be accounted for.  It's just that I wish the person designing the teapot went with either a narrow spout sans filter, or a wide spout with a filter.  We live in a far from perfect world, and when any bit of broken sheng makes its way into the teapot, it lodges in the filter where it is met by its cousin, then brother, then sister, and soon the entire filter is clogged with tea "mulch."  I suppose I could relegate the yixing to solely whole leaf or long leaf sheng pu'er, but I'm trying to get the whole-leaf sheng bings that I have to age, and I'm sampling them intermittently.  The teapot would rarely get used if I went this route.  Removing the filter or having a wide spout would solve the problem of the stopped pour, since a wide spout would have more paths for the tea to go, and a narrow spout without a filter wouldn't offer as much resistance to broken tea leaves to pass through.

The other biggest flaw is the lid.  The lid fit isn't quite airtight, but it prevents most of the tea from flowing out of the top instead of the spout.  And that's fine.  It's my ability to hold the actual lid which is a major flaw.  The lid handle is a bug which measures all of 2 centimeters long and .5 centimeters high, making it impossible to grab when I need to remove it, and the handle is so close to the lid and boiling hot tea that it's really hot to hold. So if it isn't impossible to hold on to, it's too hot to handle.  Today was the last straw; I formed my fingers into pinchers and attempted to grab the lid handle, which shot out of my fingers and chipped for the second time on a hard surface.  One more chip, and the crack on the inside of the handle will definitely widen and cleave the whole thing in two.  

And I should probably mention that the teapot is first slipcast to give its shape and then worked by inexperienced artisans.  The result is that the teapot has a blueish tinge from the different colored duanni clay where someone attempted to get the drying clay off by rubbing it with a finger, and then scraping with tools around the vine handle.  There's also a large, noticeable seam on the outside of the teapot, and the inside of is rough looking.  It appears that someone ran their hands along the inside of the pot...for whatever reason, so that the inside is composed of little valleys and ridges made of someone's fingers.  And the handle developed a crack where it joins with the body of the teapot, but it's stabilized for the moment.

I don't mind the teapot being slipcast, though I'm starting to doubt this method would leave lots of air pockets in the clay, enhancing its insulating properties.  If I wanted a handmade yixing teapot from the studio of a master artisan, I would purchase several bonds, wait for them to mature in 10 years, commission one, and then yell unprintable curses when a mover accidentally drops a box containing it.  It's just that with the finish of my teapot being this rough, the overall integrity of the teapot comes into question.  Will the seam come apart over the years? Will the handle completely crack off? Will some other unknown flaw reveal itself in a stupendous manner?

Enough of the negatives.  So what are the positives? It holds tea, has good heat retaining quality, and is pleasing to look at.  But, I'm still taking those positives with a grain of salt since this is my first yixing teapot.  It "rounds" the tea off, removing any bitterness or off-flavors, but I'm debating whether this is caused by lack of seasoning or the properties of duanni compared to zisha or zhuni or what have ye.

I decided to relegate the bug and gourd yixing to solely shu pu'er, and it had its first session today.  I'm kind of irked that it didn't release any of the sheng pu'er flavors with the shu, but I have to realize that the quality of clay that's been slip-cast is less than ideal.  But, the need for a fast pour isn't as dire with shu pu'er, and I'm sure the teapot will serve well.

The new teapot that I ordered online is a plain, 120 ml volume yixing teapot that has a nice looking spout.  This wasn't exactly an order based on faith; I'd heard of another guy buying an yixing from the vendor and he said that the pour was great, the lid fit was tight, and the whole thing was solid.  Which is something I certainly look for in a teapot.

As of right now, though, I don't plan on buying anymore yixings. If I happen to drop a teapot, my cup will have to suffice for a while...

The Hardest Instrument to Play

On Monday I had my third violin lesson of my entire life, and I was asking my music teacher about his background of music.  He attended a music university or academy where its sole purpose was to prepare its students to teach music for an orchestra.  So, as I found out, he was required to learn how to play every instrument in the orchestra.  "What's the hardest instrument to play?" I asked.  I was expecting a reply of "piano," since it has always seemed the most ambidextrous and distant instrument to me.  Your fingers don't press strings, and you don't breathe into it to make sounds. You're supposed to make expressive sounds with a series of levers, hammers, and dampers that you don't have direct control over.

So I was a little surprised when he said, "The erhu is the hardest instrument to play." I blanked out until he explained that it was a distant cousin to the violin, except it had a resonator "box" instead of a body, it had a neck but no fretboard, and its bow was in between two strings that are tuned in 5ths.

I then thought back to grade school where a young college student who returned from China came into our world studies class with an erhu.  She'd tried picking it up, but for all we could tell, its sole purpose was to let guests know that they'd overstayed their welcome at dinner.

And so my teacher went into great detail about how to play the instrument, moving the bow back and forth between the two strings and the fast tempo which most pieces are played.  "What does it sound like," I pressed.  "The most melancholy instrument."

That wasn't much to go on, but when I went on youtube I recognized the sound before, but I'd actually misinterpreted it as some sort of Chinese flute.  And Mr. He along with all other top musicians with their respective instruments, show a difficult piece and instrument are made to look easy with the musicians' credo: Practice, practice, practice.