Hello, friends! Annie Dillard famously said that “how we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” I think how we spend our time on the Internet, for now at least, is also how we spend our lives. So I want to start doing this thing where I pick 5 things I googled on Wednesday (why Wednesday? I dunno) and write a few lines about why I Googled that thing and why it’s relevant to my life right now. I don’t know how often I’ll do this—I’m not trying to revive May’s Monthly Memo, lol—but routines and structure have always helped me get over writer’s block, so maybe this will be fun. Albert and Sam, if you’re reading this (which I know you are)—thanks for encouraging me to get this off the ground!
I’ve been translating a short story from Taiwan lately and one of the terms I had to figure out how to translate was 擲筊 (the URL in the picture above represents the Chinese Wikipedia page for 擲筊). 擲筊 (jiaobei), sometimes translated as “poe divination,” is pretty common in Taiwan. It’s basically a way for us mere mortals to communicate with the gods, and you do so by casting a pair of moon blocks. Depending on how they land, the god’s answer to your question—which can be utterly mundane or very serious—will either be yes, no, “haha,” or “ask me again.”
No one has ever tried to reach me as persistently as the guy who wants to sell me insurance/auto warranty. It reached the point where I started getting calls literally every single day, despite me blocking the number each time (also, like a fool, I always pick up). Finally, I decided to be more proactive about the whole situation and entered my number into the “National Do Not Call Registry.” I am pleased to report that nobody called me today.
Dinner last night was sweet and sour pork! I looked up a recipe but ended up just going with what I remember worked in the past—1/3 cup ketchup + 1/3 cup vinegar + 1/3 ish of pineapple juice from the can will give you a pretty tasty sauce. Thicken it at the end with corn starch, and *chef’s kiss.* Yesterday, Kevin and I had meat for both lunch AND dinner, which is a rarity—we’ve been trying to drastically reduce our meat intake ever since we watched Netflix’s Game Changers.
One of my favorite times of the day is 7 PM, when my phone screen lights up to tell me that the next day’s NYT crossword is available to play. Unfortunately, I’m still not awesome at the puzzle, so often have to turn to Google to solve a tricky clue. What crystal jellies do when disturbed (4)—the answer is GLOW, and honestly, I feel like I should’ve known that. A crystal jelly is basically a jellyfish.
Finally, at 9:54 PM, I checked to see whether Twitter was down and it turned out that our Wifi was just being wonky. It’s been raining hard lately and I think there’s a direct correlation between a downpour and the Wi-Fi being “down” (haha). I really shouldn’t be on the bird app at 10 PM, anyway! So I abandoned my laptop and read a book instead.
One of my writing goals for 2021 is to keep every blog post under 700 words. Looks like I did it for this one! Until the next “What Did I Google Wednesday”…
may huang 黃鴻霙 
