red bean soup

Wow in this cold weather in Chicago I'd love to have some hot steaming sweet red bean soup. Here's a useful recipe that I experimented myself.

Slow cooker: 1 cup red bean with 2-3 cups of water.
Measure about 600-700 ml water, boil with brown sugar and ginger, then add the cooked red bean. Bring to boil again.

From New York Times...a good article for thinking about time

January 1, 2010

Editorial

New Year

We’ve been getting and sending a lot of holiday greetings, but one we have yet to hear is: “Have a Very New Year!” Perhaps it sounds too ambiguous for a real felicitation; safer to wish upon each other happiness rather than newness. But what if the newness of the new year was more than a calendrical trope? What if we rolled into January as if we were rolling into undiscovered country — ties cut, wagons loaded, oxen hitched?

For all of the toasts and vows, it is easy to dismiss the new year as an artificial made-for-Champagne-purveyors boundary. If we move past it — and our limited resolutions — quickly it is because life has a profound continuity that has little reference to the calendar’s pages. For most of us, time falls into different, and largely private, patterns. It’s more natural to measure time by how long you’ve lived in the same apartment or worked at a job, how long a relationship has endured and how old the children have grown, how large the trees you planted years ago have gotten.

That’s one thing the new year always offers: a look back across the plains into the past before we move onward into the future. It is a holiday that insists upon our temporality and reminds us that time is, in fact, the strangest thing. No one ever sat you down, when you were young, and explained the workings of time the way the safe way to cross a street was explained. You just grew into it, into the way we trail the past behind us while the future comes rushing forward.

It also offers possibility. We’re all surging forward — some with more impetus than others. And now we have 2010 before us, a year that seemed unimaginable until we were right at its border.

Travel tips from the New York Times

To travel cheaply while having fun is a good skill to have. This NY Times article details many websites that I think will be of interest to many people.

http://frugaltraveler.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/06/research-the-travelers-best-friend/

Have fun surfing!

The difference between the USA and Europe

Here's a wonderful article written by an American living in Amsterdam. He talks about how social-welfare and free-market can blend together in the Netherlands, and how USA can learn from the best of the system.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/magazine/03european-t.html?_r=1&em=&pagewanted=all.

I think I totally agree with the author. Children in Europe are definitely happier, and I believe the society in which they live has a lot to do with it.

the world is flat?

Just about 10 years ago I would never imagine that I would be spend so much of my life in the western hemisphere. At that time even the thought of having a vacation abroad and taking a plane was exhilarating; but just this year, I traveled at least 10 times by plane and crossed the Atlantic Ocean 5 times; I've visited Belgium, Netherlands, and Austria during the weekends when I didn't work in the lab. Education-wise, I went to Yale, a wonderful place that I would like to call it my second-home in the last four years. I'm not bragging about anything; I just thought, wow, as Thomas Friedman said in his book, "the world is flat." Individuals today have so many opportunities. I don't know why that is, just suffice to say the world is really changing from my parent's generation; even within my short 25 years of life, I've experienced such a change. You can say the change provides unprecedented opportunities, and I'm sure I'll be shaped by such a change. Just don't know how...this is the thing I need to think about.

New Year's Eve in Germany

My new year's eve turned out not bad at all. Four other friends and I had a gathering yesterday night, and my lonely soul finally had some company. It was an inspiring night actually because my friends are all international students, and I enjoyed learning about their backgrounds and future goals. I have to thank Geoffrey for inviting me to the dinner, so that I did not spent my night alone.

Many places in Munich were transformed into large party zones. Tons of people were lighting fireworks yesterday night around the city. It was kind of dangerous to walk around, as some fireworks jumped here and there on the ground instead of shooting straight into the sky. I was almost hit by one; fortunately I walked away fast enough. The situation really reminded of land mines in Gambodia. Nonetheless, the festive atmosphere made the city much warmer despite the cold weather.

"We take care of your mind, body, and spirit!" A slogan I saw on the T-shirt a nurse wore at 6-3. It really spoke a lot to me, of why I want to be a physician.