Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2011

Seoul-ed-Out Fenway Park: Woke up today and popped on a television channel from Korea. The language was not familiar. The image was shockingly familiar. The television screen flashed a baseball video game, complete with announcers, who tracked the balls, strikes, hits etc. of two young Korean control-clickers who were playing the game. The game was taking place at Fenway Park, with the Bob’s furniture advertisement clearly visible on the Green Monster. The commentary was quite well informed—as the announcers discussed (in English, obviously) the intricacies of playing the sometimes-strange ricochets off the wall. Imagine, here I am watching in Singapore a broadcast of a virtual game set in Boston and played by two Koreans, with two English-speaking announcers. The real-virtual tug is at hand. And this comes a day after a report in the Mail about preferences for real-world or virtual world.

Happy New Year!











Hop to it! At lunch, we had a wonderful New Year’s meal at the Palm Beach seafood restaurant at One Fullerton. The place specializes in chili crab, which was part of today’s feast with Sandy and her colleagues from the Cambridge Associates office. The meal itself was part of the ongoing Chinese New Year celebration. One memorable part was the large yu sheng, which we tossed with extra-long chopsticks. Unfortunately, we were the first table doing the tossing. I think we were a bit restrained. (The photos above show the yu shung before, left, and after, right.) After we had finished, some other tables erupted with chants and tossing. We were probably a little too low in our tosses and a little too reserved in our chanting. Even so, the mix of fish (salmon), shredded vegetables, seeds, honey and other condiments tasted great.
It was, in fact, a pretty messy lunch. Credit the chili crab for that. The meat was tasty, but a bit flaky. It seemed to break apart too easily. Still, a memorable meal. The lime juice was an added treat. So, too, were the desserts, shaped like bunnies (see below), in honor of the Year of the Rabbit.