"A Typical Day in the Life of a Chinese Man"

in the light of the melamine-tinted milk products that is affecting world-wide supplies of any milk related products/industry, there is an increasing need for awareness in what goes into the food that we eat, the products that we use. Natural leather smells GREAT but how often are the bags/shoes/car seats made of real leather, would the average joe be able to tell the difference? The blog below is a direct copy from The China Blog.

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This is a spoof diary of a day in the life of an ordinary Chinese that has been circulating on the web recently (in Chinese here, for example). I have edited out large chunks as it gets pretty repetitive, though that of course is the point. The excellent translation is courtesy of Chris Hughes of the London School of Economics and Political Science to whom we extend our thanks for his permission to use it. (I have also dropped his footnotes that link the reference to specific chemicals mentioned to actual incidents in which they were found to have been used in China.) This sometimes stomach turning account is representative of a whole range of stuff that has been appearing on the web--spoof TV ads for the milk companies involved in the ongoing scandal over tainted milk powder (here for example, courtesy of danwei.com), doctored print adds featuring witty (and not so witty) jokes about milk powder and so on. Talk about black humor. (There's also an interesting swipe at super-nationalist/'my-country-right-or-wrong types at the end, by the way):


I wake up in the morning and... I turn on the renovated TV ... The TV weather forecast says the air condition will be good. I look at the sky for a while – Oh! A very yellow sun! I will not need to wear my acid rain proof raincoat today. After I get out of bed and put on my carcinogenic ‘amine scented’ Walmart clothes, and my suit that has been dry cleaned with carcinogenic acetylene tetrachloride, I feel that there is a slight odour on my body and burning in my eyes. Luckily I can freely use my scent for non-pregnant men and the sparkle immediately returns to my eyes. I pick up the toothpaste with its slight traces of the chemical Triclosan and let it react in my mouth with the chlorinated tap water to produce carcinogenic Trichloromethane. I always eat well in the morning and after using the carcinogenic toothpaste I wipe my face with the Benzidine contami nated towel, have a cup of Melamine polluted milk, eat some fried bread sticks (youtiao) cooked in diesel, dipped in some chile source died with Sudan Red, added to a bowl of duck egg gruel with poison rice and egg with large amounts of Lead Oxide, not forgetting of course do add some condiments made with chemical ingredients. After a belch, I put on the helmet I bought for 10 renminbi to keep away the traffic cops and go out. I get on the motorbike which has just had its cut price famous brand brake pads changed and carefully go off to work.


Our hero continues to ingest horrific amounts of chemicals, including when his boss treats him to a fancy dinner:
The boss is very happy when he hears the report and of course offers to entertain everyone for dinner. Before dinner we all drank a cup of Biluochun tea died with lead and chrome, and have some pine nuts roasted in caustic soda and Sodium metabisulfite along with some pumpkin seeds in talcum powder and paraffin wax. The dinner itself is of course more sumptuous, with DDVP soaked Jinhua ham and chicken feet soup, boiled beef with spicy source washed and filtered by thousands of people, beef injected with water [6]and contraceptive fattened eel slices with red pepper, soy-cooked squid rolls puffed with caustic soda and preserved in formaldehyde, dyed Carmine pork, steamed crab raised on several types of Western medicine and dead cats, dogs and ducks, garlic shrimps baptised in human urine. He also orders a plate of seasonal green vegetables with excess pesticides cooked in hogwash oil. There are some bottles of ‘15-Year-Old Maotai’ spirit ‘filtered’ through women’s stockings and a couple of boxes of artificial sweeteners and red wine with excess colouring. The filler is steamed bread buns bleached with Benzoyl peroxide . Finally there is a plate of fruit with strawberries, peaches, apples and water melons grown large and ripe with hormones.


Not surprisingly, our boy doesn't feel so good when he gets home:
I feel very tired when I get home. My head is dizzy and I can’t sleep. I take some sleeping pills made with glutinous rice, but it is no use. Because I have caught a cold I ask the company for some time off when I get up in the morning. I take some carcinogenic diethylene glycol glycerine that has been passed off as cough medicine, but I do not take a turn for the better all day. After passing a few days like this, my headache gets even worse, I became nauseous, lack energy, sweat, vomit, and have diarrhea. So I have to go to hospital. The instant intravenous revival is no use, so the doctor can only give me false medicine produced by Shangqi,[ but it still isn’t any use! Finally the doctor consults and recommends that I go to the US for a complete examination and ask an expert from the FDA there to find the real cause. As soon as I hear I have to leave the country, I suddenly become excited: I resolutely will not go! I was born a Chinese person, and will die a Chinese spirit. I want to be a pure Chinese person!

Clearing Dead Skin

Coral Weed

In our visit to an old friend's house, she introduced to us this product for strengthening of the joints! (If you see an 82yr old man doing squats after taking this for a couple of weeks, when previously he has problems walking about... you know that this stuff works!)



Turns out that its actually dried up in this tiny packet... so you've gotta soak it in water for about 3hrs....


and it grew so much that it almost overflowed the pot!


Gotta double boil it with some rock sugar for taste and consume it like bird's nest when its hot. It turns into agar when its cooled hee...

Let's see if I still hear the clicking sound in my knee after trying this stuff out....

Hand hurts from too much keyboard?

ok it hurts to type this blog post...

does it really happens?

this was a rested hand from a night's sleep...

it hurt the moment i placed my right arm on the keypad to start typing. Now i'm doing a slated hand typing!

I used to spend about 16hrs infront of my keyboard and it doesnt happen. Why now?

hopefully it'll get better with a few days of CNY "break".

AhChoo to the begining of the Lunar 7th Month

Each year, I have a strange way of realising that its the time of the year when the air is alot more smokey and there are lot more "boogie" traps on the roadsides.

Yes, I am referring to the start of the Lunar 7th Month.

The time when the neighbourhood is filled with folks trying to each find the best corner to burn their offerings to their loved ones.

This year there is no exception, my nose has been leaking the whole day and sneezing non-stop...

The time has arrived!!!!!

Wish there was a better way to do this rather than to suffer through annually.

I'm sure there are many folks out there who is also suffering the "side-effects" of our chinese traditions & customs.

Perhaps this is why the Chinese has started to use cyberspace as the burial grounds and cyber-gifts as the alternative way to connect with their departed relatives. It would certainly cut down on burning of the paper and reduce air polluction index.

Either that or we need more heavy rain to wash away the ashes and strong winds to blow away the smoke hee hee

Breast Milk not as "safe" anymore

was reading articles on detecting environmental substances and came across this article on how advance techniques has become for analysising toxic chemicals in our body. This specialty area is important for forensics like CSI where they try to find out as much as possible on the deceased and tracing the murderer from chemicals/substances from the victim's body.

In this article "Biomonitoring and Biomarkers: Exposure Assessment Will Never Be the Same" by Dennis Paustenbach and David Galbraith , there was a section to discuss about what you can find in the breast milk....

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Breast milk. Breast milk can often provide significant information about fat-soluble chemicals in the environment. Nearly all of the industrially significant fat-soluble chemicals, such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), brominated flame retardants [polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs)], and dioxins/furans can be measured in breast milk. Samples of breast milk are relatively easy to collect and may reflect historical exposures to lipid-soluble chemicals found in the environment. Diet plays a significant role, with many of the chemicals in breast milk arising from a mother’s consumption of fish, meat, or dairy products. These can contain small amounts of persistent, lipid-soluble chemicals coming from deposition of dust,
vapors, or ash emitted from incinerators and nearly every form of combustion, including automobiles and furnaces.

Exposures to chemicals around the home and in processed foods are also easily measured in breast milk (Kamrin 2003). One can postulate that the breast-feeding infant is at the top of this exposure chain. Because the infant has such a small comparative body mass and breast milk can compose a significant fraction of the diet for the first year of life or longer,
there has been considerable interest in understanding the potential effects of these chemicals in the developing infant. However, no documented adverse effects from infant exposures to typical levels of environmental chemicals
in breast milk have yet been identified. A recent workshop explored a number of issues surrounding biomonitoring, breast milk, and risk assessment (LaKind et al. 2005).

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So mums and mum-to-be, please be wise with your food intake when breast feeding your young infant, that barrier to remove toxins and germs from your child is not really that effective in today's world. The information given by the nurses and focus groups on the benefits of breast milk maybe outdated.

Have you ever wondered why so many more kids have allergies despite having breast-fed?

Brain Freeze

does anyone experience brain freeze without drinking cold drinks?

recently my brain seems to "malfunction" its just blocked. so blocked that you can feel a cloud of something, could be mucus or something stuck on it physcially, cutting off oxygen supply to the brain and hence I cannot think straight.

A few weeks ago, I had a week of clear clear brain days and it was amazing, I could think!

By that I mean higher cognitive analysis of issues, ideas and even writing skills. I felt SMART haha

But these last two weeks, my brain has been in the "frozen" state again. Not sure why it occurs at such rates. Does anyone out there know what I mean??

Baking Success

We've been trying (I said TRYING because we haven't got it quite worked out yet hee hee) to eat more healthily by baking our own bread.

The most beloved Guardinia bread has been rumoured to have too much preservatives, additives etc rendering it unhealthy to eat. (think about it, when i buy the $1.55 loaf of bread, the bread stays fresh for about 5-7days, but when I buy the S$1.90 loaf containing almost double the number of slices of bread, it stays fresh for more than 9days! how could they do it without adding MORE preservatives?)

So before we bought our own bread-maker and totally forget about using it, wasting our $$ and precious space in our house, a friend with a bread maker at home loan hers to us. (see, those who own it would hardly use it ha ha ha)



Ad was busy with his guy friend doing the guy thing at the time when we needed to go and get the bread flour for making bread for the first time. So he gave me the IMPT assignment of getting the right bread flour. Best is Organic he said. Orh! I remember organic flour organic flour and I found it! Organic rye flour! Yipee!

We set it up according to the instructions and something tells us that something wasnt right when the flour did not rise after 2hr and the pile of flour, water, oil, yeast, milk powder mix looked the same before and after....


it was rock HARD! ha ha. nope it did not mix well, I bought Organic Rye flour, not Organic Rye BREAD flour! ha ha ha... notice a missing word? the most import word?

aiyo, how would I remember so many things? headache you know?

After a few days of troubleshooting, asking around, we found that the Jasons' supermarket at Orchard Hotel has the MOST variety of bread flour. So Ad throtted down and bought himself some real bread flour and our 2nd attempt was not too bad. :)



Yippe! success!