Enticing with food

Today an amusing incident popped into my mind.

Several years ago I was working as a programmer in a university lab. One day around lunchtime one of the Chinese masters students popped into the lab and handed me a jam sandwich on a paper plate. I accepted it with thanks, ate it and thought no more about it.

In retrospect I realised that she did exactly what one does when trying to entice an animal to be friendly, offer some food. 😃 Oh dear, maybe I should have made some conversation. I can be a bit dim. I hope she wasn't disappointed.

It illustrates though the importance of food in Chinese culture. While these days how are you is rendered as nǐ hǎo, between familiars (possibly above a certain age) a common phrase is chī le fàn ma meaning have you eaten (a meal). There is more concern for the listener's well-being compared to nǐ hǎo. For example a singer coming on stage would not ask the crowd if they had eaten.

Here's an explanation of the phrase. The writer talks about northern China, but the phrase is also used in the southern parts, e.g. Guangdong.

An idea for quirky travel

According to my saved email copy, I first thought of this 13 June 2013. The idea is to visit every place that is associated with a chess opening.

As I observed then: Might not be as hard as it seems, for example visiting anywhere in Spain ticks the Ruy Lopez box. A trip to Eastern Europe and Russia would tick a lot of boxes.

Unfortunate position for the f

I think the shop didn't foresee this when they wanted people to like them on Facebook.

Morning by Clare Fischer

Driving along today with ABC Jazz playing, I heard a lovely song that was familiar but couldn't identify. Fortunately ABC Jazz maintains an online just played list, so using the broadcast time I discovered that it was Clare Fischer's Morning, released in 1965, and interpreted by Australian jazz performers Alex & Nilusha in 2012 on their debut album Moments in Time.

Searching through my CD archives, I discovered that it was familiar because Sérgio Mendes had performed an instrumental of the song on his 1966 album The Great Arrival, with the arrangement by Clare Fischer.

It's unknown when Clare set words to the music, but they were not performed until 1980 for Clare Fischer's Salsa Picante with the 2+2 vocalists. The lyrics, about a lost love, are more wistful than melancholy due to the upbeat cha-cha-cha tempo.

In 1969, José José set the piece to Spanish lyrics, upstaging the future Spanish version of Fischer's lyrics. Una Mañana's lyrics are about nascent love and more cheerful*. I'd bet that many Spanish speakers of a certain age will have fond memories of this song.

Morning has been covered by scores of jazz and latin musicians, both in instrumental and vocal versions. Pretty good for a half a century old composition.

Coming back to the Australian performance, Nilusha Dassenaike has a beautiful voice and the collaboration lists of the duo include well known names on the local scene.

* I should have realised this sooner, but when using lyrics to practice a language, pick break-up songs to practice the past tense, and wooing songs to practice the future tense. 😃 For example, Tom Jobim's Eu Sei Que Vou Te Amar (I Know That I Will Love You) is full of the informal future "conjugated ir + infinitive". And then for fun you can tackle the imperfect subjunctive of Besame Mucho.

Non-French-reading dogs can ignore

I was in the National Gallery of Australia for the Versailles: Treasures from the Palace exhibition and after that wandered into the sculpture garden.

The notice at the foot of the sculpture attracted my attention.

Somebody in the NGA has a sense of humour.

Misadventure with breadmaker

Today my breadmaker decided to fail on me. It went dead after kneading the bread but before baking it. The dough in the pan had fully risen so I decided to put it in the oven to finish it off.

As the pan is vertical I decided to lay it on its side in the oven. What I didn't realise was that the dough could still flow. A while later when I checked, the dough had flowed into a wedge shape before being baked, and there was a croissant shaped piece of bread at the bottom of the oven where the dough had flowed out. Except for some edges, the bread was perfectly baked and very tasty (Lauke sourdough rye with chia added by me). I had the "croissant" for lunch with cheese and tomatoes, yum! I had to laugh at the resulting loaf or wedge. I'll be reminded of this as I consume the loaf this week.

Now to buy a replacement breadmaker.

Incredible hassles with bank

I decided I'd use the debit card of a bank, which will be unnamed here, to withdraw money while overseas. So I transferred money into the account in preparation.

Wednesday:

Went to an ATM, tried to withdraw money but got rejected. There was a service counter nearby so I asked for help there. They thought my account might have been deactivated because it had been idle and put me through on a phone to their call centre.

Call centre said that they had reactivated the account. Later I found out that what they did was make a $1 transaction between the two linked accounts in my account.

Thursday:

Tried to use the card again. This time not only was the transaction rejected but the ATM captured the card. Called up their call centre and they assured me that new card was on the way.

Went home and found a new card in my mailbox with new features like chip and Paywave. They couldn't have responded that fast and in fact the cover letter was dated several days before. So I assumed that the call centre knew a new card was on the way. Activated it by phone call to the call centre. But one troubling thing was that when I went to set my PIN it showed me a different last 4 digits. Sent internal query to their helpdesk about this discrepancy.

Friday:

Tried to used the card in an ATM again. Again rejected but fortunately card not captured because the ATM design didn't take in the whole card but simply read it and asked for it to be removed.

Went to service counter where they suggested that I choose Savings instead of Cheque. Same result. Suggested I go to the main office just across the street.

Again put through by phone to the call centre. Finally got passed to a rep who gave the whole story. This is the actual sequence of events:

1. Bank sent out new card, call it card B, with new features.
2. Not knowing this, on Wednesday I tried to use my old card, call it card A. Fail.
3. On Thursday I tried to use card A again and it got cancelled and captured perhaps because of too many failed attempts. Called service centre right away.
4. Bank arranged to send out replacement card, call it card C.
5. I found card B in my mailbox and called them to activate it. However what they activated was card C, which accounted for the discrepancy in last 4 digits when setting the PIN.
6. On Friday I tried to use card B, which unknown to me had been deactivated because card C had been activated. Fail.
7. I talked to the call centre. You would think that I could just wait for card C in the pipeline and start using that. But unfortunately their procedures require them to deactivate card C because I have already activated it and someone intercepting it could use it. They can't simply block it temporarily. So they have to send out card D, which they promised to expedite.

So the upshot of it is that I end up with 3 cards, B, C, and D, of which only the last works. I really hope card D arrives in time for my trip.

So it was an unfortunate "race condition" as they say in computer science for steps 1 and 2. If there was a point at which the mistake could have been caught it would be the call centre operator at step 5. He should have double checked that the card in my hand was card C. Maybe if I had done this online, the website might have showed me the card number and I would have discovered the discrepancy. Also if I had been calmer at step 3 and waited until I got home, then I would have seen card B and not triggered the sending of card C. But how was I to know that there was a new card waiting for me at home that evening?

Tuesday, update 1:

Received card D today and activated it online. (Card C arrived on Monday and I put it aside.) The webpage showed me the last 4 digits of the number of card D so I knew I was activating the right one.

As I wrote above, if I had done the activation myself online, the mistake would not have gone so far. But neither the card nor the cover letter mentioned online activation. Next to try it in an ATM.

Wednesday, update 2:

Finally tried it in an ATM (one that reads the card then allows it to be extracted, to be on the safe side) and managed to withdraw a sum of money. Let's hope it works overseas too.