Coping with heat

God has given me two great ideas for coping with heat, e.g. when you’re in a non-air-conditioned vehicle on a hot day.

Idea 1: a spray bottle. Big spray bottles for your car; or a small one to carry in your bag.

I found this tiny spray bottle in Minisou. It doesn’t have the inside tube, so you have to hold it upside down.

Idea 2: A bottle of cold water is nice, but in blazing heat it doesn’t stay cold for very long. Try this trick for cold water that lasts a few hours instead of a few minutes:

The night before you need to spend a few hours in the heat, fill a plastic water bottle NOT all the way, and put it in the freezer in a tilted orientation:

Make sure the frozen water won’t block the mouth of the bottle.

The next morning when it’s frozen, add water on top of the ice. You can start drinking cold water in a couple minutes, and the gradually-melting ice will give you sips of cold water for the next few hours.

Transgender — a few penetrating questions

Okay – I’ve consolidated my thoughts on the transgender debate, and I have some penetrating questions to ask:

First I will state what I learned in biology class:

Your sex is in your genes, so every cell in your body is proclaiming your sex.  You cannot change your genes, so you cannot change your sex.

Question 1:

Since these people cannot change their genes and therefore cannot change their sex, wouldn’t the most compassionate, loving thing to do for them be to help them accept what they are?

Question 2:

Is this just a way for greedy people in the medical establishment to make money?  Tell people they can change their sex and then charge lots of money for drugs and hormones and surgeries?

Question 3:

I am very glad all this gender confusion was not around when I was pioneering as the only girl in the electricity class in high school and often the only woman in my engineering classes in university, and then one of the few women engineers at General Motors.   I wasn’t trying to be a man – I just didn’t see any reason why a woman couldn’t be an engineer.   Now, I’m very curious whether STEM-talented girls are being persuaded that they should change their gender.  Wouldn’t that be undoing what I and other STEM women have done, to change the stereotype that engineers must be male?

The natural motivation of the book store.

I noticed that there is natural excitement about going on a shopping trip and then when you get home you want to use the new thing you bought. I figured I could use this natural motivation to encourage my children’s reading of the national language of our host country. So I decided to make a trip to the book store once a week. Each trip, I would buy each of them one book. It worked! When we got home, they would immediately devour their new books.

What color is snow?

One day, I was waiting for my car to warm up, watching snow fall onto the windshield. I noticed that the individual snow crystals were not white; they were clear / transparent. “So, what makes snow appear to be white?” I asked myself. I eventually figured out the answer: all those clear crystals are clumped together in all orientations, reflecting light in all directions. They’re reflecting white light; so the snow appears white. The same phenomenon happens with water droplets in waterfalls and fountains and breaking waves, and clouds.

Then I thought, “Gee — maybe that’s why the Bible talks about people in Heaven wearing white — maybe they’re reflecting the light of Christ!”

My creation vs. evolution testimony

I grew up knowing that God was real, and that I wanted to do what God wanted me to do. My church gave me a Bible in the 3rd grade, and I started reading it and practicing it. When I got bullied in school, I practiced, ‘turn the other cheek,’ and God delivered me. I even ended up being friends with the bully!

Then I went to high school, and took biology in my freshman year. My textbook was full of the ‘proofs’ of evolution: Haegel’s embryos, Darwin’s finches, homology, etc. The implied long-ages / atheistic worldview came across, and I started feeling like I was walking through mud. In my senior year in English class, we had to write a big research paper, and we could choose the topic. I decided to settle the questions in my mind by writing on ‘Creation vs. Evolution.’ In the public library found plenty of pro-evolution sources, but nothing pro-creation. I finally went to a Christian book store and found one little book. This little book pointed out the flaws in all of the ‘proofs’ in my biology textbook; and added scientific evidence for creation. For example, natural selection only selects from the variety that was originally in that kind of animal. It cannot create any new information, which is what would be needed for evolution to happen.

I was so happy! I could reasonably, with good scientific foundation, believe the Bible from the very first verse. My feet are back on solid ground; and I ain’t goin’ back to the mud.

When my children were growing up, I subscribed to Creation Magazine, to arm them against the barrage of evolution they get with every nature show, every zoo, every museum. — and I devoured every issue myself, too!

Fried Rice

Ingredients

leftover rice — must have been cooked at least 12 hours ago. Freshly-cooked rice is too moist.
2 cloves garlic
frozen mixed vegies (carrots, peas, and corn) — or other leftover vegetables
hot dogs, chopped into small cubes, about the same size as the peas in the mixed vegies — or other fresh or leftover meat

Instructions

Smash a couple cloves of garlic with the flat side of your Chinese cleaver, then dice.

Heat some oil in a frying pan. Test the temperature with a bamboo or wood utensil.  When bubbles come off the utensil, the oil is hot enough.

Add the garlic and chopped hot dog.

When the garlic and hot dog get brown, add the rice and turn down the heat. Don’t do a lot of stirring, but smash the rice down so that as much of it as possible contacts the hot frying pan. When you hear the rice start to crackle, turn it over and smash it down again, breaking up any clumps. Ideally, every grain of rice should be fried. When it starts crackling again, turn it over again. If it burns before it crackles, the pan is too hot.

When it crackles again, add the frozen vegies. You should not cook the vegies ahead of time. Just add the frozen mixed vegies directly to the fried rice. Stir a bit, cover, wait five seconds, and turn off the heat. Keep it covered while you set the table and call the people. Then serve your fried rice.

Christmas without Music — but…

Because Christmas is not a holiday in Taiwan, I was still busy teaching English. Nevertheless, on Christmas day, I wanted to listen to Christmas music. I picked up my iPod and scrolled for my Christmas playlist — and couldn’t find it. Oh, yeah — a few months ago I had accidentally wiped out my whole iPod. I didn’t have time that day to rebuild my playlist, and anyway, I didn’t have half of the songs, which were on CDs stored in the USA. I found one favorite song and listened to that. — but the house wasn’t filled with Christmas music like I wanted it to be.

In early February, I was preparing to recycle another iPod which had a broken screen. I recalled that previously when I had checked, I could still access the music on that iPod if I connected it to my laptop. So I connected to my laptop to check. Sure enough — I could see and hear all the music via iTunes on my laptop. — and there was my Christmas list, including all the on-CDs-stored-in-Ohio music!

What you believe matters. I believed I did not have my Christmas music playlist. The truth was, I had my Christmas playlist. — but because what I believed was not the truth, I was unable to access the benefits of the truth.

Traveling with children: stay with a family!

The best idea God gave me about traveling with children is: ask someone at our destination to find us a family to stay with that has children the same age as my children. That way, the house is already childproofed; there are NOT fragile curios that look like toys sitting around; there is NOT a sound system with interesting knobs, lights, and dials sitting at toddler level; and there ARE toys, children’s books, and playmates.  So much less stressful for us; and so much more fun for our children! — and theirs!

Salsa

• Lots of tomatoes — very ripe and even overripe ones are preferred
• A few cloves garlic, diced
• Enough chopped onion to cover the bottom of your frying pan
• Half a dozen small chili peppers (if you like your salsa spicy hot). Wear gloves to dice them. If you don’t wear gloves, make sure not to rub your eyes afterward! (Guess how I learned this…)
• Chopped yellow and green bell pepper (capsicum) These are mostly for color, and a bit of texture and flavor contrast.
• Fresh cilantro, chopped
• 1 lime (lemon, if you can’t get lime)

Chop up all the tomatoes. All the chopping takes awhile, so turn on a good podcast to listen to while you chop.

Fry the onion, garlic, and chili in a little oil, until the onion just starts to brown. Then add about 3/4ths of the tomatoes. When bubbling starts, turn down the heat, so you don’t burn the sauce. Cook until the tomatoes disintegrate into a sauce, stirring and mashing occasionally.

When most of the tomatoes have disintegrated, add the remaining tomatoes. When boiling starts again, turn off the heat. Fold in the bell pepper and cilantro. The Idea here is that the bell pepper and cilantro will get cooked a little bit by the boiling-hot sauce, yet not get overcooked and lose their color and flavor.

Mix in the juice of one lime. If you can’t get lime, use lemon.

You’ve made a lot; so freeze some, or give it away.

The Ultimate Goal of Home Schooling

As a home schooler, I was confronted with the question, “What is the ultimate goal of my children’s education?” My favorite answer is one I heard at a home-schooling conference: that our children should be “…thoroughly equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:17)