Alright Vegemite, Un-real Banana Peel

Thanks, it is as I thought - hard to find wheat-free 酱油.

It is not that hard avoiding wheat actually - easier than in Australia. I just say 不要酱油 a lot. And actually it is probably more of a problem in the north. I went to a big dinner last night (boss was paying) and there were probably thirty dishes - only one I couldn't eat: 春卷 (Yunnan has its 'own' 春卷 - it is curious as the only other province that I know of with 春卷 as a 'native' dish is 广东). They may have modified the selection with me in mind but nothing was said about it.

Hah, I probably can't drink whiskey if it is made from rye (wheat, rye, barley all contain gluten), but I don't drink whiskey anyway. I have got into drinking gin and tonic and don't ask what the gin is made from. :)

Hi bodawei

I think living in China is not an easy thing for a man who can't eat wheat. I'm afraid it seems that only some minor Japanese soy sauce manufacturers sell wheat-free 酱油 in Japan. Incidentally, can you drink whiskey?

How do you say "you're not posh enough for John Lewis"? 你不去John Lewis因为你的高级不够高?

My only defence of 4 burners are that you have to boil the potatoes, the carrots, the peas and the haggis...

Oh, you said nice cooker! I thought you said rice cooker! I should learn to read :-)

I can only speak for myself, but I rarely use the microwave. I am quite middle class though. English people LOVE to boil stuff though :-p Or bake them in the oven. Cooker = hob and oven combined. Or sometimes just the hob.

Like this:

Cooker = 炉子还是炉灶？有什么区别？

这个炉子比英国的实用一点儿。Who uses 4 or 5 burners at the same time anyway!

The John Lewis man was an Indian that told us to go and find an Indian import in London, because they were designed for people that actually used their cookers!

真奇怪！I've never seen or owned a cooker like that in England, and the only people I've ever met in England with rice cookers were Chinese born!

But then again, John Lewis is a rather posh shop, and I'm not :-p

The man in John Lewis said that it was because British people bought nice cookers so that their kitchen looked lovely, but actually cooked everything in the microwave.

No idea what you're on about! Never seen a british cooker with a special wok burner on it...

It's the "right number of minutes" that is the problem. Last time I left it in a saucepan, my kitchen smelled like I was making popcorn, i.e. I forget about it. It's quite good just to set going while you're doing other stuff, and takes up fewer hobs.

What I don't understand is why British cookers seemed designed to be impossible to cook on. The Wok burner is in the middle, so you can't use any of the other burners. Clever, innit?

Hi Changye

The Japanese also improved soy sauce. They came up with the idea of using wheat to make soy sauce and I can't eat it. But they also make some without wheat - do you happen to know a Japanese brand of soy sauce that doesn't use wheat? I want to see if I can find it in China. All Chinese brands I have found now use the Japanese method with wheat.

A rice cooker （电饭锅） is a 命根子 of Japanese people. You can often see TV commercials of a rice cooker in Japan, but not in the PRC. An electric rice cooker was invented by Japanese, of course. I have a Panasonic rice cooker at home, which I brought from Japan.

But I don't watch my saucepan. I put water in, I set it to simmer, and leave it for the right number of minutes while I do something else. I don't need a gadget to do that for me.

Oh my goodness, how can you not understand rice cookers? You just switch them on and leave them, and not watch them constantly, like you do with a saucepan. A decent rice cooker should have a non-stick coating, and another trick is to switch the rice cooker off for 5 minutes before you serve it (actually off, not on the warm setting), and the rice should lift from the bottom of the pan.

I'm going to make my millions selling rice cookers to the British and Indians, and cheese to the Chinese.

Oh, we have one. I still don't get it though. Saucepans are so much easier to clean...

If you lived in China I would strongly encourage you to spend 69RMB and invest in the cheapest one available. I'm confident you'd be a convert in no time flat. When you use them regularly they make life so much easier!

I never really understood the benefits of a rice cooker over a saucepan, other than making washing up more difficult...

jen_not-jenny

I feel uncomfortable when I go into a kitchen that does not have a rice cooker, or two big 'wok burners' for that matter. So I know what you mean.

I once heard someone say "the greatest thing since graham crackers," which I found alliteratively pleasing and much more true-to-life. Sliced bread just isn't that great.

Wonder if there is any remotely similar Chinese saying? Greatest thing since rice cookers, maybe? ;)

When I have new words, I add them to smart.fm, and do the initial learning on smart.fm, then maintain them on srs ... or at least I try to. It removes some of the pain.

RJ,

I think I know what you mean. I have my Anki set for a limit of 15 minutes a day. I should be doing it now but....

I haven't heard the "greatest thing since sliced bread" since my father was around. He used to say it all the time. Thanks for that. I hadn't thought about it in years.

yeah,well I certainly haven't been diligent at all with anki. Still,I see it as just another useful tool in the armamentarium and not a panacea for all learning woes. Thus ,despite the intro comment,I hope John still has it on the agenda for this site as I think it would be superior to anki as it would circumvent the need to export and update exports and also the site here has other options like audio which are not so easy to integrate with anki.

Yea I thought SRS was going to be the greatest thing since sliced bread as they say, but it turned out to be only, dare I say it, Vegemite (since bodawei has mentioned it). I have come to hate flash carding and SRS just means I miss all of them, since I have eliminated the ones I can identify correctly. :-)

I just read an article that said you learn much faster when you feel safe and are emotionally happy. When I do flash cards I am not happy. I learn characters much faster as parts of new words. Memorizing characters is just painful. (and so is eating Vegemite).

Okay, thanks.

course not mate..but its Spaced repetition software...flashcards where the program decides when to test you again based on your feedback