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Category Archives: ponderings

Riding the high speed potstickers

Um...it was kind of foggy when this picture was taken. Yeah...

We had some friends over for Thanksgiving dinner and we ended up talking about various things, but the most memorable topic was Taiwan‘s most advanced public transportation system, the high speed potstickers (鍋貼 or guō tiē), which is not to be confused with the high speed rail system (高鐵 or gāo tiě).

Many people know about Taiwan’s high speed rail (HSR) system.  The HSR runs north and south along the coast from the capital city of Taipei to Kaohsiung, a distance of roughly 200 miles.  The trains have a top speed of 186 miles per hour, so travel by HSR is considerably faster than by normal rail or bus, but slower than taking a plane.  You can read more about it here.

The high speed potstickers (HSP) is an auxiliary system that runs east and west and is little known beyond the residents of Taiwan.  Actually, the HSP is such a well kept secret, many residents also do not know of its existence and slog along by bus when they need to travel from the east and west coasts.  It is understandable since the HSP travels considerably faster than the HSR and is much quieter.  Because the railcars are made of potstickers, albeit a special recipe for potstickers due to the need for durability, they can be consumed at the end of their scheduled run.  I’m pretty sure employees of the HSP eat the potstickers.

Aside from the very limited schedule, there are a few other cons to traveling by potsticker.  You have to remember that these are potstickers.  They are cooked in oil.  There can be a great deal of oil in and around the stations and on the potstickers themselves.  Oil is not something that is easily cleaned off clothing when you’re on the run.

Also, the friction of the potstickers traveling at high speed on the oil coated rails, so they don’t stick, cook the potstickers.  If you’re riding a late potsticker, it can be unbearably hot.  It will smell delicious though.  But remember, it’s highly frowned upon to sneak bites of your transportation.

On the topic of scents, some of the potstickers may have a pork/leek filling.  While quite delicious, leek does have a tendency to stink things up.  You might want to take that into consideration when you’re traveling to a formal engagement.  Durian are allowed on the pork/leek potstickers, though, in case you’re transporting durian.

I’m definitely going to try and find a high speed potsticker station the next time I’m in Taiwan.

Where’s Captain Planet?!

Note: This is not the post I was originally going to put up on Monday until the dogs ruined everything with their antics.  This is entirely different and gets to go up now because it contains such important information.  Also, I’m just going to count Monday’s post as this week’s crafty entry.  So you get some deep (read: ridiculous) thoughts instead.

I was recently pondering the relationship between finishing all your soup and Captain Planet when it dawned on me the cause of our ailing environment.  You may wonder how soup and the environment are related.  Allow me to explain.

First off, I will say that heart is overarching factor in all of this.  Keep this in mind.  It’s important.

Ok, about soup.  The other day, my friend was at our house eating hotpot.  She decided to end her meal with some soup.  Unfortunately, she misjudged the amount of room left in her stomach for soup and finished about half her soup before realizing that she was really full.  Well, like a good friend, I encouraged her to finish her soup.  You should finish what you have, after all.  I’m sure most everyone has been guilt tripped into finishing their food because of the starving children in Africa (there really are starving children there), that I thought perhaps she’d have been desensitized to it.  So I used a different method.  I told her that good soups are made by mothers and grandmothers with a lot if heart (machines do not make soup with heart, so it’s ok if you don’t finish or even buy those.  Male chefs can make good soups but they have to first go through a course on heart and not all of them can pass because they are at a disadvantage of being male and thus being neither a mother nor grandmother).  If you don’t finish it, you personally are causing some kind of ruin to the environment because the extra heart that went into making the soup has prevented Captain Planet from being summoned to right some environmental ills as everyone knows that a key component of Captain Planet is heart.  It’s like you’re willfully trying to destroy the environment.  Anyway, she finished her soup.

Afterwards, I was thinking at how sickly the environment has become what with global warming and the hole in the ozone layer and the poor air quality in a lot of places and the North Atlantic and Great Pacific garbage patches, etc.  This is more damage than can be attributed to just people not finishing their soup.  I was also thinking about how prevalent hearts are in today’s popular culture (e.g. I <3 NY, girls of all ages using “heart” instead of “love” or “totes like”).  That’s when it dawned upon me that Captain Planet can NEVER BE SUMMONED because popular culture has stolen all the heart!  Popular culture is what is ruining our environment because Captain Planet can never be summoned to battle things like global warming and pollution and the hole in the ozone layer!  If there were ever a reason to stop using “heart” instead of “love” or whatever other word implying a strong affection toward something, this is it.  Think of the environment!  It’s but a small change that has a big impact!  Finishing your soup is only the beginning.

By the way, this has nothing to do with how I find people replacing another word with “heart” to be really annoying.  Not at all.