Coconut milk with mango and tapioca pearls

I just got back from the night market at Fu Tai, where I went with a friend who's become a coconut-milk-buying expert. I probably shouldn't be eating so sugary a snack right before bed--but it's so delicious! And the tapioca pearls are endlessly entertaining.

The market doesn't open until 10:50, if it can even be called that. I wouldn't have referred to several women standing in a row as such. We walked up to one lady who handed my friend a slip of paper. My friend pointed to some of the characters and told me the coconut milk could come with pieces of mango (yay!), watermelon, or something else that I've forgotten. After we placed our orders, the lady walked away, and maybe ten minutes later she returned with styrofoam containers of deliciousness.

And while thinking about food: I tried those sesame filled rice balls again, this time after reading the cooking instructions. They're supposed to be boiled! So I stuck them in hot water and microwaved them. The texture totally changed! The flavor became tasty! The only problem is, some of them were cracked and spilled their insides while boiling, transforming the water into a grimy black mess. And wasting otherwise edible sesame filling.

This afternoon my fencing friend knocked on my door, handed me a slice of apple, and left.

Possibly her odd behaviour could be explained by my earlier rambling about midterms--maybe I looked in a particularly do-not-disturbish mood? While studying I tend to run my fingers repeatedly through my hair, perhaps I resembled a frantic and unpredictable madwoman?

Anyway, I enjoyed both my classes today! Yay! In Economics of the Family the professor talked about potato chips. In relation to marginal utility. He said when he first came to the United States in 1989, he'd never eaten potato chips before. So his marginal utility for them was very high, and he would open the bag as soon as he'd left the store. But now his marginal utility for potato chips is much lower, and he hardly ever eats them. I liked imagining the professor twenty years younger and excited about chips.

And in Financial Economics we used calculus--yay! Finding derivatives? I can do that! Easy as pie. If not nearly as tasty. Seriously, I almost laughed with relief--no strange new vocabulary, no complicated terminology (are "vocabulary" and "terminology" so similar as to be repititious?), no equations whose purpose I don't understand. Just the same process I repeated (with assorted variations) all last year. It's like Financial Economics had been some snooty classmate who I just learned enjoys climbing trees and eating raisins and maybe we can be friends now...

After class I went to the library and borrowed Breakfast at Tiffany's. I did this because yesterday in the lift my friend mentioned that she'd re-read Of Mice and Men and re-experienced it's perfection and wanted to re-re-read it (that is, as soon as she finished she considered flipping to page one and beginning again). I don't particularly remember that novel, but I do remember not particularly liking it. But I tried to think of what else I'd read in 9th grade and I think Breakfast at Tiffany's came just before or after we read Steinbeck, unless it didn't. Also, I couldn't remember how the story goes or even whether I enjoyed it. All I could remember was the scene in the movie where the main character (whose name I'd also forgotten) squeezes past a group of people in a crowded room by placing his cold drink against the lady's back. If the teacher hadn't specifically brought it to our attention, I would have forgoten this scene along with the rest. Most simply: I wanted something to read.

Anyway, borrowing the book = horrible idea. Truman Capote distracted me all afternoon. If only he were a bad writer of terrible books. Sigh...but I needed distracting.