2/27/09:

If you’ve ever ordered General Tso’s Chicken and found yourself wondering if people in China were eating it, too, here’s your answer: No.

Chinese people were confused when my teammate asked for General Tso’s Chicken, and finally, desperately, if anyone had ever even heard of a General Tso.

In fact, most of the food you get at Chinese restaurants outside of Chinatowns in larger cities have been Americanized to the point of becoming almost a different cuisine.

Of course, the foods you get in Chinatowns in larger cities may also be different cuisines: China recognizes five major regional cuisines, including Cantonese, Hunan and Sichuan (Szechuan), which seem the most popularly available here.

But just because a restaurant calls itself "Szechuan" doesn’t mean it’s serving the same thing Sichuan people eat. If you’re interested in getting the most authentic experience possible, ask where the chef came from and request dishes from that region; some dishes, such as Chongching chicken or Yangzhou fried rice, are associated with a single city, and probably won’t show up on the menu — but they may be available if your chef is from Chongching or Yangzhou.

I’ve had excellent noodles at Peking Kitchen in Beacon, N.Y. off I-84, and more locally, Szechuan Tokyo in West Hartford has good authentic Sichuan food.

But in general, I’ve found that if you want authentic Chinese food, your best bet is to make it yourself.

There’s help. A Dong supermarket, down the street from Szechuan Tokyo in West Hartford, has most of what you’d need to pull off a good Chinese meal, including otherwise hard-to-find vegetables like rape or lotus, hot pot mixes and disposable chopsticks. You’ll know you’re in the right place when you step in, turn left and are greeted by Peking ducks and most of a pig hanging from hooks near the bakery counter.

Now here’s what you can make, authentically, with what you find there.

Well, here are the easiest things, anyway.

Hot pot: Buy a mix and squeeze it out into a pot or wok of boiling water set in the middle of the table where you and your guests will eat.

It will be spicy, and a good mix will look gross going into the pot. But your only prep will be cutting various vegetables — Chinese cabbage, rape, turnip, snap peas — and meats — beef, fish balls, Chinese dumplings — into small enough pieces to cook quickly and eat in a single bite.

Guests can toss in whatever looks good to them and fish it out (preferably with a slotted spoon) when it’s done.

Ramen noodles: No kidding. Though saying Ramen noodles are authentic is as shocking as going to Rome and being served SpaghettiO’s, it’s true. Chinese people eat "kuai mian," or "fast noodles," when they can’t get home-cooked or a sit-down meal — if you’re riding a train, where boiling water is readily available from a spout on each car, or if you’re a poor college student, Ramen noodles are likely a staple of your diet in China.

I think Ramen noodles are best eaten dry and crunchy, whatever continent you’re on, but I’ve never met anyone who ate fast noodles this way who wasn’t from New Britain.

White rice, cooked in a rice cooker: Brown rice is not authentic Chinese; neither is "wild rice."

Rice cookers are incredibly easy to use, quick and do a perfect job every time.

Drinks: You can pick up an aloe vera drink or chrysanthemum tea at A Dong, or you can just drink your water boiling hot. I have yet to find one of my favorite drinks, peanut-walnut milk, in America.

But when I do, I’ll let you know.

2/20/09: Making a culinary dash through the political menu

In late 2007, before the GOP presidential nominee had been chosen, I ordered Mitt Romney at Mr. Bartley’s Gourmet Burgers in Cambridge, MA. It was a Swiss cheese burger with onions and came with a pile of onion rings that spilled off the plate and couldn’t be finished even with the help of my six table-mates.

If Al Franken had been on the menu then, I may have ordered him — though more in support of his sense of humor than of the concept of a veggie burger with pineapple on it.

Wishing I had another Mitt Romney to feast on this week, I began to wonder: What if our Connecticut politicians had sandwiches named after them?

A President Obama burger would be pretty easy — a regular, all-American burger delivered by electric car over an improved highway system, probably with a side salad. The burger might come with a note indicating that its creation had been partly subsidized by federal intervention and had helped to maintain almost 4 million jobs.

If you asked if you could substitute fries for the salad, or add mushrooms or pepper jack cheese to the Obama burger, the waitress might be required to reply "yes, you can." But she would almost certainly charge you for the extras.

A Sen. Christopher Dodd burger wouldn’t likely be a beef burger at all; thanks to his emphasis on our coastline conservation and defense, his sandwich would be grilled tuna. Paying in cash would lead to a relatively uneventful meal, but if you used your credit card, you’d be treated to a free copy of Dodd’s credit card protections strengthening bill and offered the chance to sign it along with your receipt, becoming a co-sponsor.

It wouldn’t matter what the menu description of a Sen. Joseph Lieberman burger was. Whatever it appeared to be when you ordered it, the waiter would bring something entirely different to the table and insist that you eat it anyway.

A John Rowland would be a pulled pork sandwich with steak fries, but halfway through the meal, your server would remove your plate and replace it with a small garden salad — no bacon bits allowed.

A Gov. M. Jodi Rell, on the other hand, would be a box of instant store-brand macaroni and cheese, mixed up in a large bowl and served family-style, possibly with a side of canned peas.

"Like many families in Connecticut," your server would announce, "we have to cut back on extras." Then he would hand you each a spoon and ask that you bus your own table when you’re finished.

A Rep. Chris Murphy burger would be served by Murphy himself, and though you’d have to call in the order to his Washington, D.C. office, you could ask for anything you wanted on it.

If Murphy’s office didn’t have what you were looking for, at least he would explain how he’d fought for your right to a coleslaw side dish and would continue that fight until coleslaw was made available to the people of the fifth district.

A Rep. John Larson burger would be typical beef, but when you paid, you’d receive a notice that Congress would soon be looking into the question of how burgers got to be so expensive. (The burger would be taxed twice to cover the cost of investigating.)

As for state senators and representatives, city and town council members, I’m betting that if you contacted your local representives, they’d meet you in your favorite local restaurant to shoot the breeze and hear your concerns — and you could ask them yourself what kind of sandwiches they’d be.

2/13/09: Romance isn't dead, but it can be a horror

Well, it’s that time of year again.

That’s right: Friday the 13th.

Right before Valentine’s Day.

If, like me, you’ve never cottoned to a day meant for surprise romantic gestures that comes like clockwork every year, here are some ways to ward off Valentine’s Day.

Let me know if you join me in any of them.

Ignore it: This is the most elegant and non-hypocritical solution. And if you can pull off a straight-faced "no, I’ve never heard of Valentine’s Day," all the better.

Wear orange: A nice "Orange Crush" t-shirt or some tangerine pants make a nice clashy statement against all the reds and pinks of Valentine’s Day.

Get creative with candy hearts: There’s always the classic fall-back "scrape off the pre-written message and write your own in red ink" method of dealing with "say yes" and "U R Tops" type candy heart messages.

A few of the more recent candy heart messages, especially the ones intended to reflect connection in modern life, satirize themselves, though. "Email me" and "fax me," no matter how ubiquitous those modes of communication have become, will never be romantic. ("Text me" may have a chance.)

My college friends and I laughed at the candy conversation hearts we encountered a few years ago, some of which said, inexplicably, "Book Club."

In honor of a candy that clearly had a sense of humor, if unwittingly, we decided to celebrate Valentine’s Day with an ice cream cake portraying a "Book Club" heart in icing.

The ice cream was mint chocolate chip, making the cake taste significantly better than the actual Necco-waferlike conversation hearts.

Get creative with Valentine’s Day cards: Instead of those little rectangular perforated "Bee Mine" cards, or the more formal folded versions with Hallmark poetry on them, switch it up. Try sending blank cards with handwritten messages in them.

If your friends or loved ones have a sense of humor, you might consider non-V-Day-related messages, such as "you didn’t finish washing the dishes last night." Or if you insist on pre-written cards, consider the "sympathy on the death of your pet" collection.

Horror movie marathon: This is how I’m going to spend my Valentine’s Day.

And no cheating - this is not an excuse to clutch your beloved closer than usual in terror.

In fact, the more bizarre the movie, the more esoteric the reference, the better. If you snagged any dollar DVDs from a pharmacy or department store around Halloween, you probably have a few that will do: "The House on Haunted Hill," "Atom Age Zombies" or "The Brain That Wouldn’t Die" are winners.

I recommend "Ringu," the original Japanese version of "The Ring." Despite our Chinese school’s Japanese karate instructor psyching himself up before watching it (for the second time) by rocking back and forth and repeating "it’s okay; I know karate," it’s not what most Americans would call actually scary.

The first three Alien movies, while not technically horror, are also acceptable.

Go international: China has a "lover’s day," too, in which boys get the girl they like flowers, and girls get boys books.

It adds some spice to the otherwise tired routine of red roses, fancy dinner out and marriage proposal that plays itself out every year, to have a slightly "ethnic" twist on romance.

And it’s nice to have a prescribed gift item - and the guarantee that the guy you’re into will have no more excuses for not reading the Twilight quadrilogy.

2/6/09: Together online, yes, but also on your own

Galvanized by my own surprise at the number of interesting, funny and decent people I met on Craigslist after posting a personal ad a few weeks ago, I decided to dig a bit deeper.

At first, I was worried I was missing something, some obvious, glaring pitfall in meeting people online. Everybody I wrote to seemed so nice. There had to be something wrong with these guys, right?

But meeting “on the Internet” has largely lost the stigma it had a decade ago, when “the Internet” seemed like code for “a back alley” or “because I couldn’t find anyone in real life.”

My experience has been almost entirely positive, as has the experience of my new friends, I’m happy to say — particularly since the people I’ve been corresponding with say they’ve never replied to a Craigslist ad before, making me their only “Craigslist friend.”

One friend, Edward, elaborated on his online socializing: As an autistic early teen, Edward lived mostly online, where he “had half a dozen instant messaging windows open at the same time, held chat room meetings, had power; could tell someone twice my age what needed to be done; could ban someone who got out of line.”

Edward has “met” people from all around the world online, and he describes his experiences as positive, right in sync with my own.

But not everyone shares this experience.

It’s partly a numbers game: It’s no coincidence that I’m a woman getting all these responses. Since more men than women seem to read “the personals,” men who post also seem to get fewer responses.

Mike Z of Berlin, for instance, who decided to post a new personal ad every day for 30 days, quit after 14 posts when almost all he’d gotten was spam ads.

He’d started out hopeful in his initial post Jan. 2 — “hello?” — straightforwardly stating that he was “looking for a girlfriend,” admitting that he’d been single for awhile.

A few women had responded, Mike said, but no one had stuck around: “It seems that you can be having a good conversation and then it just ends, me figuring maybe tomorrow they’ll write back or something, but nothing ever comes of it.”

By Jan. 8, Day 7, Mike was tired of getting nothing but spam, and the ad he posted showed it.

Starting with a primal-scream type “aaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” Mike demanded to know what was wrong with him and his ads that caused him to be so snubbed by Connecticut Craigslist women.

He asked women to respond with suggestions, if not interest, on what he could change to improve his ads.

Women did respond.

One woman, Mike says, wrote him “about a page and a half,” advising him to get “better pictures,” and not to “come off as so desperate” or say he was lonely.

There is something to this. In the DIY ethos of Craigslist, there aren’t many pointers along the way for how to craft a personal ad that displays your best qualities, no guidelines or auto-formatting like at larger, dating-specific Web sites.

At the same time, it’s exactly that do-it-yourself mentality that eventually caused women to respond to Mike — with advice rather than the offer of a coffee meet-up, sure, but in an effort to connect, nonetheless.

Mike was still disappointed enough to stop posting his ads, the last of which is on the Hartford Craigslist site as “another post lucky 13” on Jan. 21.

That’s tough, and I wish Mike luck — and hope.

Because, as my experience has shown, there are good people out there — here in Connecticut — and online.

My main disappointment remains that I can’t meet them all.

1/30/09: Getting real personal in mostly virtual way

Recently, I realized I needed more local friends.

I could pontificate here on the fragmentation of modern society, the industrialization of things that used to be personal and the disaffection caused by modern communication methods and media that may have gotten me to this point, but I won’t.

This isn’t a story about how I needed to find friends because globalization is a lonely making force.This is actually a story about how I found them.

Two weeks into the new year, I posted an ad on Craigslist, a Web site community familiar to most who consider themselves geeks, nerds or hipsters.

I’m using the word “community” here deliberately; Craigslist isn’t only a dating site like Match.com or eHarmony. It isn’t a career site like Monster or Idealist.org. And it doesn’t only offer free things to people willing to pick them up like a regional Freecycle listserve group. Craigslist is a do-it-yourself version of all of these things in one.

And it’s free, and is organized by geographic location, which was what I was looking for.

I was a Craigslist novice when I first looked up the personals section on the Hartford network, but I knew enough to realize that the “strictly platonic” category of personal ad was more for hook-ups than friendship-building. So I posted my ad in the section I thought would get me the most responses: “women seeking men.”

I introduced myself to central Connecticut as a nerd looking for people to hang out with, sat back and waited to see what I’d get back.

I was almost immediately overwhelmed with responses: In the first three days of my ad being posted, I got e-mails from no fewer than 50 different e-mail addresses.

True, some of these were spam ads for other “dating sites,” and some were from men looking for the sorts of relationships I wasn’t interested in — but the majority were from real people looking, as I had been, for a sense of connection.

I was touched, personally, by the positive responses I’d gotten. But beyond that, I was shocked by how many people out there — how many of us — are searching hopefully for others to have fun with, relate to and share their ideas and passions.

I got e-mails from people who liked the same music I liked, filled with “they’re great, aren’t they?” types of comments. I instant-messaged about the comic books I’ve read and the independent coffee shops I like to hang out at. I learned a bit more about towns I’d grown up near but never investigated.

I found a local whose hometown in China is an hour away from my adopted hometown, and a fellow nerd who took me to task for never having seen “Dr. Who.”

I was charmed by the people I wrote to, and even more charmed by the ones I met. Who knew central Connecticut was so full of engaging people?

I decided to do a little more digging and see how deep this vein went.

It wasn’t all sunshine and springtime: One responder said I was the first person he’d replied to on Craigslist who was real — the rest had all been spam ads.

And Mike Z. of Berlin has had plenty of trouble finding the connection he’s looking for.

Mike has been posting a new ad on the Hartford Craigslist most days since Jan. 2. He says he’ll continue posting for 30 days, or until he starts corresponding with someone interesting — and real.

Next week, Mike’s story.

1/23/09: It's time to add hope to our history

This week has been unprecedented. The news has been full of analysis of the inauguration, from how much money was spent on it (an unprecedented amount), how many celebratory balls the Obamas went to (an unprecedented number), how many people gathered in D.C. to participate (unprecedented crowds of them) and how great it is that America has finally elected a leader who is a person of color.

I like talking about things in this way, and I hope we keep it up.

I like it because before the newness of this inauguration, news cycles were full of accounts of an impending economic depression — “the second Great Depression,” I’d heard it called — and how the bailout would still be affecting us generations from now.

Before Obama even became president-elect, too, he was being compared to President Kennedy, and an Obama White House was being touted as a “return to Camelot.” Some of my friends, citing the fresh-faced young family’s similarities to the Kennedys, expressed concern for Obama’s safety, in the kind of hushed tones reserved for talking about things you’re afraid to say aloud in case it would somehow cause them to happen.

There’s a certain kind of adrenaline created by all that talk, especially when it links us now to memories of past traumas still shocking and dire enough to warrant moments of silent reflection.

But that kind of agitation is nothing compared with the adrenaline of moving forward, and that’s what I want to focus on. In fact, what I want most to say here is that we all should.

Our times are unprecedented. We can learn a lot from the past, and I hope we do: Saving money and learning to live within our means, as modest as they may be in this economy, are lessons we can glean from the 1930s. I, for one, have learned to cook turnips and make my own marmalade.

As loath as I am to suggest that anything “good” could come from the national trauma of the assassination of our president in 1963, I hope even the most extreme protestors learned that proper, democratic dissent can’t be handled by a gun or any violent solution. It can only be productively expressed in words and through legal, peaceful means.

But we’re not living in the Great Depression. We’re not living in the Cold War. Our lives now are so significantly different that we couldn’t have predicted what we’d be doing or caring about now even 20 years ago. Even 10 years ago, most of us would not have guessed we’d be where we are today.

We’re living in a country with people willing to participate in more than 12,000 service projects in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and President Barack Obama’s call to service, for one thing.

I have to admit that I have a soft spot for service projects; I spent two years in Washington, D.C., as a full-time Americorps volunteer, and loved it enough to be seriously tempted by the possibility of visiting for this week’s inauguration. My time in D.C., and as a volunteer, taught me that a lot can get done with a bit of optimism and elbow grease.

I’m not saying that I think that “the power of positive thinking” will magically save us from the need to right our economic situation any more than I think the King Day of Service will eliminate the need for social programs.

But these days require out-of-the-history-book thinking. Hope needs to be taken into account when we’re talking about the future.I think we’ll find our accounts are better off than we thought.

1/16/09: Goodbye Forest City, it's duet from now on

Well, I think you’ve almost certainly heard the news by now — if not in the paper you’re reading, then probably on TV. But in case you’re like me and only read my column and the comics, and only watch TV shows in commercial-free DVD form, here it is: The Herald and The Bristol Press have been bought.

In all the talk of buying and selling and the action-movielike last-minute appearance of publisher and newsman Mike Schroeder to save the day, though, in all the excitement and celebration, no one’s taken time to acknowledge that this is also a parting of ways. The Middletown Press, once called "the Marsha Brady" of our triplet papers, will be going it alone.

In case you’re wondering who’s ever called it that, it was me, just now.

You’ve probably noticed that I have a bit of a crush on Middletown. In a past column, I cited the city as a good example of downtown revitalization — an example New Britain and Bristol are justified in trying to emulate.

Alas, Middletown, it’s not to be: This is our last column together. I’ll be writing for The Bristol Press and The Herald, alone, from now on.

We’ve had some good times. I brought my friends to Javapalooza as a nice Starbucks alternative when they came to visit last year; the lamb Rogan Josh at Tandoor is excellent; and I love the way the Victorian houses on Broad Street have been made into businesses. I can even forgive you for towing my out-of-town friend’s car during the parking ban last week.

But it’s time for me to "love the one I’m with" now: New Britain’s Staropolska’s pierogies and the giant satellite dishes of Bristol’s ESPN.

Now’s a pretty good time to love New Britain and Bristol, actually. Despite our ailing economy (and snowy, cold winters), urban central Connecticut holds onto the "almost sacred relationship to work" that made author Stewart O’Nan set his novel "Last Night at the Lobster" in New Britain. And despite the advantages of Middletown’s Main Street collection of diversions, ferreting out hole-in-the-wall places (like the Hole-in-the-Wall Theater) for entertaining ourselves often becomes another form of entertainment — especially when many of us are already strapped for cash to spend once we get to wherever we’re going.

It’s getting easier to love other places from New Britain and Bristol as well. With the still-years-away busway between New Britain and Hartford at least in serious planning phases, and the construction of the Route 72 expansion into Bristol begun, we’re heading toward the integration of our communities that I expressed hope for this summer.

If U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy has his way, we’ll have increased commuter rail service between Hartford and Springfield, and while the rail spur between Berlin and Waterbury has always been more a dream than an impending reality, once everything else is in place, that connection would link the Amtrak Vermonter and the Metro-North train into New York City. We’d be right in the middle of the action.

As much as we’re about to be at a literal crossroad, newspapers in general, and our papers especially, are at a virtual one. We’re not stopping the presses, but plans for the Herald and Bristol Press will focus just as much on getting our local news online as getting it into print.

And that’s where you can still find me, Middletown.

We’ll always have the Web.

1/9/08:

When I was in high school, my younger brother got a pet dragon.

Now he plays in a rock band with his friends when he’s home on vacation, usually between midnight and 3 a.m.

I would never have thought of doing these things, myself — but then, he never went on a River Raid or destroyed Asteroids.

By now you probably know I’m talking about video games.

But I’m not just talking about video games. I’m talking about the way "kids these days" think and act, and how it’s been influenced by video games and new television genres.

I’m talking about it because despite my own relative youth, the way my brother — about 10 years younger than me — thinks is significantly different than the way I do. And I think it’s in large part thanks to his history with video games.

When I was 9, we had an Atari. By the time my brother was 9, we had a Sega and Super Nintendo, and as he grew older, he went through a Sony PlayStation, a Nintendo 64, an Xbox and several computers’ worth of computer games.

Was I deprived, or was I mercifully spared a virtual childhood?

I think that partly depends on how well the skills we learn in video games translate into real-world know-how.

On a practical level, for instance, thanks to his Halo experience, my brother may know how to outstrategize alien invaders.

That may not sound very practical, but while I probably learned some level of hand-eye coordination from my Atari adventures, my brother learned entire ways of thinking. Increasingly, the skills games require are the ones demanded by a global, information-driven economy: strategic thinking, virtual problem-solving and even (groan) some game theory.

Perhaps most importantly, he learned how to learn-by-video-game.

It’s not likely that his career path will veer into "professional video gamer," nor that all careers in the future will have video-game components. But we’re living in the society predicted by both naysayers and advocates of the Internet’s ubiquity. Our lives are just as much virtual as they are actual these days, and lines between real and not-real are smudging.

The blurring of boundaries heralded by the influx of "reality TV" shows 10 years ago has become much more sophisticated. We still have "Survivor," but we also have "Lost," which is a scripted show (less "real" than "Survivor" in that sense) with interactive elements such as "The Lost Experience" alternate-reality game that people play online (more "real" than "Survivor").

Even in sitcoms, which used to be about setting up elaborate one-line gags no matter how unrealistic the premise, we’ve moved on from "Friends" to "The Office," which subtracts the laugh track for awkward moments and the quotidian victories of paper company employees in Scranton, Pa. – also more like real life, unless you spend all your days being witty in Central Perk.

And "Lost" and "The Office" took their venture into "reality" one step further, running ads for products that exist only within the series. The uninitiated wouldn’t even know these weren’t real.

If interacting with the real world requires dealing with this much virtual input, maybe we should all be playing video games.

James Paul Gee, the author of "What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy," says that "we can learn a lot from those young people who play [video] games, if only we take them and their games seriously."

I agree. We all need to learn how to interpret, interact and think in a virtual world. Relying on old standards would be like training as a blacksmith after the Industrial Revolution: useful and quaint, but not quite relevant.

1/2/09:Traditionally, China isn't about the future

My second year in China, my brother called to chat. The conversation worked its way around to the "what time is it there?" point that most trans-time-zone conversations get to, and I said "it’s exactly the same time it is in Connecticut, but tomorrow morning."

"So you’re in the future?" he asked.

"Compared to you, yes. Twelve hours in the future."

"What’s tomorrow like? Oh, oh, wait — what are the newspaper headlines for tomorrow?"

I explained that it didn’t work like that. Just because it’s tomorrow in China doesn’t mean calling there gives us a psychic reading on the future. And that’s fitting. Fortune cookies notwithstanding, China is a country more about tradition than predicting the future.

He was disappointed but understanding.

In particular, relying on China for predictions on the new year won’t help, since Chinese New Year comes after ours. This year, Spring Festival, or Chunjie, falls on Jan. 26.

My first Chunjie in China was a bit startling, though I’d gotten used to some of the differences between Western and Chinese holidays during the fall. If I’d had Chinese ancestors, for instance, I might have participated in the burning of "ghost money," or fake paper currency, to ensure they weren’t living the afterlife in poverty during Ghost Festival.

My school had a Ghost Festival celebration culminating in "the sailing of the paper boats": We released folded paper boats, each carrying a single candle, onto an outdoor pool, and watched them burn and eventually sink.

An eerie reverie fell over the students as the boats floated away — eerie particularly if you’d tried to teach a class of squirmy, talkative fourth graders just a few hours earlier. (My students were barely recognizable when they weren’t wiggling out of their chairs or shouting "a hamburger!" in answer to a question.) — and it seemed we were all caught up in the past and our memories.

Chunjie, the biggest, oldest, loudest and most future-oriented Chinese holiday, doesn’t involve sailing paper boats, but it does involve paper, in the form of red scrolls inviting luck and fortune hung around doorways.

Chunjie also involves fire, which I was completely unprepared for.

Walking back from town around Chunjie, I came across pair after pair of children giggling conspiratorially — and almost all of them grasping some form of explosive.

This was alarming at first. If the kids, some of whom seemed barely old enough to toddle a safe firecrackering distance from their homes, hadn’t been so intimidatingly intent on setting them off, I might have demanded to know where their mothers were and marched them all home.

If I had, I probably would have encountered a bunch of moms wondering how the foreigner got in rather than what their kids were doing with sparklers and Roman candles. They all knew what their kids were up to; in China, everyone gets in on Chunjie firecrackers. They’re meant to ward off evil spirits, and kids are taught how to use them, mostly safely, practically from infancy. They symbolize Chinese connections to the past — to ancestors and past life events — while ushering in the future.

I learned this after a traditional dinner banquet and special variety-TV-show viewing at the headmaster’s house, when he invited me to join his family outside. He brought a giant wheel of firecrackers, the equivalent of a few thousand cap-gun caps, and lit the end. We all stood back as it spun and sparked, the lit end traveling inward on a spiral heading for the center.

Watching the spark travel toward its end was just as good as "watching the ball drop" for putting the old year to rest; and it was the closest I’ve ever gotten, or expect to get, to being able to predict the future.

Comment on 12/26/08, and response

Hi Alicia -- This is Ken from The Herald Sports department.

I was reading your column and have the following comment. I hope you don't think I'm being critical but if I don't tell you, maybe nobody would.

"You're a trooper," I believe, should be, "You're a trouper."

Merriam-Webster says:
: Trouper -- a person who deals with and persists through difficulty or hardship without complaint. You're a real trouper to wait so long.

I used the phrase recently, thought about it, checked it out and I was glad I did.

*****

Good point! And one I should've made in my column. I'll post your comment on my blog archive of my columns, if you don't mind.

I actually copied the phrase directly from the "101 Ways" poster I was looking at, but I should've checked, as you did, on the spelling. For a poster I was critiquing, trusting the spelling to be right was obviously trusting too much!

Alicia.

12/26/08: Wondering what to say? Praise the effort.

You may think me a bah-humbugger after my past two or three columns warning you off of things you shouldn’t say, when here we are in the middle of the jolliest time of year — the holidays.

You’d be partly right. Instead of eggnog, for instance, I’ve been drinking diet fruit punch. Not much holiday spirit in that.

But I don’t intend to leave you holding your tongue into the new year: Here, finally, is the column that tells you what to say instead of just what to avoid saying. This one’s all about praise.

Way to go! You made it — and so did I! High fives all around. And that haircut looks great on you, by the way. Most people couldn’t pull it off, but on you, it works. Not that it’s strange or anything, just, um — so how about this weather we’re having, eh?

While I think my firsthand experience qualifies me as an expert on things you shouldn’t say, I thought we’d all be better off if I did a little research on how to praise properly.

I consulted one of those posters of "101 Ways to Praise A Child," hoping a quick fix would do the trick.

From "bingo" to "you’re a winner," though, I saw praise that would work only in particular situations: "you learned it right" wouldn’t be very helpful, for instance, in encouraging a kid struggling with math to persevere past the two-plus-two-equals-five stage. And I have a hard time imagining myself saying "hot dog!" unless I’m actually handing one to someone.

I memorized a few and experimented with them anyway. In general, my attempts to praise led to confusion, neck-straining (as friends looked around for the promised hot dogs: "Where are they? I’m getting hungry") and eventual disappointment ("Well, now I wish I had one") rather than increased self esteem.

Maybe a new vocabulary wasn’t enough; I needed a new theory.

And — hot dog! — I found one.

An (actual) experiment in praise performed by psychologist Carol Dweck and her team at Columbia University found that acknowledging effort, rather than innate talent, works. In the experiment, two groups of fifth-graders were given an easy test. One group of kids was told they had done well because they were smart; the other group was told they had done well because they worked hard.

When they were all given the opportunity to take a harder test, or stick to the same level of difficulty, the majority of the "smart" kids chose to remain at the same level. Ninety percent of the "hardworking" kids chose the harder test — and then worked harder.

Not only did the "hardworking" group have a more positive attitude toward the tests and their own efforts, but when retested, they improved their original scores by about 30 percent. The "smart" kids did worse by about 20 percent.

I went back to the 101 Ways poster to see how many of the phrases I’d learned fell into the "you’re smart!" category. There were a few that would have to be axed, in addition to "you figured it out," "you’re catching on," and "A+ job," which are based on results rather than effort.

There were also a lot of generalities, such as "neat," "super work," or "wow," which aren’t as effective as specifics.

Here’s what to remember about praise, then: the more focused on specific efforts, the more effective.

So in the spirit of the season, thanks for taking the time to look over this column, reader. You’re a real trooper.

How was it — good? Let me know; your praise could help me write an even better column next week.

12/19/08: A bit of sound advice, and why not to give it

As promised, here are some phrases to avoid when giving advice. Remember this list when your relatives are in town.


"Calm down."

As a joke: You can say this to someone who is sitting quietly, reading a book or otherwise not bothering you in any way. This is especially effective used on someone who is never excitable, such as an entomologist.

For real: Either the person you’re saying this to is actually upset about something, in which case your saying "calm down" will almost certainly fail to have the desired effect, or they don’t perceive themselves as being worked up and you’ve succeeded in pointing out their embarrassing volume level.

Perhaps instead, you could say "You’re being loud and embarrassing me, which is just as important as the fact that I stole your credit cards. Have a little self-respect!"


"Stop worrying."

As a joke: Repeat this phrase at increasing volume, again when the person you’re speaking to does not appear to be worrying at all. Escalation is key.

For real: Telling a worrier to stop worrying will have the opposite of the intended effect, since you’ve now shown them you are not willing to share the necessary work of preventing disaster through worrying it away. Now they’ll have to do your part of the worrying, too.
The only way to unclench worrywarts is to beat them at their own game. For every new anxiety they mention, respond, eyes wide with concern, "I know — we’re probably all going to die! Probably from this!"

If they object, up the ante until they give up: Santa won’t come this year; zombie robots will doom us all to a life of telemarketing; "owls will deafen us with their incessant hooting"; etc.


"Chill out."

Var. "calm down" — see previous entry.


"Don’t do anything stupid."

As a joke: This phrase functions best in response to someone’s announcement that they’re about to do something completely reasonable and necessary, such as wash the dishes.

For real: The person you’re advising has probably already decided to do something stupid by the time you utter this phrase. Your advice only indicates your disapproval at that point, making it less likely you’ll get a front-row seat for the ensuing disaster.

It’s also possible that the advisee is still on the fence; in this case, the phrase only distances you from the person you’re trying to convince. Like worriers, people about to act stupidly usually don’t recognize that what they’re going to do is stupid. Even if they do, most people don’t like to be reminded of their own capacity for stupidity, despite its humanitywide prevalence.

Instead of telling the advisee not to be stupid, then, bring their focus around to possible actions or ideas that may be smart: "let’s mop the kitchen floor," "how about getting some ice cream" or "why don’t you adopt that pet tortoise you’ve always wanted, instead" may get the advisee in a better frame of mind.


"Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do."

As a joke: This works best if you are a person of extremes — either extremely straight-laced or a daredevil.

For real: This phrase has one advantage over other typical advice phrases, which is that it reveals the true raison d’etre of advice-giving: to get the advisee to act exactly as you feel you would act in a given situation.

Anyone reaching the point of seriously uttering this phrase should stop speaking immediately and seek help.

After you’ve received your share of advice, you should be able to return to the previous conversation, knowing better.