Sunday, January 27, 2008

Wo xi huan yong kuaizi!



The headline is Mandarin Chinese for “I like to use chopsticks!” it represents one of a few phrases I remember from the eight months I spent studying Mandarin Chinese at Defense Language Institute in Presidio of Monterey, Calif.

The other night, as an early birthday present (I turn 35 on February 6), my wife took me and our kids out for a Chinese buffet. As always, I asked the waitress for chopsticks (In Chinese, to request chopsticks, you’d say, “Ching ni gei wo kuaizi [Cheeng nee gay wo kwai zuh].” I ate with them for a while until my left wrist got sore, and then I switched to a fork.

Well, as it turns out, eating with chopsticks is actually a good thing. John Tesh, on his radio program Intelligence for Your Life, recently reorted that using chopsticks make you eat slower. This, in turn, gives your stomach ample time to send signals to your brain telling it that you are full.

I was joking with my wife that maybe it’s time I try to buy a permanent pair of chopsticks from the store. I don’t think, though, that I’ll be doing The Karate Kid thing by trying to catch flies with the utensils!

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