what do you do when your fingers are burning?

Blog about it, of course!

So yesterday, I got two of what I thought was Jalapeno peppers. I never used Jalapeno peppers before, and I remember reading that they were supposed to be flavourful peppers that's low on the spice. I thought that was perfect for the pasta I wanted to make.

As I chopped away, the capsaicin got to me and I was coughing all the way. My roommate was laughing at my thinking that Jalapeno peppers not being hot. Okay, so I was wrong.

I started cooking. My roommate started coughing her lungs out also. I told her that I will not cook like this again.

And then, after eating some of my spicy pasta and doing some internet research, I realized that what I bought was probably Habanero peppers, something that's about 40x stronger than Jalapeno peppers. Jalapeno peppers were supposed to be green and elongated. Habanero peppers are bright orange, fat and wrinkly. I am also learning now, the hard way, that these peppers are not safe to handle by hand, and that the burning is likely to stay for the next few days.

(Yes I tried washing with oil and soap... it made it worse -_-'... I was touching it all the way while cooking and putting it in the pot...)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jalape%C3%B1o
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habanero

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the fun(ny) side of america

I've been pretty negative about my experience here, so this is a list of all the fun and funny things that happened, just to balance it off and so that I remember. They're in no particular order, just blogger sucks and won't display my circle bullets.

1. Seeing first hand about what american consumerism is all about - it's depressing and amusing at the same time... though sometimes disgusting.... >_>... (Yes, I know that Canadians are quite some consumerists as well, but I'm not friends with these people and don't come in close contact with them. Now, I'm living with an assistant manager of a high-end dress store slash bridal specialist. Go figure.)
2. Walking along a high way in the rain at night, with cars going past me at 65mph. That was fun. I was laughing all the way.
3. Taken on a drive into the beautiful suburbs of stamford, where rich people lives in mansions. I'm not a fan of having lots of space for the sake of having lots of space, but the plentitude of trees does give that perfect amount of privacy... and natural beauty.
4. Learning the hard way that Jewish mothers (like Chinese mothers and Indian mothers) loves to give you food... even though you're only the girlfriend of the son of her husband's friend from 50 years ago's who haven't kept in touch in the last 20 years. But dammit guacamole is AWESOME!
5. Having a 6d? account on KGS - I knew that having a ? rank (due to not having played enough games for the computer to estimate your rank) means it's going to jump a lot, but I didn't expect the comp to have me jump from 1d? to 6d? just because I won against a 1k ...
6. Hurrying past people masturbating to weird music in the Rittenhouse Park ...
7. A bunch of teens sitting outside of Qdoba (another mexican place that I go to since there's no Chipotle around here... *sniffles*) pretending that they're time travellers without any money

I'm sure I'll have more to add to this list... next week's Rochester trip will definitely be a highlight of the term. They've come to my tourney, now it's my turn to go to theirs.

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Facebook, stalking, and interviews

Alright. I know what I did was freaky. I was curious. I wanted to see if anyone from my work was on Facebook. I didn't think that my manager would be stupid enough to not have his privacy settings right.... so I could see his profile and also his... pics of (I know, way to make it seem worse than it actually is by censoring...)

I also found out that he's younger than Greg, and that with the old FB layout he would've been the guy with a 3-pgs-long profile....

That kind of tramatized me a bit. I mean I already know that I'm not going to like this term, but it gets me thinking: what if I looked him up before I accepted this position (or better yet, before I chose the office location)? I mean we all get told that employers sometimes look at our facebook profiles but - why couldn't it work both ways? Why couldn't we know a bit more about the kind of person that we're going to be stuck with for four months?

I honestly think I'm going to start doing this next term.

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