Oh. So you thought I’d stopped thinking and talking about Taiwan, right? Sorry… no! (See the archives, say under “food and drink“, if you don’t know to what I’m referring.)
Another great thing I enjoyed while there is the fruit. There’s great fruit everywhere. Reminds me a lot of part of my childhood for lots of reasons.
Here’s an arrangement of some type of very fragrant citrus fruit that was in a reastuarant in Hsinchu. They had several of these arrangements around the place, and it smelled divine!
(I went there with my dear friends and colleagues Chong-Sun Chu (Durham), Keh-Fei Liu (Kentucky) and Tu-Nan Chang (USC), who are all based in non-Taiwan institutions (although Tu-Nan is directing the National Center for Theoretical Sciences I told you about earlier.)
Here’s an arrangement of fire-dragon fruit brought to the table at the end of a banquet-style meal at an excellent tradiational-style restaurant (see below) in Hsinchu. Just a wonderful fruit, with gorgeous patterning and colouring, don’t you think? And delicious!
(It was quite a splendid restaurant (as was the other one). It is particularly famous for its traditional layout as well as the food. The layout (shot of entrance below right) includes full-blown streams of water running through the restaurant, with lots of 
ornamental fish in the various streams. (Hsinchu readers, please feel free to remind me of its name.) Earlier, I went to another of these -even more wonderful, imho- in Tainan, and I do intend to show you a shot or two of that since the style of food there was just great, and very visual. Back to this one, I went with a group that included Tu-Nan Chang (USC), Ray-Nien Kwo, the chair of the National Tsing-Hua University physics department, her husband, (whose name I’ve forgotten, I’m embarrassed…he’s a physicist too I think; I welcome help on this from Hsinchu readers….), and Douglas Osheroff (Stanford, and yes, it’s the same Osheroff who won the Nobel Prize in 1996 for Superfluidity in Helium-3), and his wife, whose name I’ve also forgotten, to my embarrassment.
I know some of you would prefer to see pictures of the people instead of the fruit, but it did not occur to me at the time….. Hey, I’m weird that way.
-cvj
March 26th, 2006 at 1:38 am
Ah, the fire-dragon fruit!
I had the pleasure of eating them a few months ago on my holiday. Excellent stuff! They remind me of kiwi fruit and perhaps they are related.
They must be the easiest fruits to peel. You do need to first break the skin, though. After that’s done, there’s no resistance whatsoever. The skin almost falls off by itself. (Okay, that’s an overstatement.)
March 26th, 2006 at 5:33 am
[snip]
Moved to the correct thread. -cvj
March 26th, 2006 at 12:20 pm
chimpanzee… thanks! Those look like great photos. I will be sure to check there for updates. I’ll also make a post here about the eclipse for you and others to comment on if you like.
Cheers,
-cvj
March 26th, 2006 at 5:00 pm
[snip]
moved to the correct thread. – cvj
March 26th, 2006 at 7:07 pm
chimpanzee:- You should put stuff like this under the “Shadow Dancing” thread…. a post I made just for this purpose.
Cheers,
-cvj
March 26th, 2006 at 10:32 pm
wow, dude. That sounds fabulous. My employer maintains collaborations with Taiwan and occasionally sends people over there. Not me, which is just as good since the people who do go spend a lot of time complaining about the food. Who wants to travel with drips, I say.
March 27th, 2006 at 3:18 pm
http://www.identitagolose.it/english/dessert/relatore.php?relatore=22
it reminds me of Davide Cassi, the italian physicist who is studying gastronomy, or molecular cooking (link above). More gastro-physical recipes here below (Italian only).
http://newton.corriere.it/Pregresso/2003/02/2003020100019.shtml
March 27th, 2006 at 5:15 pm
Frumious B. That’s amazing! If your colleagues complain about the food in Taiwan they are either being locked in a box while there, are xenophobes, have weird and/or juvenile tastes in food, or are just spectaculalry ignorant. Or all four. See my earlier posts on the range of wonderful food you can get there.
Cheers,
-cvj