Stale off the Boat with Eddie Huang

Notes: For this four-hour assignment, I watched episodes 3 and 4 of the new sitcom, Fresh Off the Boat, with 3 other Asian-American friends and afterwards debated whether or not the show was realistic, racist, or any good at all. Then, I went home and wrote a review.

Stale off the Boat with Eddie Huang

By episode four of the “groundbreaking” Asian-American sitcom, I’m starting to see what Eddie’s angry about.

image from Hollywood Reporter

Fresh Off the Boat, a new ABC sitcom based off the adolescence of Eddie Huang, big restaurateur (he owns the popular Baohaus in the East Village) and even bigger personality (he’s a regular on VICE and prone to dropping four-letter-words along with extended Frankenstein ones of his own creation left and right in every interview), drew some controversy for using the racial slur “chink” in the pilot episode. The scene goes like this: in white-washed Orlando, Florida, where young Eddie is an outcast newcomer, the only other kid of color, a black boy, pushes him out of the way in the lunch line and onto the bottom of the middle school totem pole– a place he used to inhabit de-facto.

In isolation, it’s a simple act of pre-teen territorial marking, some standard name calling pushing the biggest button an 11-year old can think of, the race card. But here’s the thing. It’s more complicated than that– what little Eddie, whose idols are all black rappers with big swagger, living the FBGM life– wants most is to be accepted by his white schoolmates. To be a Lunchable, pizza flavor. Walter, the offending name-caller, says it best, after Eddie chooses the shaggy haired popular crowd over him, with a roll of his eyes: “What kind of country is this, where a white kid and an asian kid bond over a black guy?”.

I find myself asking the same thing about the show. Despite all the racially colored, exaggerated antics of the Huangs, there is very little substance addressing the so many obvious racial questions we’re left wanting to ask. Why is the show called Fresh Off the Boat, a racialized slur that in my experiences is far more common and loaded than the above offense, when Eddie’s family is fresh off the boat at all, but fresh off a car drive from another major U.S. city? Did little Eddie have black friends in DC, where his family recently moved from and which is significantly less white-washed than Orlando?

Hip hop is so clearly an inspiration to Huang, but we only ever see it repurposed in the hands of white or asian kids. What young Eddie aspires to the most is the image he’s formed in his head of black masculinity. He wants honeys (literal Honeys, in Episode Four, where he tries to win over his sexy new (married adult) neighbor– was that a nod to Biggie’s lyrics?) playing him close and a soundtrack to go with his swagger (albeit currently played on a boombox by his grandmother).

It makes great sitcom fodder, because to the viewer, there’s nothing further away from a black rapper than the fat little asian kid, eating tofu and being told to do his math exercises by his Dragon-lady mother and his contentedly obedient younger siblings. Hilarity and entertainment ensues, but doesn’t the fact that we the viewer find it comedic at all, affirm, on some level, that the struggle is real?

For Huang, the real life one, the struggle is exactly that: what he calls “breaking the bamboo ceiling”, or the stereotype of model minority. The show, although at times endearing and “aww”-inspiring in an overstated way (parents making up after a fight, cute child actors being cute) fails to do that. At most, it puts a more human face to a heavily-stereotyped, fantasy Asian-American family. Which isn’t to call it a trivial feat: after all, this is the first Asian family on TV ever.

Eddie, as expected, had harsher words: “The network tried to turn my memoir into a cornstarch sitcom and me into a mascot for America. I hated that”[1]. As for me, I’m left wondering what all this means to the little Asian kids out who grew up listening to Biggie and Nas and Tupac (if we must include the West Coast) to fuel their swagger. What about girls, who have two ceilings to break: bamboo and glass (that’s another thing; aside from the mother figure, this show is a Boy’s world). Are we all just material for laugh tracks?

Still, any depiction of Asian-Americans that brings at least more than one-dimension to the unexplored arena can be a welcome one. Despite all the unanswered questions and the heavy-handed reliance on tropes, it’s a step in, if not the right direction, at least some sort of movement. As for the opinion of this little “Chinkstronaut”? I go home, pull out my laptop, and blast some Notorious B.I.G.

In the words of Biggie Smalls: It’s all good, baby baby.

1http://www.vulture.com/2015/01/eddie-huang-fresh-off-the-boat-abc.htm

“Tesla”: A Novel about Inventions and Illusions

The west bled a most tragic crimson. The two young men stared at the middle of the path that showed the blueprint of the motor.

             The scene is from “Tesla: A Portrait with Masks,” a novel by Serbian author Vladimir Pištalo, and depicts one of the most iconic moments in the history of science. It was February 1882 when Nikola Tesla, walking with his friend in a Budapest park, drew the blueprint for his most famous invention, the induction motor. Ten years later, the motor would become the basis of the alternating current revolution, ushering in an era of previously unimaginable discoveries.

570508_img2048-promo_f

Pištalo signing his book “Tesla – A Portrait with Masks”

Pištalo’s novel — winner of the most prestigious award in Serbia 7 years ago — has just been translated into English and on Monday night it was promoted at Porter Square Books in Cambridge. Pištalo, who teaches American history at Becker College in Worcester, says he spent 8 years researching Tesla’s life, only to discover that it is not even certain what color the inventor’s eyes were.

“Some say they were brown, others say they were blue, and some again claim his eyes were originally brown and they turned blue because of all the electricity he let pass through him,” told Pištalo an amused audience.

Pištalo comes from the same part of the world as Tesla, who was Serbian, and who immigrated to the U.S. in 1884, aged 28. Tesla briefly worked for Edison before developing the AC motor, which made it possible to transfer electric power over long distances.

“At that time, people had faith in inventors. Journalists were really convinced that the world would be better, that all wars would stop, and that there would be no end to progress. And then World War I ended that illusion,“ says Pištalo.

NaslovnaIt was also around that time that Tesla, a prolific inventor, who not only made possible the electricity we use today, but also invented radio (before Marconi), and experimented with X-rays before Roentgen, reached the end of his endeavors. His most important invention, the wireless transmission of power, never came to be.

Pištalo says Tesla turned to J.P. Morgan for funding. Morgan gave 150,000 dollars for wireless transmission of messages, but unbeknownst to Morgan, Tesla worked on wireless transmission of power.

“Tesla broke all deadlines and Morgan would not finance him anymore. At that time, the House of Morgan controlled 13% of the world’s finances and if Morgan wouldn’t touch a project, no one would. In the end, Tesla’s lab at Wardenclyffe was sold as scrap metal,“ says Pištalo.

The audience asked the novelist questions ranging from Tesla’s relationship with another Serbian-American inventor, Michael Pupin (“They were from the same notch of the wood, but didn’t like each other”) to whether Tesla believed in God (“He was a Christian and a Buddhist, but really believed in Aristotle’s entelechy”).

Pištalo is a well-known writer in Serbia, and has published 7 novels. This is his first novel that has been translated into English.

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Toucans & Turtles – A game of League of Legends

This is a piece reporting on a game of League of Legends (often shorted to League or LoL) on Sunday afternoon featuring Team Solo Mid (TSM) vs Team Liquid streamed live to over 300k viewers. Like most sports, the verbiage is confusing if you’re not a follower, I’ve tried my best to actually report on the game while also including references to help and following the player-based stories.

The following is a brief description of the game itself.

League of Legends is a 5v5 objective-based sport (there is no fixed time per game). Each team picks 5 characters out of a pool of over 100. Games of League can be categorized into 3 phases: early game: where players are pit individually against each other, mid game: where teams start to group and work together, and late game: where objectives and team movements are more important than individual skill.

Teams fight over objectives on the map such as towers or neutral creatures such as the Dragon and Baron. Doing enough damage to an enemy champion results in a ‘kill’ or a short power-play for the other team, during which they can take objectives. Objectives give ‘buffs’ which leads to greater strength for the team that takes them. When the final objective, the enemy’s nexus, is taken the game ends.

The positions for the game are: mid, top, jungle, marksmen and support, with each role playing a unique niche on the team. Each player has a role that they play as well as an in-game nickname, referred to in quotation marks for example, Thariq “trq” Shihipar.

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Natural Disasters Vs Mining Operations in Indonesia

I started this data visualization set at 4.30 pm today and finish it almost four hours later. This is the first time I try to visualize several data sets using CartoDB, after participating in a workshop on using this tool last January.

The idea is combining three different data sets about natural disasters in Indonesia (floods, landslides and forest fire) to see the places where it happened most of the time in 2014, and then layered it with a map of places where non oil and gas mining operates in the country.

I suspect that most of these disasters happened in places where nature has lost its ability to sustain the balance, due to over exploitation of the resources. Obviously, although the trigger is natural cause, disasters such as flood, landslides and forest fire are basically human made.

All of the data sets used here are taken from government database, available at http://data.go.id.

I try to find other relevant datasets to combine the disasters map, such as: industrial zone maps, deforestation map, oil and gas mining zone, but unfortunately, those map don’t have similar georeference codes that can be read in CartoDB. So I finally settled with only a distribution map of the non-oil and gas mining industry.

Initially I wasn’t sure how to make the connection because Indonesia has more that 1.000 mining locations spread all over the archipelago, but then I found the torque heat animation which I think can represent the different concentration level of the mining industry in different places. The heat animation can highlight and contrast the disasters map which are only represented by different colors of simple circles.

From doing this exercise, I realize the complexity of data visualization, the importance of having a clean data set and the powerful image it can give to the audience. I hope when people look at this map, they can really make the connection between these horrible disasters and the mining industry that for years have been operating without a clear environmental regulation and oversights. (*)

Click here to see the map: Indonesian Natural Disasters Vs Mining Operation Distribution Map

PLACES Journal finds its way back to MIT

PLACE
noun
plural: places
  1. a particular position or point in space.
  2. a portion of space available or designated for or being used by someone.

This new exhibit at the MIT Museum has the purpose of reminding us of the second part of the definition: places are there for people to use, interact in and transform into incredible and wonderful sights.

Founded in 1983, Places Journal has tried “to see places in new ways” as the editors wrote, and this exhibit offers us a glimpse of those new ways of seeing places around the world.

Since the Journal was co-founded by an architecture faculty at MIT and the University of California, Berkeley, it seems only logical that after 32 years, MIT Museum would display some of its more relevant pieces.

21 photographers, from the famous Joel Sternfeld to Maria Cox, give us a new way of apprehending places where people live and feel. A lot of the photographs in the exhibit present New York places but don’t worry you will also encountered very unknown place such as Kyrgyzstan sights from Margaret Morton for example.

Enjoy a small preview in the exhibit by clicking the link below. New ways of showing the world deserved a new way of displaying quotes and a few pieces present in the exhibit.

TAKE ME AWAY!


The exhibit will run until August 16, 2015.

MIT Museum – 10am 5pm – http://web.mit.edu/museum/
Places Journal Website: https://placesjournal.org/


  • 1:30 – 2:45 : Museum
  • 3:00 – 4:00 : Photo treatment
  • 4:00 – 5:15 : Post publication

10 tips on writing a book (this is not a list)

Disclaimer: this a four-hand review. We collaborated on the interview and the writing. Every sentence was drafted and edited by the two authors simultaneously. The piece is trying to bring back a bit of the old fashioned impressionistic twist into the lists craze.

Timing: 30 min to decide topic, 60 min interview, 30 min sharing notes, 75 min writing and editing.

10 tips on writing a book (this is not a list)

by AJ and Ricardo

A Harvard Fellow writing a book on international affairs shares his thoughts on the creative process (warning: this article is ISIS, Cuba and elections free)

 

You’re sitting at your desk on yet another normal snowy day in Cambridge, MA. Tea is hot and ready. You even got that snack to sustain you through the afternoon. You flip your laptop open and you are about to act on you latest brilliant idea. You are going to write a book. You have just forgotten the most important tip about writing a book: it is a lonely affair.

Your life is about to turn into a one-person marathon, you and your shadow carrying that computer (and it better be an Apple) through the city’s quietest corners and emptiest parks.

This was the first warning we got from H.K, a middle aged lawyer and diplomat, half-Latino and half Middle Eastern, who’s been in Cambridge for two years and just emailed his manuscript to his publisher and friend of 10 years in Argentina.

Why did you write a book, we asked him over decaf coffee in a campus cafeteria bustling with rushed students and even more rushed Buddhist monks.

“You cannot grow without criticism. You have to let the public judge you.” So whatever the topic that keeps you up at night, world peace or the best apple pie recipes, your book is a discussion, a new debate about –often- old issues.

Discipline or inspiration? According to H.K, inspiration gets you started, disciple writes your book. “In my case, I read and research for a week, and I write for a week. 6 hour-days. Discipline is everything.” Writing is like jazz. To the untrained ear it sounds like a lot of improvisation. But you better stick to the rhythm.

As the interview was drifting, again, to snow logistics, H.K interrupts us: “My book is a very important part of my legacy.” In Latin America, a life with purpose can be summarized like this: “Tenga un hijo, siembre un árbol, escriba un libro”…. “ have a child, plant a tree, write a book”… those were our grand-fathers’ words on a life well lived. It is neither narcissism nor megalomania, just a guy writing and thinking about his grand-kids.

And remember, every couple of hours, you’ll stop writing, check your iPhone and go on Twitter. And that scary thought will hit you: with all those millions of ideas out there, am I actually adding something original, or just more clutter?

Warning: you are now on the highway to writer’s block. H.K gave us his tip to find the exit: if your book is personal, if it is about you, and if it stems right from something that makes you different, you’ll have nothing to worry about. H.K’s writing is all about his unique perspective as the son of Arab immigrants in Latin America, who studied in Germany, married an American woman and has an American son. If you let your personal journey speak through your academic credentials (H.K has a PhD in international law), somebody out there will find your book original.

You might find it lonely, this writing-a-book business, but it is still the most honest and thoughtful way to start a conversation with “everybody”.

Remember, we promised you tips but no lists…

 

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Student’s bid to reenter MIT raises questions about medical leave process

I started the story below just over four hours ago with an interview. I suppose I should add a slight reflection/qualification first. We often hear about students having bad experiences with MIT medical leave or readmission after it. It’s often tough, though, to sort out legitimate complaints that can serve as the basis of a critical story from hearsay or more dubious objections to a process that will likely leave people disappointed even in the best case. But in this case, between the possible legal action (with decent precedent), the crowdfunding campaign, significant attention and support from on-campus email lists, the subject’s own documentation and willingness to go on-the-record, and the added issue of financial hardship during medical leave, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to finally explore this issue. I only had time to incorporate one side, but I hope to add in all the nuance later that I think makes this story interesting.

That being said, this story is not ready to go to print. Due to the four hour limit, I have yet to get/seek comment from MIT (though it will likely just be a “no comment” for privacy reasons). I also want to incorporate far more documents and direct quotes into a longer, more interesting piece for The Tech. And since colorful writing or its absence so often makes or breaks feature/profile pieces, and this piece feels so dry, I expect a lot of revision will be necessary.

I’m quite used to writing stories quickly in news style, but getting even the skeleton of a profile done in 2.5 hours from a 1.5 hour interview is pretty tough. In retrospect, perhaps this wasn’t the best choice of topic given the time constraint, but it also grew significantly over the course of the interview.

Here’s the current version:

***

According to Joshua Hernandez, his story is not uncommon at MIT. Following his February 2013 stay at McLean psychiatric hospital in Belmont due to an “intense depressive episode,” he went on voluntary medical leave from the Institute. Two years and two failed applications for readmission later, his fledgling campaign to raise money to mount a legal challenge to MIT’s latest decision has prompted discussion on campus — and commiseration from those with similar stories they say stem from a flawed approach by MIT administrators.

Hernandez feels the latest denial of his readmission application lacked a solid medical basis and said it runs counter to the recommendations of his therapist — a possible violation of Section 504 of the Americans with Disabilities Act. But he also emphasized the struggles embarking on medical leave without stable finances or home life, stresses he described as comparable to those at MIT.

Hernandez knew he had bipolar II disorder before a period of depression and resulting alcohol abuse led to his hospitalization. His assigned therapist summarized his progress during his stay to MIT Mental Health, a division of MIT Medical tasked with handling the clinical side of such cases. A day before his discharge, he learned from MIT Student Support Services (S^3) that he had little choice but to voluntarily go on medical leave. “I was told that it would be extremely difficult for me to return to MIT” if forced onto mandatory leave, he said.

Though Hernandez said he was upset with the decision and felt it was “not handled as well as I think it could be,” he said, “Ultimately I did kind of agree with … the assessment that I could use time away from MIT.”

His next move, though, was less straightforward. Hernandez, whose family lives in Mexico, said his situation at home was unstable, partially due to fraught relationships with his parents. He said MIT pushed for him to move back in with his them, though he deemed it impossible due to complications of moving internationally and the emotional toll of living at home.

He ended up staying with a friend in Cambridge and attending five weeks of daily therapy through the Triangle Program in Boston at the behest of MIT. He said that the daily commitments made it even more difficult to find work, already a difficult prospect for someone seeking temporary positions without an undergraduate degree.

MIT requires students on medical leave to take classes or work full time while away from the Institute, but Hernandez expressed displeasure with the policy, suggesting it was extremely stressful for students with few resources to quickly find employment.

“It’s kind of biased against … people that come from poor families because it assumes you have a stable home environment to return to.” In addition to difficulties finding work and residence, Hernandez said his finances were complicated by the loss of his high degree of financial aid, which, along with an on-campus job, he had counted on to make ends meet.

Hernandez moved to Seattle in May 2013 to live with his stepfather and began to work as an online physics tutor while still meeting with a therapist regularly.

His first proposal for readmission, submitted in November and December of 2013, included letters of recommendation from his employer and therapist, an academic plan, an essay about what he learned from his time away, and a detailed list of his activities since his hospitalization.

When he learned from a call with MIT Mental Health that his insomnia had endangered his readmission bid, he went to a sleep clinic and was diagnosed and successfully treated for sleep apnea, and he informed S^3 of the development. He said his therapist was confident that his alcohol abuse was only a symptom of his depressive episodes — one that had not resurfaced since his hospitalization — and told MIT as much. Nevertheless, insomnia and alcohol abuse were listed as the reasons for denial of his readmission proposal in January 2014.

Hernandez was upset that his application was denied due to issues — insomnia and excessive drinking — that he felt had come under control and were unlikely to plague him at MIT. Nevertheless, he continued his leave, still working as a tutor and eventually moving in with grandparents in Mexico. When he applied for readmission in late 2014, he felt confident he had addressed all the issues that had derailed his previous bid.

But in a four-way phone interview with MIT Mental Health and S^3 representatives, he was asked how he planned to control his violent tendencies, which Hernandez said had never been an issue or even concern throughout his illness, treatment, or leave. He said he told the interviewers about his displeasure with MIT’s process and what he considered their far-fetched concerns.

Unsurprisingly, he said, his application was rejected again, this time with unspecified concerns from an S^3 dean as the critical factor.

Hernandez thinks the vague medical basis of the rejection is a violation of section 504 of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which requires “reasonable accommodations” for illnesses including mental issues, and said he hopes to see broader changes in MIT medical leave policy in addition to the reversal of his readmission denial. He is firm in his judgment that MIT officials are in the wrong, but he still insists that they are well intentioned and that tough decisions on medical leave are still sometimes necessary.

Though he didn’t want to go into detail about his legal options, he said that he is interested in keeping a lawyer who specializes in higher education student mental health cases on retainer with any funds raised by the crowdfunding campaign, which he described as a long-shot idea suggested by his friend. As the fundraising link has circulated on certain campus lists, the vast majority of commenters have expressed support. Hernandez said three quarters of the messages he has received about the issue have described similar experiences with medical leave readmission applications.

An evening in the ER

“Tell me what happened that brought you in here,” the doctor says, eyeballing a thin young man consigned to a bed in the corridor of a Boston hospital’s emergency room.

He has a rare disease of his intestinal tract, the patient explains softly. The doctor leans in to hear him above the chatter of passing nurses. And he came in hoping for relief of rectal pain.

Back at the nurse’s station, the doctor shows me a warning entered in the patient’s electronic medical record: “DRUG-SEEKING BEHAVIOR,” it says. It cautions against giving him a heating pad because in the past, he has used one to elevate his temperature.

I had decided to visit the emergency room to see for myself what politicians and public health officials have called an alarming crisis – a surge in deaths caused by overdoses of heroin and prescription painkillers, which are collectively known as opioids. On Thursday, the administration of Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker released data showing that overdose deaths from opioids increased by almost half in 2013 from the year before, to almost 20 a week.

Source: Mass. Department of Public Health (Data exclude suicides.)

Source: Mass. Department of Public Health (Data exclude suicides.)

A few weeks earlier, the ER I visited had treated six patients for opioid overdoses in a single Friday night shift. This is not that unusual: a federal report notes that ER visits related to misuse or abuse of opioid prescription drugs jumped 183 percent nationally between 2004 and 2011, to nearly half a million.

 

Source: US Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration

Source: US Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration

 

During my evening at the ER, however, no overdose cases arrive. Patients are being treated for a stroke, a head injury suffered in a fall, shortness of breath, unexplained pelvic pain, unexplained malaise, an anxiety attack, a nose bleed. The count of patients in the waiting room, displayed prominently on screens at the nursing station, steadily ticks up, from 1 to 7.  “Welcome to the jungle,” the chief resident says when we meet.

But doctors are vigilant for patients who might be inflating pain complaints to feed an addiction to opioid medication, such as the young man in the corridor, with a stubbly patch of beard on his chin.

He drew their suspicion because his description of the location of his pain changed; when he arrived, he had told the triage nurse it was in his abdomen. But his doctor is sympathetic. The patient has suffered a litany of medical problems, and pain can be ambiguous – there’s no blood test or scan to diagnose it. She is reluctant to deny medication to someone who is actually in severe pain. Still, she recounts the story of a past patient who complained of severe pain but then walked out of the ER when a scan showed nothing wrong and doctors wouldn’t give him Dilaudid.

The doctor digs further. From the medical records and conversations with the patient, she learns he has visited four other Boston emergency departments in the previous few days. Three apparently sent him on his way without providing treatment. But a fourth performed a scan, and though it revealed no serious problem, gave him a prescription for an opioid pain reliever. That was only a few hours ago.

Next, his doctor enters his name into a state database, called the Prescription Monitoring Program. It lists all prescriptions filled by pharmacies in Massachusetts and can be used to spot patients who have a history of apparent doctor-shopping – obtaining narcotics from multiple doctors in a short period of time. In 2013, the program flagged more than 10,000 people as “individuals with activity of concern.” Nearly three-quarters of a million residents received an opioid prescription that year — 11 percent of the state’s population.

All physicians are supposed to check the list whenever they are prescribing narcotics to a patient for the first time. But only two-thirds of doctors are enrolled in the program, and even those don’t always comply, citing the time it takes.

The ER doctor has forgotten her password and searches her e-mail to find it. But in little more than a minute, the prescription data on her patient fills the computer screen:

In the past 12 months, he had obtained more than 20 prescriptions for narcotics from 10 doctors.

There is now no question he is attempting to feed an addiction.

What to do now? “You never want to blame,” the doctor says to me. “He’s just had the bad luck of having lots of illnesses.”

She pages a hospital social worker, but doesn’t hear back. She goes to see the patient, who has now been given a room in the ER. She tells him she can’t give him any medication, but offers to make him an appointment with the surgeon who operated on his intestines at another hospital. Worried he won’t keep the appointment, she calls one of the patient’s friends. There’s no answer.

He asks for a heating pad.

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Bringing the heat–and so much more

Turning the corner onto St. Mary’s Street in Brookline amid the snow and slush, my friend Seth perked up: He could smell the chiles from here, and he already approved. A group of friends and I had walked for half an hour to get here, slopping through the cold for the chance to warm ourselves up—mouths and all—at Sichuan Gourmet in Brookline, the fiery, fantastic Chinese restaurant with four Boston-area locations.

Walking inside—especially in from the cold—brings a sense of efficient comfort, an unpretentious amalgam of tile ceilings, dineresque seating and dashes of Chinese art framed on the walls. There’s no need for fanciness here. This operation is all about the food, a single-minded focus that owner Li Zhong and head chef Liu Lijun brought with them from Chengdu, Sichuan’s capital. The pair are committed to authenticity, serving up delicious dishes and correctives to a notion that “Szechuan” is less a cuisine from China’s misty, mountainous southern province and more a code phrase for “chili oil and peppercorns.”

The menu coaxes us away from that Sichuan-as-spice fallacy, offering up a suite of appetizers that give diners a way to dip their toes in the water. (That said, the more adventurous can gun straight for the “Sichuan Delicacies” just below, all of which run spicier.) Perhaps the best are their scallion pancakes, their crispy, still-hot exteriors gently protecting a buttery, flaky interior dotted with herby scallions. It’s almost impossible to think of ways to improve upon them—and then the waitress brings over a small dish of soy sauce for it. The pancakes don’t need it, but I’m a sucker for the added saltiness and flavor—and dabbing some on does nothing to diminish the pancakes’ fantastic crunch.

The scallion pancakes.

The scallion pancakes.

The deliciousness—and the spice—only goes up from there. Helpfully, the menu offers up chili peppers next to most menu items. One means that the food is “hot and spicy”; get two chili peppers, and you can bet that the food is “very spicy.” They mean it when they say it—the food will roast and toast you—but it’s not punitive in its heat. Each dash of burn is more than matched with rich flavor. It’s true for the beef with spicy chili sauce (two peppers), each peppercorn-flecked piece of beef and bak choi bathed in broth and chili oil to scrumptious effect. It’s true for the dried chicken with chili sauce (one pepper), each squared-off, orange-brown piece fried to a light crisp. They explode with flavor, each succulent piece like a savory, chili-infused firecracker.

Pan fried noodles with vegetables.

Pan fried noodles with vegetables.

And it’s true for the vegetable pan-fried noodles (no peppers), perhaps the most unwieldy of the dishes we ordered: a bed of water chestnuts, broccoli, bak choi, and baby corn dribbled over a bed of crunchy noodles that, at their center, had soaked up the vegetables’ juices. Dividing up the dish four ways was easily the most uncomfortable part of the meal but well worth it. The crackle of the noodles, in contrast with the tender baby corn, makes for a satisfying vegetarian treat.

2015-02-21 14.20.46

The dried chicken with spicy chili sauce.

 

As we finished up our meal—snapping up our final mouthfuls of rice and fully thawed from our walk in the cold—my friends and I exchanged glances, our faces gently reddened by the spice and the joy at finding such delicious food. “Yeah, we’re going to need to make this a thing,” Seth says. I’m happy to say I agree.

Sichuan Gourmet

1004 Beacon St, Brookline; 617-277-4227

OPEN Daily for lunch and dinner (closes at 10:30 PM Friday and Saturday, 9:30 PM otherwise).

PRICES $4 to $25.

To see Sichuan Gourmet on Google Maps, please click here.

My Four-Hour Challenge

  • 2:00-3:00 PM – Eat at Sichuan Gourmet, take notes and photograph food
  • 3:00-4:20 PM – Back to MIT (by way of BU’s Insomnia Cookies)
  • 4:20-6:00 PM – Write review in Microsoft Word, transfer to WordPress
  • 6:00-6:20 PM – Wrangle with WordPress media uploads, add embedded Google Map

 

Four Hour Challenge Via Zeega

I attended Professor Steven Pinker’s lecture “Three Reasons to Affirm Free Speech” at Wellesley College, hosted by The Freedom Project (http://www.classical-liberalism.org/).  The lecture, which occurred on February 18, 2015, started at 8:00PM and finished at 9:00PM.  To produce this story, I took notes during the lecture and decided to implement “Zeega” after.  Check out the results below:

http://zeega.com/171342

  • Start Time: 8:00PM 02/18/2015
  • End Time: 12:00AM 02/19/2015
  • Post Time: 5:20PM 02/20/2015 (I couldn’t figure out how to share “Zeega”)