The Off Topic Topic

[Barrister]

Yeah, I used to work with a guy - he's white as can be, but married a Chinese wife, lives with his inlaws (free childcare!), raising his kids to be bilingual.

When we'd go to Chinatown he absolutely ordered stuff I'd never touch.

[Josquius]

Yeah bones are good. Having an Irish family meant I was exposed to, say, salt cod, offal and boney cuts of meats well before I saw it in, say, a Portuguese or West Indian place

Your Irish are very different to my Irish.
Mine would be quite the opposite. Everything is mush

On Chinese food I found a place locally that does authentic szechuan food. Presumably aimed at Chinese students.

Authentic as in full of bones.

I wish there was somewhere that would do authentic Chinese but with western cuts of meat.

The bones add flavour! the good part about growing up on Portuguese food is I'm used to the weird cuts. Feet, ears, snouts and innards of a multitude of animals, had them all . Only trouble I've had eating was balut* and chicken feet.

*the quail kind, not the duck kind. Duck was way to developed to even try.

They do.
I love tonkatsu ramen.
But once the flavour is added you should take the bones out 

[Jacob]

Taiwan

I'm so jealous

I've only been a few days in Taipei and I loved it. I absolutely want to go back to Taiwan and explore the rest of the island. Hoping to do a trip to Sichuan and Taiwan in 2025. Crossing fingers that Xi doesn't trigger any big geopolitical crises in the area.

[Jacob]

Saw a Vinfast car on the road earlier today.

Never heard of it, so I went home to search it on the internet. Turns out it's a Vietnamese E-Car manufacturer who has entered the Canadian and US markets in 2023.

The car looked decent enough in traffic and online. Certainly more attractive than a Tesla on first glance.

Do any of you know anything about the company or their cars?

[FunkMonk]

Wordle 955 4/6*

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🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Connections
Puzzle #233
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟪🟪🟪🟪

[Grey Fox]

Saw a Vinfast car on the road earlier today.

Never heard of it, so I went home to search it on the internet. Turns out it's a Vietnamese E-Car manufacturer who has entered the Canadian and US markets in 2023.

The car looked decent enough in traffic and online. Certainly more attractive than a Tesla on first glance.

Do any of you know anything about the company or their cars?

Quality is so so especially the software but they are competitive. They plan to introduce a small size electric vehicle in  NA. The VF3 with a starting price of 20k$cad. If they can sustain some quality it will be a great thing to have really cheap electric cars.

[Jacob]

Thanks

[Jacob]

That reminds me... how is the Vietnamese government these days? Is Vietnam sliding into a local flavour of Xi-ism? Is it on a path of liberal opening up? Something else?

[Tamas]

Seems like we have hundreds of guests reading us at any given time, are all of them bots and why?

[HVC]

AI learning 

[Josquius]

AI learning 

Potato potato milk shake hedgehog.

We need to scramble them with random  replies.

Imperium dramatacus artichoke.

[HVC]

Bmolson was ahead of his time.

[Sheilbh]

I've only been a few days in Taipei and I loved it. I absolutely want to go back to Taiwan and explore the rest of the island. Hoping to do a trip to Sichuan and Taiwan in 2025. Crossing fingers that Xi doesn't trigger any big geopolitical crises in the area.

I want to go to China a lot but feel a little uncomfortable about that - but also more practically, it's massive

So it feels like Taiwan's a nice entry point.

Also only really been to Thailand and Cambodia, but really want to go to Vietnam and Indonesia at some point. So I imagine it won't be my last stop-over in Hong Kong with Cathay Pacific. But worth doing.

[Josquius]

I'd love to visit Taiwan, but it seems so hard to get to, hardly any flights going there relative to other places in the region.
So many missed opportunities for travel in Asia whilst in Japan- stupid job making leaving the country a whole rigmarole of paperwork and my idiocy in choosing a place far from an airport.

For China all I've done was a few days in Beijing, including the Great Wall, on some weird visa-free if its a transit flight dealy (incidentally China Air sucks). Though that was 6 years ago or so. Things have gone downhill since then.

[Jacob]

So apparently 23andMe's valuation has gone from about 6 billion to close to zero, because they've decided to share their database with law enforcement?