Deserted Island (無人島)

Recently, I've been reading and consuming a lot of news: Wall Street Journal, CNN, NHK (Japanese news), etc., etc. I even fell for the dreaded (wait for it) FAKE NEWS! after I clicked on a shady link! Urg. Turns out, despite all the gloom and news of doom and its instantaneous nature (24-hour news cycle, things come and go very quickly), news can still be very very fun, and there's still a lot of interesting things in the world that capture my attention. One of these is News in Slow Japanese, a website I swear by that captures real human-interest news stories......in Japanese. Right up my alley. One of the worst parts of a short attention span and not thoroughly reading articles, though, is I forget them after a day or so and constantly need to refresh my memory. I feel like my grandpa (who watches the news and immediately forgets its contents). Here are a selection of them that I have thoughts about:


1.) One of the news articles was about how many deserted islands there are in the world, especially near Japan. People can now rent out a deserted island for themselves and spend their vacation on the island. Kind of an exotic idea until you realize there might be wild animals there, there are no hotels, no restaurants, no civilization........it's just a huge camping trip with limits (you can't leave the island). Something about islands, though, captures people's imagination: think "Castaway" and why Survivor the reality show is so popular (and still popular, going on its 38?th season). Just don't lose your way home (be sure your boat doesn't sink) and wind up like Tom Hanks.

2.) On a flight in China that was delayed indefinitely, passengers were getting irritated and causing trouble until a concert broke out! Apparently, members of the Philadelphia Orchestra were among the passengers, and they brought their instruments on board, gave an impromptu concert. Please, please, please have this happen on my boring Southwest flights one time! Beats the neverending line to the bathroom, the bad flight attendant jokes, and free peanuts to pacify the crowd. As an amateur musician myself, that's a great idea for the musicians to put their talents to good use, the purest form of music (and the reason for its inception): to entertain the masses, without financial incentive.

3.) One high class French restaurant was accused by its former employee of declining service to ugly customers, or at least sitting less attractive customers in the darker-lit areas of the restaurant while seating better-looking patrons in the well-lit and central areas of the restaurant. Also, the former employee was told by management to turn customers away based on attractiveness even if the restaurant had plenty of seating left. Really, really dishonest but not illegal: restaurants and bars reserve the right to refuse service to anyone, as it's a private establishment and the owner could choose not to take your money. Really bad business practice though, and certainly very risky due to today's internet society and Yelp and whatnot. For some businesspeople (like TRUMP, who got inaugurated today, btw) this might even be a smart strategy: it's an exclusive-kind of restaurant anyway, it serves the rich and famous, and might bolster the restaurant's image as only for the elite and attract the type of people who they want to attract anyway. Hmmmm.....

4.) Speaking of food, I never realized it but the human taste buds detect 4 types of taste: sweet, salty, sour, and bitter. That's it. Huh. But apparently, there's a rare 5th type of taste: umami, which I've never really experienced (always saw the ads in LA about the Umami Burger, but never tried it). I'm guessing it's not THAT good, or everyone would be raving about it/ insisting they have it. It's a tough call between the top 2 tastes for me, sweet or salty. It really depends on where and when: sweet seems like a summer thing to have (and able to work off later,), salty seems like an elegant sort of dinner, that one at a high-falootin' restaurant might have.

Fantasize on,

Robert Yan