The Ji Village News

季庄新闻–Haidong Ji’s Blog

明天就上飞机回国咯。这次拖家带口，让家人见识一下咱们中国。

飞机星期五到北京。我们会在北京呆5天，下星期二回山东老家。我们月底从上海飞回美国，我们打算带上父母、侄子、侄女一起到上海，到苏州、杭州玩玩。

不知国内有没有临时手机出售或出租服务。如果价钱不贵的话，有个手机倒挺方便。

I took a short business trip to Louisville, Kentucky last week. My hotel is the downtown Marriott Courtyard, almost right next to the Ohio river. It was not too far from the slugger’s museum. I heard one can make a wooden baseball bat there, but I am not that interested in baseball, plus I didn’t have time, so I didn’t visit.

At the hotel, I searched the web a bit for places to have dinner. Two places got my interest: Chung King Palace and Yaching’s East West Cuisine. They are all close to the hotel, so I decided to check both out.

I walked to Chung King Palace first, hoping that it has some authentic Sichuan food. Based on past experience, I knew my expectation was a bit unrealistic, and my visit confirmed that. This place is a typical Americanized Chinese restaurant, with weekday lunch buffet to draw the lunch crowd from office buildings, and quick, cheap menus to fill the stomach. After inspecting the menu, I left and headed to Yaching’s.

Yaching’s turned out to be terrific. It has tasteful decoration on the wall and throughout the dining room, with easy and soothing music (not the cheesy kind) playing in the background. From what I can see behind the bar and on the menu, it also has a wide collection of beer, wine, and liquor. Most importantly, the food is fantastic.

Since I was in Kentucky, I had one Kentucky Ale, which is excellent. I ordered garlic and ginger infused New Zealand mussels for appetizer, the first item on the menu. There are 6 or 8 mussels in this dish, all looking very fresh and inviting, sitting in a clear broth sprinkled with just the right amount of minced green onions and ginger. Man, it was so good that I also drank all the broth and cleaned up the whole bowl!

For main course, I ordered the Sichuan beef noodle. It came out in a bowl, just the right amount, unlike so many other typical restaurants where they fill a moon-sized plate with obesity-inducing junk. The beef was slow cooked and tender. The bok choy in it was fresh and tasty. Another big thumb up.

There were not too many guests there, so the owner and chef, Laura Tao, came out of the kitchen and chatted with me a bit. I have to say that she and the waitress are terrific hosts. I talked to the waitress quite a bit. She is from Shanghai and came to Louisville recently to study. She has an easy smile and is very friendly and helpful. It was nice talking to her in Chinese and learning something about Shanghai from her, where I will visit this month.

I enjoyed it so much that I came back the next day. I ordered dumplings for appetizer and flank steak with rice for main dish. Once again they are fabulous. I also tried their deserts, something that I don’t normally do. I forgot the name, but it is ice cream sitting on some red rice. Excellent.

Anyway, I highly recommend Yaching’s. It is obviously not the typical Americanized restaurant. I wouldn’t call it an authentic Chinese restaurant either. It is a fusion restaurant with Chinese and South East Asian styles. Here is the address:

Yaching’s East West Cuisine
105 S 4th St
Louisville, KY 40202
(502) 585-4005

I also tried grits for the first time at the hotel breakfast buffet. At first I thought it was made out of couscous, but that cannot be true, as couscous is not a typical southern US grain. Somebody told me it is made out of cornmeal. Anyway, it is pretty good. I tried it plain and mixing it with brown sugar. All in all, not bad.

Here is my notes on setting up replication on MySQL. In a lot of cases, that is not good enough, because it replicates EVERYTHING from the master to slave(s), whereas you may just want one or two databases replicated.

At first I thought I could just add this to /etc/my.cnf on the slave:
[mysqld]
replicate-do-db=MyDb

That didn’t work very well for statements like this, assuming you are in a database other than MyDb:

insert into MyDb.TableInMyDb values (SomeValue)

Fine, I thought, let me add this to slave’s my.cnf:

replicate-wild-do-table=MyDb.%

It’s not enough. For the Sql statement above, it still couldn’t catch and execute that statement.

After some searching and testing, I found what I was looking for. As far as I can tell, it works beautifully. All you need to do is to modify my.cnf on slave. Just add the databases to ignore in the list. Below is a sample:

replicate-ignore-db = mysql
replicate-ignore-db = test
replicate-ignore-db = testdb
replicate-wild-do-table=MyDb.%

今年四月到加州去了一趟。加州的华人多，所以中餐馆也多，并且很正宗。用我们鲁南家乡话说，这（债）下子拉（三声）馋（一声）了。

我去的地方是圣何塞（San Jose）。说来好笑，这个地名，开始的时候我是按照英语的语音来读的，所以我把它读成San Joez，像rose一样。其实San Jose来自西班牙语。我不会说西班牙语，为模仿地像一点，我现在都把它读成San hooZay，好像一般人都明白我的意思。

所以J在西班牙语里好像发H的音。举几个常见的人名为例：Alejandro（我不知道这个名字的中文翻译），Javier（哈维尔），Julio（胡里奥），Juan（胡安）。好像没听说过有人叫“胡来”的。另有一个常见的西班牙、拉美名字，Jesus（heySoos），不要把它按英文读。我不知道这个名字的中文翻译，但应当不会是耶稣、耶和华或救世主吧。

另外还有一个西班牙语的人名叫Raul。开始的时候我把它读成像roar一样，跟英文里狮子怒吼的声音相似，搞得别人以为我在发威，但这又是一个错误。我听起来这个名字的正确发音好像是raWoo。

英语中这样的外来词不少。像王子在这个评论里提及的Michelle。

以下是一些菜的照片。我一共去了两个不错的餐馆：一个叫岳阳楼：163 South Murphy Ave, Sunnyvale, CA 94086。

酸菜笋尖肉丝

四川凉粉

另外一家也不错，汉语名字好像是“巴蜀人家”：
South Legend Sichuan Restaurant
Address: 1720 N. Milpitas Blvd., Milpitas, CA