The Asian "goddess" on that little plastic dish I bought turned out to be Ma Gu, a legendary Daoist "immortal" (kind of like a saint). She's pictured with a big platter of the peaches of Immortality. The article about her on Wikipedia is actually quite interesting.

One of the old legends about Ma Gu quoted on that page mentions Penglai Mountain. Penglai is the town where I taught English in 1998.

The same section of the article quotes my favorite Chinese saying, canghai sangtian (滄海桑田). Literally, it means "blue ocean [turns to] mulberry fields." It expresses the thought "great changes over the course of time" -- because it would take a loooooooong time for an ocean to dry up and become fertile land for mulberry trees.

(Honestly, of the thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of Chinese 4-character sayings, what are the odds that pretty much the only one I remember at all would be quoted in this article??)

For a not-very-good picture of my new little Daoist-immortal plate, click
( behind the cut )

I Big-Pink-Fluffy-Heart the new Asian supermarket near the Oak Tree Cinema!

Prices: Really really good. I bought a 3-oz. jar of chili powder for $1.59, a big jar of toasted sesame seeds for $2.59, Fuji apples for 99 cents a pound, fresh poblano peppers for $1.69 a pound, a package of tortillas for $1.69... the list goes on.

Don't go there for dairy. Then again, don't go to any Asian market for dairy products.

Seriously, I should start shopping there as my main grocery store. I would save beaucoup bucks, and have much more exposure to healthy foods like soy cakes. Then again, I'd also have much more exposure to POCKY, so it might end up being a wash, health-wise.

Selection: An amazing variety of exotic processed foods. I wandered up and down the aisles with a cheesy grin on my face, lost in a pleasant dream of pickled fruits, soy paste, bean noodles, cheap Nutella from Bulgaria, jarred Greek-style eggplant, fresh duck eggs, dozens of kinds of chile peppers -- fresh, dried, flaked, and powdered -- devotional Mexican candles, 50-lb. bags of rice, fried dough sticks...

Produce: I would call the selection of produce "substantial," and the prices "cheap." They did have some exotic produce -- tamarind pods, fresh curry leaves, that kind of thing -- but not the crazy amount of variety that Uwajimaya has.

Still, "substantial selection" plus "cheap prices" is a much better combination than the QFC where I've been getting all my produce. The QFC sells beautiful-to-look-at produce -- produce that would look great if you bought it merely for decorative purposes. It doesn't contain any actual flavor.

I picked up a devotional candle or two, and a "praying bowl" showing an Asian goddess, and am currently trying to figure out who she is.

Links links links!

Classical School Blog: "Near-daily classical education blog with resources, links, and lesson plans- including all aspects of the Trivium - Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric, Latin and a little Greek, Ancient and Modern History, Great Books and Philosophy, Bible and Theology, and Classical math and Science. "

Fascinating article in strategic TechNotes (summarized from a longer piece in the Faculty Research paper series at Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government), on why computers should be "set to forget." Thanks to my parents-in-law for the link!

Hindu Gods & Goddesses, just because. And many more gods can be found at GodChecker.com (although their tone is a bit too flippant for me! Let's not mock the god of lightning here, 'k?).

Heraldry ClipArt. Almost impossible to browse, but I spent one time going through and saving down images that caught my eye, and now I am well stocked with black and white woodcut-style clip art for all my medievally needs.

The Pathology Guy has more stuff written up on his site than I could ever hope to rival. Not all of it is about pathology (a subject which kind of grosses me out, to be honest). I found the site because of his D&D 3.5 Character Generator, but some of his articles are very interesting, notably the page on the XYY Karyotype.