Mix them all up in one big mash, and what have you got? Hungarian goulash.

There may be something going on in the Chinese buffet restaurant industry in my corner of New Jersey (I'm nowhere near any corners). I mentioned the two restaurants nearest me closed just before the Lunar New Year for renovations. The second one has reopened and it's quite renovated. It's no longer a Chinese restaurant: it's an International Fish Buffet. I was considering whether to try it out, with the problem being characteristically me. The thing is, while I generally like the taste of fish, it's kind of a pain to eat. All those bones, you know, in most fish models. You can't eat while reading; you have to keep turning attention to the fish to make sure you aren't eating any critical bones. I almost tried it anyway, but noticed the price was about double what it had been for the Chinese buffet. That was a touch high for me to try out a place I probably wouldn't like.

The buffet restaurant nearest my parents did something different: it appears to have gone out of business. On the front door there's a sign warning that inside is some manner of dish washing machine (I'd have written down what it was, but I was there in the middle of a rainstorm, and I didn't think I could get my notepad without soaking it), and giving a number to call should anyone attempt to remove it. I'm sure that the sticker will deter anyone who otherwise steals automatic dish-washing machinery from closed Chinese buffet restaurants. There was also a note written on a piece of spiral notebook binding newspaper and stuffed in the door frame, but I didn't read it, lest I invade the privacy of someone or other.

So on top of the bee colony collapse now we've got a collapse of the Chinese buffet restaurant industry in a certain section of New Jersey. There's all sorts of things to worry about these days.

Trivia: ``Chinese-restaurant syndrome'', which started concerns about monosodium glutamate in food, was coined in a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine by American physician Dr Ho Man Kwok in 1968. He'd noticed a headache, tightness in his chest and jaw, and a burning sensation in the back of his neck a short time after eating in a Chinese restaurant. Source: Radar, Hula Hoops, and Playful Pigs, Joe Schwarcz.

Currently Reading: Energy Forms: Allegory and Science in the Era of Classical Thermodynamics, Bruce Clarke.