« July 2005 | Main | September 2005 »

August 31, 2005

Ramen

I was finishing up a very good bowl of Ramen and about to start my chem reading when I thought it'd be cool to know a little more about this fascinating food. So after a quick search on google I came about an entry in "Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia." Here's just a little section:

"Despite some health concerns, ramen is a popular food item among college students due to its ease of preparation and extremely low cost—as of 2004, one packet could be bought for as little as 10-15 U.S. cents. Ramen is also very resistant to spoilage and can be easily prepared with boiling water, making it a favorite of backpackers."

One might read this and say, "hey, I didn't know there were health concerns! Tell me more!" Well if you're one of those people, the website also stated:

"Being a popular dish, ramen has often been criticized for its potential health risks. Some of these claims are justified, while others could be made against any diet which contains too much of a particular food.
A serving of ramen noodle is high in carbohydrates and low in vitamins and minerals, so eating a cup of instant ramen with only an egg as topping for every meal is not a wise choice. Adding a serving of boiled spinach or cabbage to ramen improves its nutritional value.
Ramen soup, especially the instant variety, contains a high amount of sodium. Ramen noodles themselves contain very little sodium so one can avoid drinking the soup if a low-sodium diet is recommended for health reasons. Many Japanese people also believe that ramen soup contains a high amount of fat and also that pre-fried fat from the noodles seeps into the soup. However, a typical serving of ramen, even when drinking all of the soup, has less food energy than a fast-food menu consisting of a hamburger, soda, and fries.
Some brands of instant ramen use hydrogenated vegetable fat (ie. trans fat), which is known to be harmful to the body."

There also seem to be an abnormally high amount of MSGs as well...

OK, so there may be a few reasons not to enjoy a brick of ramen, but my view is: life is short, eat Ramen. It is cheap, salty, and if you eat it quick enough after adding the water, it's crunchy too. I hope we all learned something from this experience, I sure have.

Posted by agutwin at 05:34 PM | Comments (2)

August 30, 2005

in the news

Becca sent me a link to this picture on yahoo news:

Guests at a local hotel watch a dolphin swimming in the pool while the eye of Hurricane Katrina passes near Gulfport, Mississippi August 29, 2005. Hurricane Katrina ripped into the U.S. Gulf Coast on Monday, stranding people on rooftops as it pummeled the historic jazz city New Orleans with 100 mph (160 kph) winds and swamped Mississippi resort towns and lowlands with a crushing surge of seawater. REUTERS/Frank Polich

wow, i guess that dolphin was pretty lucky. If i were there I think i'd jump right in the pool with him...probably not the best idea though...

*Yawn* i'm super sleepy, but that probably comes with having a 9:05 class this morning then nothing until 3:35. Or it could be the fact that I don't get any actualy sleep, I just dream. One would think that It'd be cool having so many dreams, and some of them are good, but mostly they're just weird and I don't want to wake up because I want to find out how they end. Oh well, maybe I'll take a little nap in the library before my section.

Posted by agutwin at 01:35 PM | Comments (0)

August 29, 2005

Swimming and Slacklining!

Sunday was a near-perfect day. Well I guess a little bit of that came from hanging out with Floris the night before (an episode of Alias always equals a good time to me). Anyway, while Katie and I were on staff training for COE we got to thoroughly embarrass ourselves on the slackline that was set up. For those who are not so versed in this climber past-time I'll explain: Slacklining is basically where one ties a long strip of 1" webbing between two trees (fairly close to the ground) and then tries to stand, walk, turn, etc. on it. So after having fun on the one on sat we wanted to have more fun by setting one up on Sunday. Thanks to Katie's "old" webbing and a couple trees and 'biners we got fairly good at it, but most importantly we got addicted! So that and a relaxing morning set the day off right.

Possibly even more fun than slackling was swimming. Katie, Laura, Stephen, Floris and I went down near the suspension bridge and splashed around. If I need to state the obvious: I love swimming. A pool, a lake, an ocean, it doesn't really matter as long as I can paddle around in the water and have fun. It was a pretty hot day to begin with and the water was soooo nice. Luckily Floris is pretty good with a camera and took these awesome pictures:

That's me playing in one of the many waterfalls

A bee we found on one of the plants

A view from above. I'm on the left, Stephen, Katie and Laura are in the middle. It's very deep after that waterfall so you can dive/jump in

One of the mini-waterfalls

Basically the whole thing

Posted by agutwin at 04:41 PM | Comments (0)

August 25, 2005

first day of class....

All right I do, in fact, go to Cornell for the classes - although ask anyone of my friends and they'll tell you otherwise ;). Today was the first day, which is always a little awkward. By the time classes roll around I actually really want to go and learn something, which is an odd feeling to have. However, on the first day nobody really learns a lot and I find it frustrating! In a couple weeks (or maybe days) I'm sure I'll feel differently...

So my first class was "Horses". Yes, I am taking a class called horses and yes it will be pretty easy, but hey it's about horses! The second class of the day (and last for this day) was Orgo lab. I'm not to good at chem, I admit, but I think with a new course and a fresh outlook (and a butt-load of effort) I can actually get by.

Enough of the boring stuff - I'm wicked excited to be back in Ithaca with all my friends. Since I had a pretty lame friend-birthday-party-thing I think a couple of events may be in the works (Including, but not limited to candy instead of a cake, a extreamly fun game of "Apples to Apples" and possibly loud music and laughter). I don't care about any presents, as long as my good friends are there. So I guess we need to figure something out sometime...

For now I'm going back to fixing up my room to look semi-cool while listing to some awesome music. Hopefully I'm going climbing with Katie later on today, and possibly swimming earlier if I can drag some people out to a gorge.

A picture from my Hort. class last semster, we got to go tree climbing!!. Left is Alana, and right is Amy.

Posted by agutwin at 03:37 PM | Comments (0)