5 Minute Chocolate Mug Cake

I got this fabulous recipe from Sis. Ferguson in Hong Kong. The first time my room mates and I made it, we were astounded. This is the perfect chocolate cake for college students since it literally took 5 minutes and the only dishes I had were one cup and a spoon!

5 MINUTE CHOCOLATE MUG CAKE

4 Tablespoons flour
4 Tablespoons sugar
2 Tablespoons cocoa
1 egg
3 Tablespoons milk
3 Tablespoons oil
3 Tablespoons chocolate chips (optional)
a small splash of vanilla extract
1 large coffee mug
Add dry ingredients to mug, and mix well. Add the egg and mix thoroughly. Pour in the milk and oil and mix well. Add the chocolate chips (if using) and vanilla extract, and mix again.
Put your mug in the microwave and cook for 3 minutes at 1000 watts (high). The cake will rise over the top of the mug, but don't be alarmed! Allow to cool a little, and tip out onto a plate if desired.

EAT! (This can serve 2 if you want to feel slightly more virtuous). Now we are all only 5 minutes away from chocolate cake at any time of the day or night!

It's not as easy as ABC

Buying books was a little difficult for me today. The BYU bookstore has changed the way they stock their textbooks, switching their old by-subject system for a new alphabetical one. With a little sigh, I started singing the alphabet song. The thing is the song rolls off my tongue so easily that sometimes I go past the letter that I'm singing for so I had to sing it all over again. Needless to say, I took forever in the bookstore.

When the cashier asked me for my thoughts on the new system as part of some feedback scheme, I told her that it was fine but I just had to sing the alphabet song over and over again. The sad thing was she just laughed and assumed that I was kidding.

Unwanted . . . by China

With a U.S. passport, a Hong Kong permanent resident card, and a ten-year China home visit visa, I have never had trouble going anywhere in the world. I don different identities, slipping into and out of the various languages, sometimes out of convenience, sometimes out of laziness. If I'm headed to Barcelona with my friends, I pull out the U.S. passport and breeze through security. If somebody in China customs is giving me a hard time about certain procedures, with an unrepentant smile, I sometimes pretend that I have absolutely no idea what they're saying.

Which is why I was shocked when they wouldn't let me on the plane to Shanghai in the Detroit airport. All I forgot to bring was my flimsy China home visit visa. I had left it back home in Utah, safely tucked away in a plastic folder. I tried to convince them that I do indeed have a visa and please can they check my name in the ether of some computer program? Isn't it obvious that I'm Chinese? I tried frantically to demonstrate how I could speak all three languages. The stewardesses who were smiling so patiently at the bumbling business class flyer a moment ago turned around and glared at me, "you think anyone can go to China? Why should we believe you?"

Used to living in my little Utah bubble, I wasn't sure what surprised me more: the fact that somebody would think I'm lying or that I was refused (no! retained, turned away, and bundled off to a different airport where I was somebody else's problem) by China!

I'm ashamed to report, that I did what any respectable college girl would do: I called my parents ten times, and when that failed, I cried.

In someways, that worked. The stewardesses came back to me, promising me a free flight back to Utah (and then from there to Shanghai but it turned out my visa was expired anyways). I was surprised that my little histrionic outburst had effected such a change, but then I suppose that I had passed the test: after all, terrorists trying to enter China illegally don't cry.