1. At a Vietnamese take-out place near Berkeley I got a can of sugar-cane juice. Some flavor, but very close to sugar water. From Taiwan. Which makes sense: In a Hong Kong store I saw cans of pure sugar water.
2. At Trader Joe’s I bought a package of trail mix called “Omega Trek Mix with Omega Fortified Cranberries.” (A new use of omega, by the way.) It contained “500 mg Omega-3 Fatty Acids Per Serving.” Sold only by Trader Joe’s. Not saying which omega-3 fats is a problem; so is lack of refrigeration. I could do a bio-assay, I realized: using the tests I have blogged about, such as balance and arithmetic, I could determine how much of the mix I had to eat to have the same effect as 1 tablespoon of flaxseed oil.
3. At Trader Joe’s I asked the checkout clerk what parts of her job she liked the best. “If we card a secret shopper, we get $15 for lunch,” she said. Lunch here? I asked. Lunch anywhere, she said. Whereas Dell employees detest secret shoppers. A tiny glimpse of a better future.