Introductions and Ramen

The Eclectic Hodgepodge is just a little something I throw together every once in a while, giving me an excuse to go off on a topic or two. This week (or time), the topic is Instant Ramen, the staple food of the typical college student. (Dorm residents at Virginia Tech invented the “Great Ramen Challenge”, in which they try to get their fellow students to eat 12 packages of ramen in two hours).

Instant Noodles. Not only popular with college students, they're an economic indicator as well. Higher volumes of purchases tend to mean recessions, whereas lower tends to be better. Apparently, its due to people not being able to afford more expensive foods, hence the increase in the purchase of ramen, as ramen is seen as an inferior good. Hopefully you don't have too many college students confounding that, eh?

Isn't true in North Korea though, where ramen (yes, the instant stuff) is considered quite the valuable commodity. Ever since introduction in the 1990s and indigenous production in early 2000, instant ramen has not only highly sought after by the elites, but has been finding its way onto the black market as well (with over 600,000 boxes of product...misdirected in 2004 alone).

From my brief digression into the socioeconomic ramifications of ramen, we move to an amusing little webcomic I ran across, called "Piled Higher and Deeper" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piled_higher_and_deeper) which follows the lives of several grad students in engineering. You should look into it, you might enjoy it.

Speaking of amusing sites, there's apparently a ramen blog (unless my perception of this blog has changed the nature of its existence, as it is wont to do under the tenets of observer effect due to quantum waveform collapse by consciousness...e.g. If a tree falls in a forest, etc). http://www.mattfischer.com/ramen/ for more information, including recipes ranging from the traditional with meat and vegetables to ramen with chili, breakfasts with eggs and ramen and sugary desserts.

Who could have guessed that when instant noodles were invented back during China's Qing Dynasty, that they'd eventually become such a hit? (Or that ramen would become known as a quintissentially Japanese dish...well, outside of Japan?)

Indeed, in the manga Naruto, the title character's favorite food is ramen; early on, he claims that his favorite thing in the world is "cup ramen" while his least favorite is "having to wait the three minutes for it". Talk about obsession...

And finally, one last bit of humor, the flying spaghetti monster(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster), part of an interesting parody religion called "Pasta"farianism.

That about wraps it up for this edition of the Eclectic Hodgepodge. I hope that you found a measure of amusement from this little digression from the doldrums of routine. Thank you for taking the time to read through my rambling, and 'till next time, take care, sleep well, and have a good day!

And in the name of the great Flying Spaghetti Monster...RAmen.