Budding designers | The Honolulu Advertiser

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Budding designers | The Honolulu Advertiser | Hawaii's Newspaper

Posted on: Wednesday, April 2, 2003

THE LEFT LANE
Budding designers

Advertiser Staff and News Services

Fingers and flowers will fly on Saturday as UH-Manoa fashion students compete in Les Fleurs Couture, a floral mannequin exhibit sponsored by Kahala Mall.

Teams of students will use fresh flowers and plant material, fabrics and notions to outfit 12 mannequins, from noon to 4 p.m. at the mall's Center Court. Fashion industry professionals will judge the entries at 4 p.m., with the winners announced at 5 p.m. Cash prizes will be awarded — some of which, no doubt, will go toward materials for the students' April 27 final exam/fashion show.

Yan stirs Sensasian

YAN

Yan can cook? You bet — and not just on TV, but in his new Sensasian restaurant, an elegant pan-Asian restaurant that opened recently in Irvine, Calif. "For years and years, people asked me, why no restaurant?" says Yan, host of more than 2,000 PBS cooking shows, including "Yan Can Cook"; and author of 25 cookbooks (his latest: "Martin Yan's Chinatown Cooking," William Morrow, $34.95). He needed to find the right culinary team before he'd consider it, he says.

There's no shortage of kitchen drama at Sensasian. The 175,000-BTU burners produce foot-high flames surrounding each wok in four side-by-side stations. Chefs perform wok ballets — stirring, tossing and tapping with their ladles as if tuned into some silent high-speed syncopation. But the menu isn't limited to wok work. There are huge steamers for dim sum, along with mammoth ovens for roasting.

There are also barbecues for grilling, a necessity when preparing Vietnamese and Thai dishes intended for hibachi-style heating.

Debug your keyboard

Ever take a good look at your computer keyboard? You might want to. Or maybe not.

The TechTV cable channel took a keyboard that's shared by multiple users and sent it to the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, where microbiologist Fenyong Liu swabbed the keys and cultured the liftoff.

The results: "big, blob-like growths" that included gram-positive bacteria, which can include staphylococcus, the organization behind "staph" infections and strep throat.

A careful weekly going-over with antibacterial wipes or a cotton swab dipped in alcohol can help keep keyboards free of life forms other than yourself.

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