I hate cornstarch

Seriously. If it weren't so useful I'd swear it off forever. Today I managed to successfully make sweet and sour fish (tang2 cu4 yu2). Last time I tried, I failed abysmally because in substituting tomato puree for ketchup, I ended up with something that was wayy too tomato-ey and not sweet enough. So this time, I wised up and only added a dash of tomato sauce and more dashes of sugar. But the cornstarch! Okay, so this time I didn't screw up the cornstarch as badly as last time, but it was still pretty bad. I've come to the conclusion that there is no good way to handle cornstarch, particularly over here where it universally comes in plastic packs. Whatever happened to those useful cardboard cartons that you can just tip to the side and sprinkle out starch? Aargh. The starch gets EVERYWHERE and sticks to EVERYTHING...except for the stuff I actually WANT it to stick to. Like, the egg-yolk covered fish. I ended up with yolk and starch covered fingers instead, and fluffy white starch all over the kitchen counter and the sink. And...only pathetically starch-covered fish after all that effort. And because I didn't have enough foresight, I had to put the pathetically starch-covered fish down in a tray while I got out a frying pan and heated up some oil. I lift up the fish and what do I see? NO STARCH ON THE UNDERSIDE OF THE FISH!!? Why, might you ask? ...Obviously, the starch is stuck to the tray instead! aallll of it!! Arrghh. I gave up and just fried the fish anyways. It still turned out alright, but I don't think I'll be able to solve the cornstarch problem anytime soon. Unless I'm missing something really obvious about cooking with starch.

On a positive note, the Japanese news informs me that starting today, the sun will set later. Yay! Longer daylight hours! I'm tired of it being dark at 5pm.