Golden Arches of Deliciousness Part Deux (Sept 7-9)

Breakfast: Noodles being made at the local univeristy cafeteria. Noodles, soy sauce, chilli, pickles, and cilantro. they love cilantro here.

So this weekend I decide to visit my main man Fu YiLin (I have his permission) in Hangzhou. I’ve never been to HZ, but this is the city of West Lake, a really popular tourist attraction in China. Also, it’s not as a big city as Shangahi and lots of rich people and retirees come to settle in HZ because it’s so beautiful, or so I’ve been told. So Friday after work, I go back home to get changed and grab my stuff, and MLK is going to go with me. I told him I’ll meet him at the train station. Now MLK and I have a tenuous relationship and I think he knows it too, but I’m not going to discuss the details here. Anyways, so I’m waiting to take the subway to the train station, and I swear I look at which direction it’s going and I get on the train and two stops later I realize I’m going the wrong way, and my train will leave in 40 minutes. Thankfully, I get off and get back on the right direction and make it in time for the train. Phew. We get to HZ and Fu Yi Lin is waiting for us and we take a cab back to the hotel he has arranged. Excellent Hotel, it’s brand new which is good because everything is clean, and I feel comfortable.

MLK goes back to his friends place, he graduated from the university in HZ. So Fu YiLin and I decide to make a trip to West Lake at night. We walked through some bamboo gardens which are very peaceful and finally made it to West Lake. It’s huge, I mean I don’t think it’s any of the great lakes huge, but it ain’t no pond either. I’m really tired since we walked a good hour or so and we take a taxi back. I get back and I crash.

Next morning SW and MLK came by the in the morning and we had noodles for breakfast. Oh here’s a note, if you are into some sort of low carb atkins bullshit diet, don’t come to china, this is the land of rice, noodles, and bao zi and dumplings. Lots of carbs and lots of processed carbs. So yeah have fun with that. Oh and guess who did one of those diets, yeah you’re lookin at him. EGH. Really sometimes I truly despise myself.

So we hit up west lake again, it was hazy, but its nice you know. I’ve seen better, but its nice. To be honest, I'm surprised how much my chinese colleagues and friends rave about this place. It's nice, but from their description I was expecting more, but I didn't see a lot of the city. There isa lot of history there I don't know about either. Ancient poets, warriors, legends, etc.

We rented a small boat for an hour and relaxed in the water. I took a little nap…mmm naps. Love naps. We had lunch and the guys took care of me. Unbelievable, the whole weekend, they paid for everything and when I thought I would pay the final lunch on Sunday morning, MLK beat me to it, the cheeky bastard. Didn’t know he had it in him. Man these guys are in school and really don’t have that much cash at their disposal and still took care of me like a king and they just refused to let me pay for anything. What can you say huh?

Anyways, then we played some ball at the local university outdoor courts. The talent, I’d say on a scale of 1-10 they’d be about 5 or 6. There was this kid, a freshman probably, who really was a damn assassin. He definitely shot from the outside close to 60%. You could not leave him open and he never missed two in a row. Moved without the ball, rebounded and he was only about 5’8”. Really fun to play with. We played for about an hour and half and then went to dinner Now this part of the university is about an hour bus ride from West Lake and it’s pretty brand spanking new. I might have some pictures. I didn’t check out any of the buildings inside other than the cafetiera. There are two levels, the more expensive one and the common one. Which I guess you can find in universities stateside as well. Oh andby the way, the courts are crazy. This out door court, which is one of several in the univeristy, had a total of 30 half courts, and each had at leasta 4 on 4 game going and several people waiting. 300 kids, at least, easy. that's just one set of courts....unbelievable. sports/shoe company wet dream. It's just that these kids are in the university and couldn't afford your average Nike shoe, not by a long shot, but they love it, they really love it. the whole basketball culture. I've played with a guy who's goal is to collect all 2o some Jordan shoes. He wore Jordan's favorite pair the other day, the one he wore during the 72 win season. I love basketball, but there is no way, I plunk down 150 for a pair of shoes.

Aftewards, more bball this time with Fu Yilin’s friends. The competition was slightly better and there was one court where some serious ballers were playing. These guys were like 6’4” and can move and shoot pretty well. So the skills are definitely there in China, but not NCAA skills or NBA skills, but they can survive on any of the suburban courts. However, there are a lot of people playing who absolutely suck as well. Just remember population…..

Anyways, so after bball, everyone is tired, and I get back to the hotel and I just stay there. I’m a little hungry, but I keep watching a bad movie and by about midnight I’m starving. Room service is closed and I decide to venture outside and see what’s what. I take a couple block walk for 30 minutes, listening to my mandarin audiotapes, and I’ve got nothing. Now I’m really hungry and the only shop open is a convenient store and a local restaurant and it’s safe to assume that there are no English menus. So I come back to the hotel and ask for directions for a food place and I still don’t know what the lady said to me. The only thing I understood was turn right out of the hotel. If it was her right or my right I still don’t know.

And now it’s almost 1:30 AM and I’m officially starving and sleepy but damn it I want food. I walk two blocks, nothing, left or right, always left, and I see a club, this is promising, but no food, and I keep walking and I see some neon through the trees to my right, and I walk over and look at my left, and look into the valley and low and behold, there it is the Golden Arches of Delciousness, and what does that glorious sign say? “24 hours.” Baby, daddy’s been livin right. Practically giddy, but way too cool to show it, I mosey on down to the MickeyDs and order myself a double cheese burger, big mac, and fries. Oh healthy livin, don’t you love it. I guess as anywhere else, this is where people come down to eat after some clubbing and there are definitely some drunk fellas in the line today. Coupla guys are from the sub continent and I give them the nod and one of them is really drunk and being a semi-jerk. Then he goes to the counter and spits out fluent mandarin. Egh. If this guy can do it, damn it I can. One of these days brotha. One of these days.

So I walk back, it starts drizzling, no umbrella, I jog it back to the hotel just in time to avoid the rain. Plop down on my bed, and scarf down both sammiches and go to bed. The whole time during this adventure, even as I started to walk out the first time for food, I’m thinking, this is a pretty good blog story, and I am thinking of the exact words to write, and realized that I need to be a bit more adventurous for the sake of my readers.

So here’s to more adventures, but they won’t be happening anytime soon as I am somewhat working a little lately. I know I know, I’m shocked as you are.

Golden Arches of Deliciousness

Random Constrution: The streets are being dug up everywhere. this used to be a pretty busy steet. Now the street is on the other side of the blue wall.
We’ll get to the title in a second. I walk into my favorite restaurant, City Diner, and see that the lower level is being gutted for construction, I pay it no mind, I came back two days later and we got a brand new wall, it’s ridiculous how fast construction can happen in China. But here’s the problem, all that haste makes some serious waste. Waste in the sense that things are done haphazardly a lot. Our plant, little over a year old, the paint has started coming off, high profile visible cracks, etc. Don’t get me wrong, some of the construction here is probably the best in the world. I mean take a look at any of the work in Pudong or at Tomorrow Square building, it is realy kick ass, but there is a lot of work that is done hastily and shabbily. Your apartment building can start cracking up paint or pealing anytime, so in my rent agreements I have to have clauses in there to protect myself that I did not have to have in the past. Let’s just say I really don’t feel like trying the legal system here without those specific clauses. Thursday I had dinner with a couple of friends and we had crawfish boil. Oh man I love crawfish. We got it asian style instead of Cajun style. Some with curry, and some with ginger and black pepper. Good stuff. Oh and you get plastic gloves so your hands don’t get dirty. So after dinner we decide to go down to the local DVD store which my friends say is only a 10 minute walk, 30 minutes later (thanks guys), we finally get there. I settle on a bad quality version of the simpsons movie. I had to seriously get out of there before I got another TV show and ended up pulling an all-nighter. TV show DVDs, especially TV shows with a continuing story for the entire season, kill me because I can’t stop myself from going to the next episode, before I know it and 12 hours later, my living room look scene from the Lord of the Flies, and all I’m missing is Piggy and his glasses to build a fire. Oh by the way, can the Phils fuck up in anymore cruel fashion. I hate our bullpen, I hate them with a passion, what the hell. We kick the Mets ass and follow it up with getting our pants pulled down against the Braves. I read about the loss where we gave up a 5-0 lead and then came back to lead it again, and then lost it in the ninth or something ridiculous like that. Hey I know what we can do to shore up our pitching. We’ll make a huge free agent signing, and not give the guy a physical, and find out after the guy blows his arm out for the year, that he was hurt when he signed the motherfucking contract. And we still keep paying him while he does nothing for us. If that is not negligence in doing your fucking job as a general manager, well shit then my name is King fucking Kong and I like to climb on top the empire state building and swat angrily at biplanes whizzing by and eventually fall to my death as I realize the love of my life is beautiful blonde bombshell while I am just a giant fucking hairy ass ape. FUCK. I HATE THE PHILLIES. Our best pitcher is hurt and our second best pitcher (Kendrick is probably our best starter) is a 44 year old wily veteran who has an ERA over 5. now I can take that as our fifth starter like the Wake in Boston, but for crying out loud. Jamie Moyer, “ I aint’ mad atchya I ain’t got nothing but love for ya”, but I just can’t be having you as my 2nd starter that’s all. So imagine flame throwing knee buckling pitching ability of our 4th and 5th starters. And you know what, there isn’t a damn player in free agency that can help us. Where the hell is my spicy Indian food so I smear it all in my eyes. While we’re at it, can we just fucking fire greg lewis and his goffy ass self. I’m sorry but that motherfucker needs to go, and two miffed punt in one game and one is with less than 2 minutes in the game. So you’re telling me 4 preseason games isn’t enough to decide on a punt returner, ladies and gentlemen: I give you the legendary pre-game preparation of Andy (I wish I knew his middle name) Reid. Why why did my parents have to move to philly when I was a kid, WHY? WHY? I’m destined to just root for teams that torture my soul and seriously test the depths of my sanity. Look what you have made me Philly Sports, LOOK WHAT THE FUCK YOU HAVE DONE TO ME. You have made me a stark raving lunatic.
Okay back to China, sorry about that folks. I’m still angry, but I am a hollow reed and trouble passes through me like that wind. Fucking motherfucking monkey ball shit, fuck., just one fucking championship just one, is that too much to ask? I have to go now. I need prozac stat.

Spicy? August 27-Sept 2 2007

August 27-September 2 2007
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070831/od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_china_ninja
now this is hilarious. Sorry maybe I’m culturally insensitive, but from my view point, F-U-N-N-Y


So this week was pretty uneventful. No funny stories, except my man Elvis(this is an alias, I’ve decided to use aliases from now on since I don’t have people’s permission to talk about them) was hilarious. Dude’s English isn’t perfect, but he is easily the funniest guy in the office. Cracks me up every time I talk to him. So Monday I was in a really good mood and I decided to buy some Bao Zhi for breakfast. These are dumplings the size of donuts filled with vegetables or pork or beef, or shrimp or shrip and vegetables. Anything you want really. So I decide to be a nice guy and get them for the whole office. I buy fifteen of them. These suckers are steaming hot and I get them in a plastic bag. The steam escapes and hits my hand, I almost drop all of them on the ground. So I get myself in a taxi as soon as possible instead of trying to walk with them. So I get to the office, get them out of the plastic bag into a ceramic bowl, plastic forks (no chopsticks at the office), paper plates, napkins, I’m freaking Martha Stewart over here. Ready to go (and I’m get to the office before everyone else). This deserves extra notice since I think I have made it to work “on time” probably 5 times in 2 months or so. So patting myself on the back as we speak. Oh did I mention each of these Baos are 1RMB a piece. Not exactly healthy stuff, but it’s better than a donut, that’s for damn sure.
Elvis: So nice of you to get breakfast for us.
Me: No problems, any time.
Elvis: What’s inside
Me: Vegetables (This was a loca restaurant and since I couldn’t read the menu, I just pointed to something, it was just green veggies and tofu, Egh, I should have asked for pork (which is Jiuro prononounced: Jew Row, irony much?)
Elvis: hahahaha, Goodbye (and walks back to his desk). Just had to be there. Obviously he prefers the meat filled ones.
And for lunch we go to a wonton soup place, now let me say wonton soup sucks stateside (alliteration, just for you my English teachers). This was a whole in the wall shop and they did frozen wontons, and it was still better than any wonton soup I had in the states. So you can imagine the wonton soup at a semi decent restaurant here.

This week I was pretty useless. I found a great website called www.waiterrant.net. Talk about a good blog. I mean I literally killed hours on this. The guy is an excellent writer, he’s got great stories, and throw in any biting angry streak and a dashes of tenderness and maturity, and it is literary cauldron of deliciousness (um I think you carried that food metaphor thing a bit too far there Shakespeare). I wish this thing I write was half as good as his. So I need to work on my writing. I need to have more dialogue with people. I’m too much of a loner. Always have been, but that’s a different story and I need to just start doing random stuff. At work, I don’t really have that much contact with other people. Work has been slow. So our local Chinese interns went back to their schools. We had a 2 hour lunch, and then to top it off, we had a meeting at 5 about presentations we have to do. Unreal. Took a couple of the interns out to dinner. Because of the vacation situation, I missed out on a hiking trip with some of my colleagues. I am so jealous right now. EGH.

Saturday was cleaning the apartment, working out, ultimate, and a fantasy football draft. Probably one of my worst performances to date. So Sunday, I had planned to play basketball with Lee, one of the guys I met here. He’s an A.I fan and when I saw him, he was a walking Nike Ad. So just as we meet, it starts to rain, and it’s been raining off and on, but we both want to play really bad. Now after I saw a guy land flat on his ass trying to attempt a layup back in the day when I was a younger much better looking man (before my nose decided to exchange DNA with freaking Pinocchio), I decided that I would not play on a wet court. Well I guess there goes that decision. So we get to one of the free courts, and we play, and my man and I ran the pick and roll to death. He’s got great vision and got the pass to wherever the hell he wanted to. Shit I lost count of how many easy bunnies I missed and the passes that bounces of my hands cause I just wasn’t expecting it. Man that was fun and our team didn’t lose, note that the competiton wasn’t really that good. I’ve gotten my ass handed to me here by some locals. One guy I guarded was like 6’2-6’3, and he stepped on the court, no warm up shots, gets the ball and I let him get the shot, and he fucking nails it. I couldn’t give him an inch of space. He was just good. His team spanked ours everytime. So I’m fighting for a ball and I hit a slick spot and one leg goes one way and the other another. Messed up my hip. Mr. glass strikes again, hey at least the ankles were safe this time around.

So I met a couple of guys from South India and they work for a company that produces the machines that make solar panel crystals. Interesting stuff, so meeting other Indians is always nice. Of course, I’m more American than Indian, and they know it and aresurprised that I still speak my language which is similar to theirs. I speak Malayalam and they speak Tamil. So if you look at the map of India and go to the very southern tip, on the Arabian sea side is my state, Kerala and on the Bay of Bengal side is theirs, Tamil Nadu. Our language is very similar, something like Italian and Spanish, so we can understand each other for parts of the conversation, but we leave it at English just to spare any misunderstandings. So one of the guys, Nadhan, is with his wife and 15 month old daughter and the other guy is married, but solo in Shanghai. Really nice guys. Mr. Solo invites me over to dinner at his place and he cooks chapattis and curry, and Nadhan’s wife comes with a crab curry she made at her place. You know I’m usually good with butter and lemon, but I’d say the south asian style of cooking crab in curries like India, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, is probably the best. The curry just seeps its flavor into every nook and cranny of the crab. It’s fantastic. So Mr. Solo made his vegetable curry and he and I are eating together as Nadhan is waiting for his wife, and he asks me if the curry he made is too spicy. Now I’ve been Americanized so my tolerance of spicy food is somewhat oh how do I say, okay I’m a sissy little girl now, okay, is that what you wanted to hear, are you happy now??!! But at the moment, I wanted to him that my palette is as tough as they come and damn it, I can handle it. So as my tongue is slowly catching fire and the lava is slowly making its way to the rest of my mouth, I say “oh it’s fine, no worries, no problems” and he goes, “yeah it’s a little spicy for me.” Do I need to say anything more?

A good bye (August 20-26)

The view is from a restaurant called M on the Bund. The first is Puxi side, and the second is Pu Dong which is the new city which was all but marsh land in 1990. and now it's ridiculous. They did a really nice job with Pu Dong. wide streets, lots of trees, a lot cleaner than Puxi. THe the Pearl tower is the building with the two bulbs, The lower bulb they are renting out apartments with a hefty price tag. I don't know the exact numbers, but I hear its insane.

A shout out to my boys, Ryan and Jason, who ended their internship and went back to school in the US. Great to meet you guys, sonsabitches better stay in touch. I know where you go to school….Jason, now who the hell is going to handle the menu? You know I ain’t trusting Jon with that shit. And Ryan, whatever the hell you do, do not, I mean do not, drop that yellow cake. Don’t drop that shit. So pretty much, I’m gonna miss you guys a lot. Okay back to being a guy now.

So at work we have some issues with one of the local safety authorities. Can’t go into specifics, but in China there are about a million freaking laws and probably thousands of codes that you have to adhere to, depending on your business. I was trying to find the laws that we needed to work with in a database, and I think I stopped counting at 10,000 at least that’s when I stopped hitting (next page) on the website. In any case there are specific instructions on food processing, each specific food additive, I mean pretty every nook and cranny. However, if an audit is done, I bet money that you will find more companies in violation of these laws rather than in compliance. At least that’s my bet. If there are any laws/guidelines/ restrictions for food vendors, there is no way they enforce that in Shanghai. You can see meat being cut up in pretty unsanitary conditions. Easily.
So anyways, back to our problems. In China, all buildings and structural designs have to be approved by a local design institute (LDI) and they are supposed to adhere to all codes and give you a design with their seal. Without their seal, you can’t put up anything permanent for sure, (temporary is defined as less than 5 years). Even if something is temporary, depending on the size, you still might need LDI approval.
So we have a meeting with the LDI and the government to decide on a solution that we can all live with. For communciation’s sake, my boss who speaks Chinese, the LDI, and the government guy all speak in Chinese and me and one other guy who is American just sit there and I try to pay as much attention I can, but pretty soon, I’m thinking of fantasy baseball analysis and trade and wondering if I am going to do Fantasy football this year. I wonder how long it will take me to be a part of a conversation like that. I hate meetings, holy cow, imagine a meeting in a languge you barely understand and not wanting to fall asleep. I mean I have slept through class in two continents ( I perfected the art of sleeping and pretending to take notes, I mean I had people ask me questions on how I did it. practice baby practice. )and meetings in 3, well it took all my efforts not to fall asleep in this one. Anyways, the meeting went really well and we have come to a good solution that everyone can live with. So it is just a matter of executing it. That’s where yours truly comes in.

So Saturday, I decide to freaking kill myself. Starting at 2PM, I start playing sports, Ultimate, Bball, and then finally badminton, Olympic sport style. I played against one of my colleagues who is freaking really good. I stopped playing at 9PM. 2-9PM, with an hour in between for traveling. Let’s just say I slept like a freaking baby.

Sunday was great, I had brunch, read a book, church, dinner. Just relaxing.

All this week, I’ve been pretty sick too. So I can get antibiotics over the counter here. It’s awesome. I get a z pack of zithromycin for like 5 USD. It was awesome. The freaking Orange Juice absolutely destroyed me with a price tag of 8USD. This was imported Florda’s Natural. I just wanted non concentrated stuff and this was the only one I could read the tag on and trusted. Hefty freaking price. Unbelievable. Well some pics for your perusal.