How we roll, Part 2

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NO8DO

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Last fall I decided to get a tattoo - not so much to express my individuality (as just about every other person has now done) but more to have the experience of getting needled as well as to see how having a permanent piece of portable art would make me feel. The problem was what to get. Tattoo shops are loaded with catalogs of both standard drawings and freelance work. The breadth of options is staggering if you only want something canned. My thoughts went in the other direction - I wanted something that meant something to me, characteristic of my life experience. So I thought about meaningful statements, written in Sanskrit or some other obscure language, or maybe something to do with a bicycle. Or maybe something Chinese. Or who knows, the only thing I did know was that I didn’t want a giant orange Japanese Koi wrapping around my biceps. One day it came to me. While wandering around Sevilla last year, we saw the same logo over and over, on anything that had to do with the m...
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Yet another dinner to remember

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We had our traditional team dinner last night at 海之幸, Hai Zhi Xing or "Fortune of the Sea." It's a mile down the road from the hotel, and I am sure I have walked passed it a dozen times without a thought. As always, some of the jewels in life are overlooked and right before your eyes. This one certainly was. It turned out to be great. The walk takes about 45 minutes, not so much due to the distance as the fact that it can sometimes take 10 minutes to get across the streets. This happened a couple of times when our group fractured due to picture taking opportunities, but we made it intact, even beating our local hosts. We sat and enjoyed a couple of 1 liter Qingdao beers until they arrived. It was Japanese for a change with a bit of Korean and Chinese thrown in for color. The plates and the beer and the sake kept coming and of course much was left on the table. The spirit was great and we had lots of long conversation reprising our various adventures together, my favori...
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A regular day

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A word or two about food. In China, dinner is a completely different event than what we are used to in the west. First of all, large quantities and a vast selection of food is brought to the table. Secondly, you don’t take your “share”; you eat a little, spin the Lazy Susan and rest a lot between mouthfuls. It’s all about turning dinner into an event for visiting. And you order so much that you leave some behind, as a gesture to the host indicating that you have been served plenty. The last two meals for me have been grand repasts. Last night the IT team went out for a traditional Shanghaiese meal in a 1930s converted row house. The trip in to our private room was down a multitude of halls and up continuous little staircases that evoked the passage into Gryffindor Tower in the Harry Potter books. The room we had was more than likely a bedroom in the home of a prosperous, pre-war family. As always, the food was delicious and interesting. A mixture of hot and cold dishes comprising the f...
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