Thursday
Today was a long day. I had a meeting over lunch, so it was more catered hotel food – good, but dull. Then, my working group meetings weren’t over until 7:30, and it appeared that the folks I normally go to dinner with had other plans. I hung out with some folks assuming that they were planning to leave for dinner any time now, but after an hour or so, it was pretty obvious that they had blown off some portion of the meeting and had already had dinner. I was involved in a conversation, and by the time I looked at the clock it was 9:30, and I wasn’t really that hungry, so I just decided to forget dinner – I’ve eaten plenty at every meal this week, so I figured I’d survive.
Friday
This is the last day of IETF conferences, and I’m pretty glad. You can’t handle more than about a week of this – trying to pay attention to dry presentations for 8+ hours, arguing minute technical details in a room full of alpha geeks, some of whom find making people look stupid a sport, then trying to catch up with home and work on a 12 hour time difference. I haven’t had to get up at weird hours for any meetings, and “catching up” mainly consists of dealing with the deluge of email I get overnight since that comprises the bulk of the US business day, but still, it’s pretty draining. Add to that missing your family, and you’re pretty ready to go home after a week. Last year when I went to Japan, and when Emily and I went to Stockholm last July, we were able to take a webcam and use Skype to call home. It makes a huge difference being able to see the people you’re talking to… This year, two things are different. First, my employer has decided that Skype somehow represents a security risk and will forcibly uninstall it from my laptop whenever I install it, and second, due to security concerns, they sent me to China with a travel laptop that is very locked down. I couldn’t install the drivers for my webcam if I wanted to. So while I have been able to call home, it’s been voice only, and it really isn’t the same.
My morning working group ended a bit early, so I was able to get out a little ahead of the lunch rush. My buddy at the concierge desk had a new recommendation for me when I told him I’d been to most of the usual places – today’s recommendation was a dumpling shop. I’ve had a lot of dumplings and buns here already because the hotel serves those in humongous quantities at every meal, and even at our afternoon snack breaks, but I figured it’d be worth going to a place that specializes in them to see how they are different, and that turned out to be a good idea. I was able to match up the characters that he had written down for me for a change, and found it with no trouble. They had an English menu, and I ordered 3 different types of dumplings – pork with fennel, pork with pickled vegetable, and spicy pork. I had no idea what the portion sizes would be like, but the dishes were 7 RMB apiece, so I figured I didn’t have much to lose – I would either have enough, or I could order more. They didn’t look at me too funny, and I saw them bring two dishes to another person dining alone, so I figured I’d be ok with 3. They kept holding up 2 fingers when I ordered each dish, and the receipt also indicated a quantity of 2, but when I held up 1 finger, they shook their heads, so I think I was getting double orders. It was a lot of food, 3 full plates of dumplings. Probably would have fed 2 people comfortably for lunch, but the theme for this week has been overeating…
The dumplings were all tasty. In comparison to the hotel, I found that the fillings were more flavorful – it appears that mass-produced hotel food is the same everywhere: “least common denominator” bland; and the dough had a taste instead of just being a means to hold in the filling. As we got on towards lunch rush, I knew this was a good place to go. Nearly every table was full, I was the only tourist there, and there were two different sets of PLA Soldiers having their lunch while I was there.
One of the things that I have discovered here is that the dumplings are supposed to be eaten with vinegar. However, this isn’t the normal clear, delicate tasting rice vinegar that we get in the states “in the Asian food aisle of your local mega-mart” to quote Alton Brown. This is a deep brown – I mistook it for soy sauce for several days, and tastes more like malt vinegar than rice vinegar. I’m not sure if it’s simply fermented differently from the rice vinegar that I’m used to or what. Guess I need to do a little research. Either way, the food was excellent, and I paid 43 RMB including my tea.
I didn’t have a 50 note, so I paid with a 100 note, and I noticed that they had both a printout on the wall explaining common counterfeiting signs (well, I believe that's what it was - it was in Chinese, so I couldn't be sure) and a scanner that they passed the proffered 100 RMB note through to verify its authenticity. Unsurprisingly, mine was authentic (it came from an ATM), but I hear from other participants that it’s not a good idea to get 100 RMB notes in change from your average taxi driver or a vendor in a big tourist area.
Dinner was in the hotel, but not in the usual places. I was having a fairly lengthy discussion with some of the folks from my last WG meeting, and we decided that it made sense to continue the discussion over drinks. Well, apparently if you have elite status with Gold Circle or whatever the Shangri-La hotel’s affinity program is called, they have a special members’ only lounge on the 12th floor of one of the two towers that make up the hotel. My hotel room is also on the 12th floor, but in the other tower. Anyway, we got there just in time for happy hour, which includes free drinks and miscellaneous appetizers. I got an opportunity to try some Chinese wine, made by "Great Wall Winery" which was actually a pretty good Cabernet Sauvingon. I also had some Tsingtao, and some food. The appetizers weren’t exactly a new experience, because they were roughly the same thing that the hotel had served for the welcome reception on Sunday night, but they served as the correct amount of sustenance after my big lunch, so when we finally left the lounge at 8:30, I figured I was set, and headed back to my room to get ready to head out tomorrow.
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