Fireworks and feng shui

Last night we went to the Chinese place. We had been there before on my previous trip. It is the one where as an appetizer we had deep fried little fishes which looked like french fries with little black eyes. We had those again--I don't know if they are more nutritious than french fries, but they are very good! I didn't take a picture this time...really, once you've seen one eyeballed french fry you've seen them all.

We had Peking duck--which was fab. We also had some sort of green veg that I couldn't for the life of me pick up gracefully with chopsticks and get all the way into my mouth. You'd think when all you are given is chop sticks and a chinese soup spoon they would cut things into bite size pieces. Nope. The green veg was like eating crisp, yet slimy--those Chinese are amazing at that--6 inch stalk and leafy broccoli stems. If I managed to get one to my mouth with out dropping it along the way I couldn't fit the whole thing into my mouth. I would then sit there with droopy greens hanging out of mouth while I tried to rein them in as fast as possible, leaving me with a shiny nose (see earlier) and an even shinier, yet tastier-garlic and butter, chin.

I asked Scott how to do it and he said, "I just suck hard."

I didn't want to further the poor boy's ego woes by agreeing, but after he commented that I looked like Nessie of Loch Ness fame while eating my veg, I had to agree. He sucked hard.

We also ate something called a bamboo clam. It was about the size of a crayola paint set, long and thin. I tried to take a picture of it with the camera phone. If Scott helps me I will try to upload unto the blog. It was...ok.

One thing that cracked us up...we did have lots of plum wine, which contrary to most experiences with alcohol, it tastes worse the more you drink...was the Placement of the Dishes. True it was uncanny how there were servers everywhere and if you lifted the last thing off a plate they would materialize out of nowhere and replace the dish with a new one. Even if all you did was drip some sauce on a plate you were not using it was immediately replaced. The second your wine cup touched your lips and was set down it was refilled instantly--therefore I can say I really only had one true glass of wine. The funniest part was the Bringing of More Dishes.

The server came and set down three empty plates A B C. Then arrange them A B C. Then rearranged them into A B C. We thought it was odd they were not equally spaced so we arranged them A B C. Two seconds later, the server reappeared, without the food, and reset the plates as AB C and then came back with the food. Apparently, we are not only NOT masters of the feng shui of classic dinner settings, but we were bringing disaster and humiliation upon the whole restaurant when we arranged our own dishes. We are bad foreigners.

After that we mosied on back to the Swiss Hotel Stamford and up to our lowly 20th floor room--there are 70 floors. We had some chocolaes and watched the NDP (National Day Parade) fireworks over the bay from our balcony. Not a bad day!