Beijing By the Numbers

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Courtney: A couple of weeks ago a work trip took me to Beijing for a few days...

Hours in Beijing: 60

Taxi rides: 5
Taxi rides that included a near collision* with a bus: 4
Taxi rides that included a near collision* with a cyclist: 5
Taxi rides with functioning seat belts: 0
* "near collision" = margin of 6 inches or less

Peking ducks eaten: 1.5
Cups of chrysanthemum tea drunk: 5
Unidentifiable foodstuffs eaten: 6
Mini Snickers bars from the Google mini-kitchens eaten: 8

Days since last rainfall in Beijing: 110

Rainfall during my second day in Beijing: 6 inches

Taxis available when I needed to leave the office that day: 0

Googlers stranded at the office with me: 2 (that I knew of)

Times I called my hotel hoping they could send their car service to get us: 3

Times I thought I'd have to sleep in the office that night: 8

Cost of renting an umbrella from the restaurant where we ate dinner: dunno because I didn't pay, but what a brilliant idea

Minutes spent wandering in the rain at 9pm until we found a taxi: 45

Cost of 35 minute taxi ride to drop off 2 other Googlers and me: US$4.82

Tokyo highlights

Wednesday, February 11th 2009

Keith: After five fabulous days in Tokyo, Courtney has gone to Beijing and I've stopped off in Hong Kong, awaiting her arrival on Friday. Here are the highlights of our trip so far:

1. Courtney ate whale in a Tokyo sushi bar. Apparently, it was fairly tasteless - the food, I mean, rather than the act of eating an endangered species. I guess we should be thankful she didn't choke on the harpoon.

2. I discovered - and please ensure you're seated before you read on - that I like sushi. We were taken to two great local sushi bars, first by Courtney's friend Jon and then on Monday night by one of her colleagues, Yoshi. The first was at the local fish market and served food on a conveyor belt - you just grab what you want as it goes by. Somewhat surreally, amid the raw fish and vegetables, a plate of strawberries and cream circulated the entire time we were there... I ate raw mackerel, salmon, herring, sardine, and fatty tuna. I was even a fan of the seaweed soup. It's all just wrong, frankly.

3. We visited the Imperial Gardens. They were shut.

4. Our hotel toilet has a built in bidet, butt/bottom spray, seat warmer - and an artificial noise machine to disguise indiscreet sounds. Intriguingly, the noise machine only works for the first two seconds after you sit on the seat, which does somewhat put the pressure on you to perform. Either that or end you end up trying to do the business between star jumps. Regardless, it was a delightful experience. Had they piped in Premiership football, delivered the New York Times and served tea on the hour I'd happily have sat in there for the entire five days.

5. We found a whole district of small hotels offering short-term rest breaks, a few hours at a time. My first assumption about their purpose proved to be entirely wrong.

6. We successfully navigated the metro system, even though everything's in Japanese. We were helped by the fact that they number the stations consecutively and have an electronic map on the train telling you exactly where you are. And we only went one stop. But still, it's an achievement.

7. Despite the fact that I can't sing, we went to a karaoke bar and sang the Kells anthem 'Wonderwall', and our wedding anthem 'The first, my last, my everything'. The picture shows Courtney and Linda - an Aussie fluent in Japanese - in full flow. I'd excused myself by this time and was busy douching myself on a piping hot toilet seat.

8. Face masks are de rigeur for anyone with a cold: it's a very selfless way of trying to stop spreading your own germs. As one of Courtney's colleagues pointed out, if Americans wore face masks they'd do it for exactly the opposite reason i.e. to avoid picking anything up. It makes me even more embarrassed about the time in the Singapore shopping mall when I got a twitch in my nose, turned away from Courtney and promptly sneezed all over a little old Chinese lady. I tried to tell her it was a sign of good luck in the year of the ox, but I'm not sure she understood me.

9. We saw the most expensive real estate in the world (Ginza shopping street) and the world's busiest 'scramble' crossing, a huge junction where all the traffic stops simultaneously and several thousand Japanese pedestrians fight it out to get across the street. Hours of entertainment for the idle passer-by. Coming from Britain, I was amazed and somewhat disappointed to see that no-one threw a punch.

10. The highlight of the trip was definitely the food - not least because people here have been incredibly hospitable in showing us around. Given that my wife has a slightly more refined palate than mine, I shall leave her to explain the finer points.

Tokyo highlights, for those with refined palates

Wednesday, February 11.

Courtney: Culinary highlights from Tokyo:

1. Whale sushi. All in all, not worth the karmic penalty I'm sure I'll have to pay. (See: Beijing taxis.) It was a lovely deep crimson in color so was expecting something like a carpaccio, or a heftier tuna-type taste...and got a mouthful of something vaguely sushi-feeling, along with a pile of minced chives and ginger. Apparently different cuts of the whale have different texture and depth of flavor so am guessing I got the flank steak instead of the filet mignon. So maybe I should just look at it as an experience with a Japanese interpretation of steak fajitas...

2. Macadamia nuts, interesting applications of. We went to an underground cave for Australian food. It was a narrow passageway of a basement restaurant with beautifully textured beige walls that made it feel like a hiding place from real life -- and especially from the youthful neon chaos of Shibuya. I'm not exactly sure what "Australian" food is unless it says "Sauvignon Blanc" or "kangaroo burger." But it seems to be about fresh ingredients and simple recipes done well (not unlike California cuisine), and in this case I discovered a fantastic way to eat macadamia nuts: liquefied in a cream-based sauce for pasta, served with chicken.

3. Global brands, appreciation for. The Starbucks at Shibuya crossing in Tokyo is apparently the highest-revenue Starbucks in the world. We popped in for a taste of home, and I discovered the magic that can happen when a global brand customizes products to suit local tastes. The first example of this was my Honey Orange Latte...yum! The second example of this was the unbelievable efficiency of this incredibly busy outpost -- it puts 9am Midtown NYC baristas to shame. From the English language menu they hand you when you set foot inside, to the friendly greeter who takes your receipt and listens for your coffee to be ready so they can get it into your hands (and you into a chair or out the door) as fast as possible -- these guys give you a glimpse of just how simple and smooth the world should be. If only the coffee shops in Singapore could get the "best practices" playbook from this place...

4. Most exciting realization of this, my second trip to Tokyo. I will not starve here, even if I don't speak Japanese. I used to envision a doom of endless lunches and dinners in McDonalds and TGIFridays, with the best food options locked up behind the language barrier. Even though there are signs in English letters and plenty of plastic food models, it's not really a country where I want to just guess and pray (especially since I'm married to someone with a food allergy). But I've discovered that more places than you'd expect have English menus -- there's even an English-language Japanese magazine called Metropolis which often states in restaurant reviews that a place has an English menu. I am also becoming a Google Translate addict (shameless product plug alert).

Speaking Japanese: An Englishman's Guide

Monday February 9th 2009

Keith: If you ever wind up here in Tokyo, I found the following language guide indispensable:

At the Sushi Bar
Smile, bow head, pause, bow head =
Good afternoon. Table for two, no smoking please.

Follow waiter to table, smile, bow head =
No worries, the smoking table's just fine.

Smile, bow head twice =
Sure, we're ready to order. I'm allergic to shellfish - are there any dishes I should avoid?

Smile, bow head twice =
Are you positive I can eat that? It looks like lobster to me.

Smile, bow head twice =
No mate, I know a crab when I see one. Here, I'll try some of that sushi instead.

Smile, bow head twice =
Is that thing still alive?

Smile, bow head twice =
What are you talking about? It's walking across the f***ing plate.

Smile, bow head twice =
It looks like a cockroach on steroids. With a club foot.

Smile, bow head twice =
Hang on, I think it's making a run for it.

Smile, bow head frantically =
Waiter, waiter - kindly apprehend that crustacean!! Yes, that one - the one with the limp.

Smile, bow profusely, hands clasped as if in prayer =
Oh thank you madam, thank you - very well caught. And may I say you show a remarkable turn of speed for someone wearing such a dainty kimono?

Smile, bow head twice =
What the...? Noooooo - don't put it in your mouth!!!

Smile, bow head twice =
I'm feeling slightly nauseous: can you show me to the bathroom?

Next week: In the emergency room

Golden Showers

Sunday January 25 2009

Keith: I've never yet managed to find a taxi on New Year's Eve in London, San Francisco or Sevilla, so it was probably expecting a bit too much to find one at 5pm on Chinese New Year's Eve in Singapore. Which is why you'd have seen the two of us looking a little less than chirpy outside a newly-discovered French deli in Dempsey Road today.

What upset Courtney was the fact that we'd already hiked for an hour through the city to get to the Botanical Gardens up the road, and faced the same trek back - this in a climate where a ten-minute walk to the subway is considered excessive. What bothered me was that I'd just invested S$50 at the deli in a loaf of rosemary focaccia and some of the store's finest brie, stilton and gouda - and after ten minutes in the heat much of it was already starting to resemble fondue. Only those who've lunched on nothing but bread and cheese for the last 20-odd years could appreciate my bitter frustration. It was the culinary equivalent of meeting Jenna Jameson in a bar, spending $200 on dinner, persuading her to come back to your place and then discovering she's a practising Roman Catholic.

Still, the trip to the Botanical Gardens was worth it. It's not the world's biggest park, but it boasts a small swathe of really cool rainforest and some amazing orchid collections. We wanted to take some pics, but there was so much to see we weren't sure where to start. Thankfully, the park authorities came to our rescue:

I've included pictures of a few of my favorite orchids, including the aptly-named 'Golden Shower'.  An amazing sight: see how it explodes in a burst of yellow spray, saturating everything around it in a frenzy of pent-up release. I wish I could describe the aroma - vaguely familiar, sort of pungent...

There was also an orchid named after Margaret Thatcher in honor of her visit to the park in 1985, back in the days when people actually cared what she was up to and she actually remembered who she was. Tellingly, it seems to be wilting a little - I guess 24 years of hard-nosed monetarism and a weekly blue rinse does that to you.

And there was a really cool plant that entices insects in and then snaps its lid shut, a bit like a Venus fly trap. I'm thinking of buying one to add to my anti-mosquito armory.