Eating at a korean restaurant, with indonesians, in China.

So, an american and 4 indonesians walk into a bar. Andrew, his sister Mariska and their friends Andrian and Christian invited me to go eat with them at a korean restaurant a short busride away from campus. The bus was fun, like trying to stay mounted on a bucking bronco, except since it was a bus, it was like trying to stay standing while someone trys to take your legs out from under you. Like I said, fun.

At the restaurant we went to, [insert name when known], they served you several little dishes of different food, vegetables, fruits, crabmeat. All sorts of different appetizers. It was all free. After that, they keep you waiting for several minutes until they brought the main course. I'm sure not everyone has to wait, but we did. Regardless of the service provided (negligable) the meal was fun.

When the meal finally arrived, it was several dishes of uncooked meat. I should mention, in the middle of our table was a small firepit, a stove, with a smoke vent above us. We cooked our meat ourselves, from raw and bloody to questionably cooked (in my opinion) all by ourselves (everyone but me helped, since I don't know the first thing about cooking out). The food tasted pretty good, but I didn't think there was very much of it. We had lamb, pork, chicken and beef. Which segues into an interesting thing about the english language. We have different names for our meat than our animals.

Sheep-Lamb, Mutton
Cow-Beef, Veal
Pig-Pork
Chicken-Poultry
Rabbit-Rabbit
Squirrel-Squirrel

The reason behind this has to do with the different social classes. The lower class, poor and hungry, would eat cheap, easily hunted meat, like rabbit and squirrel, while the landed gentry and such could afford the meat of stock animals, but, because they were a higher class, they couldn't use the same names as the peasentry that raised the animals did. Another, perhaps more telling aspect of this is that most of the higher class meat names come from french, while the lower class words come from german.

Or something like that. Look it up if you're curious, and let me know.

Where did all the time go?

So, I had two free days until registration. I spent it watching chinese movies on CCTV5, some of which were very fun, and silly, some of which I consider to be works of art. (Lethal Hostage, a Chang Er film.) I started and finished both Jim Butcher's Cold Days, a pulp-fiction collection of snark and fantasy. The absolute trash kind of read that countered my homesickness. I skipped a lot of passages, without missing anything. It was a pretty good story, too, but there was too much talking, in order to give characters facetime. I also read The Order of The Scales, by Stephen Deas. That was a work of art, as fantasy goes. It is a book in the same vein as George R.R. Martin's Fire and Ice series, but without the massive amount of characters who just get in the way with their own, albeit interesting, but unimportant stories. Ach, all my prejudices about fantasy are coming out of the woodwork here. Anyway, in a beautiful tragedy, that actually made me sad, the book ended with a finality I've not seen recently. Far too often, people either don't know when to end a story, or don't want to, so leave open ends, or drag it out. Stephen Deas bites the bullet and cuts the arm off right when it needs to go.

But more about China.

I worked up the courage to meander into a cafe known as 'Blogger's Cafe,' in English, without my Ipad. The irony is rusting up my insides, I promise. I could easily have been in a cafe here in the states. I had beef noodles, which were good, and two cups of coffee, which were ok, but each cost more than the noodles, go figure.

I also visited SingKing BBQ. It boasted an impressive menu of various kebabs and meats. I tried the mutton, which was mouthwatering delicious, and the beefballs, which were not. The place seemed more designed for nightlife, with an impressive selection behind the bar.

Then there was Lakers, a pub down the lane, offering american style food, burgers, pizza, hotdogs. Apparently, that's american cuisine, our contribution to the global food scene. Anyway, they had heineken, so I got a heineken, and a burger. The burger was meh. The heineken was a heineken. But what was most interesting was the people at the bar. There was one pair, of your typical male, non-frat guy, with their large ballcaps and loose, overlarge jackets. They were trying to order, making a minor mess of it, nowhere near my imaginative fiasco. They did lean over to one table nearby with cute girls at it and ask them for help. They obliged, but didn't bite the hook when the guys asked them, is it shei shei? (Its she-eh, she-eh, for the record) to say thankyou. At this time, next to me, some new girls came in with cups of dice they were betting on, a game i've known so long I've forgotten it. They ordered a 3 foot tall pitcher thing of beer. I'll take a photo next time I see it to share. I was quite excited by it.

Next there is Sculpting in Time cafe. The first place with wifi I discovered. It's quite nice, like Coffea in Lexington, but with a more open feeling, and higher ceilings. People were smoking inside, something I haven't seen for years in Lexington. Businessmen greeted each other next to students relaxing for the day. Their password for the wifi was ilovebeijing.

Directly across from there, through campus, is 猫眼, cat's eye. A small, cosy cafe seemingly designed for couples. Even though I wasn't a couple, I discovered their pizza is pretty damn good, and it was the first place that had real coffee, not just lattes and diluted tea. Where is the drive for purity in caffeine! Anyway, that's about that for the days leading up to today. Sould be caught up now.