Wednesday, October 20, 2010

What a night. What a world.

I babysat today Jonathan's and Jubi's girls. Jonathan is a white guy. Jubi's family is from South India.

After my babysitting gig, I stopped by my CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) group to pick up my weekly delivery of produce. Sweet potatoes. Acorn squash. Butternut squash. I question my choice about carrying around these large vegetables for the rest of the night.

Twenty-seven years ago I met a great group of friends in Cincinnati which included Amy (Brane) Noyola who is now a missionary in Mexico.

Twenty years ago I met Brad Canning in Cincinnati. Brad now lives in Brooklyn where he and his wife, Joy, started a new church (Church!).

Tommy Brane, who happens to be Amy (Brane) Noyola's younger brother, is a white guy (and Amy's younger brother) married to Suja. Suja is from South India.

Tommy and his family are going as missionaries to Burkina Faso.

After I collected my produce, I met Brad and Tommy, who is visiting from Cincinnati, in Alphabet City where they had heard a singer from Brad's church perform. Tommy and I went for tea and hot chocolate at a diner while Brad went to visit a church member with a newborn at Beth Israel Medical Center.

After Brad's visit to the hospital, we were looking for something to eat. I wanted Korean. Tommy didn't really want Asian food as he'd already had Japanese earlier. You know, all the people in Asia are saying the same thing, "Oh, I don't want Asian food again, I had that already five times this week."

Tommy had never eaten falafel and we passed by this hole in the wall which appeared to be patronized solely by Middle Eastern cabbies. There was an Arabic film blaring on the tv. We were definitely out of place but we loved that. We ordered too much food which seemed to be too cheap for Manhattan and we ate family style, or maybe it was animal style, just food spread all over the table, each of us stabbing at food willy-nilly. Grilled chicken, stuffed grape leaves, falafel, some kind of beef and rice (so delicious).

Then on to Veniero's, just the best Italian pastry shop I know of. I mean, the case with the pastries is more beautiful that my words can describe. I usually go for the lobster tails but the millefoglia seems to be the same thing only easier to eat. They now have what they call a French cannoli, which is filled with Bavarian cream instead of the heavier ricotta filling. But they only have that on weekends so I went for the millefoglia. Brad is now mad at me since he's lived in NYC about a decade and this is the first time I've taken him to Veniero's. Well, I don't take everyone there. Actually, I do. When Joy finds out what she missed, Brad is going to be in big trouble but I'll not tell.

Then off to the subway to take them to bed in Park Slope and to me at work downtown. My subway never came.

Great guys. Great conversation. A great night.

I've only slept about two and a half hours today and it is going to be a long night. But it was so worth it.

Friday, February 12, 2010

Happy Chinese New Year

It is almost Chinese New Year. I was hungry at work it seemed fitting to eat some Ramen-style noodles I happened upon in my desk drawer. Smelling the steam off of them took me back to a trip to China in the early 90s.

It was Easter week. It was early April. My boss, Doug, was in China looking at a potential project there. Early in the week he called and asked me and a couple of other people to get on the next flight over. He was in Shenyang, a city of more than 7 million, in northeastern China, not far from North Korea.

We landed in Hong Kong in the morning and had to spend the entire day there. I'm not a fan of Hong Kong, just wanted to sleep but we made the best of it. I think we actually had to get visas for China so that took some time. We flew the three hour flight to Shenyang, arriving around 10:00 p.m. Doug had told us to call when we arrived and someone would collect us from the airport.

It was apparent as soon as we came out of customs and immigration that the airport was closing. In Northeastern China, it is still very much winter in April. All we needed to do was make a phone call. We went to a desk. One of the people with me, Sherry, spoke enough Chinese to let them know we wanted to make a call. But of course, what did we know about telephones? They wouldn't allow us to actually dial the number ourselves. They took one look at the number and said, "Sorry, is wrong number." Now, we knew it wasn't a wrong number. We had been dialing it for a week and getting through just fine.

But as I said, the airport was closing. Finally they shooed us out and, though I don't remember who "they" were but I imagine it was someone who couldn’t go home from work until they were rid of us so, they put us on a city bus and apparently told the driver to take us to an international hotel. After about an hour, we arrived and a very nice hotel, not in our budget at all. But remember, all we wanted to do was make a phone call.

So we went to the front desk and ask if we can make a phone call. It is an international hotel and so they should speak English, right? Well, yes, they knew the vocabulary for renting you a very expensive room. Finally they relented and said we could make a call. But again, Americans probably don't know how to use a phone so they insisted that we give them the number. "Sorry, is wrong number."

Okay, I'm not very pleasant after a trans-Pacific flight with very little sleep late at night in a place where I don't speak the language. So I convinced my colleagues that we should just get a room and figure it out in the morning. There were three of us, two guys and a girl. Because of the price, we wanted to share a room but that was forbidden. It was the guys in one room, the girl in the other.

So when we got to the room, I decided to find Doug. But we weren't allowed, as foreigners, to call anyone inside China. We could, however, call the United States. So I tried calling Doug's wife. She was not home and this was back in the days when few people had cell phones.

So, I did what anyone does when they are in a pickle. I called my mother. I gave her the number of Doug's hotel. I told her, "Dial this number. When they answer, they will not speak English. Just keep repeating the words 'Doug Lucas' and they will eventually get him." I told to tell him where we were staying.

When my mother called, she only had to say "Doug Lucas" one time. Of course, if you know Doug, you'd know that he had already made an impression on the hotel and they knew exactly who he was. So we were able to make contact.

It turned out that Doug was not in Shenyang. He was in Liaoyang, a small city (a village really by Chinese standards) of 1 million people. It was about an hour away. No one in Shenyang recognized the calling codes and so, "Sorry, is wrong number."

And so the following morning, we were collected and taken to what appears to have been the only international hotel in Liaoyang. I don't remember much about it except that I do remember Doug cornering a rat in the hallway to the delight and horror of the "attendant" on our floor, the attendant being the person who was evidently in charge of making sure we were always watched.

Doug and I did escape somehow one afternoon. We took a walk and people ran into their homes to get their children to come look at us. Doug had a camera and they all wanted to be photographed with us. Then we decided to take a bus. Neither of spoke enough Chinese to do anything but we took a bus ride and finally we were the only ones left. The bus driver finally pulled over, turned to us, threw up his hands as if to say, “What now?” We got off the bus and got on another bus going back in the direction from which we came and eventually we made it back to the hotel. I mean, how lost could we get? It was a city of only a million.

For three days we lived like kings. We were wined and dined by the provincial government. There was a scary hotel breakfast every morning which consisted of hot milk (and I don't like milk, especially hot) and tasteless toast and unsalted butter. But then lunch came and for two hours we feasted. The food was truly amazing, art really. And then after lunch, just when you were sure you could never possibly eat again, the hauled us off to another banquet-style dinner, including some wonderful and some scary things, like fried scorpion (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BeMld9mB2U). We did this for three days.

On the fourth day, it was over. Everyone was leaving. The Americans were flying away. Doug had a morning flight to Hong Kong. The three of us had an afternoon flight to Hong Kong where we would meet up and fly back to the States.

It seems that when all of the "important people" left, no one cared a fig what happened to the three of us. After being VIPs for three days, we were suddenly completely alone in the Shenyang airport. Did I mention that it was snowing? And did I mention that there's no heat anywhere in the airport. But there was a shop that sold instant, Ramen-style noodles and hot water. And that is where I learned to love those noodles.

So when the time came to check in, we took our tickets to the counter and handed them to the lovely young lady. She looked at the computer screen. I could see it. It had our names with "OK" beside each one. But no. The agent said, "So sorry. Ticket has no seat. Must buy new seat with ticket." And that was all. She wouldn't talk to us anymore. She just went on to the next customer and pointed us to the ticket window.

So we went over to the ticket window and just as we stepped up, the lady pulled down the blind. It was lunch time. I could peak through the cracks and I could see her eating her noodles. So, we went down the line of ticket agents. All of them telling us the same thing, "Ticket has not seat. Must buy new ticket with seat."

Finally, we came back to the first girl. We handed her our tickets again. She typed us in and a beaming smile spread across her face, "Oh very lucky. Have three seats!" I wanted to scream, "It is not luck! That's what happens when you buy a ticket." We made our flight and our subsequent, close-call transfer in Guangzhou and then to Hong Kong, where Doug talked me into buying a duty-free Palm Pilot, which I never used but DID have to pay duty on when I arrived in San Francisco.

That's all for now.