Old China Town Paradox

Where can you get good Chinese food when you are not in the Chinese soil? China town seems to be the common sense for non Chinese people. However, speaking the truth, I rarely had decent Chinese food in any China town, incluing San Francico, New York, Toronto or Yokohama. The foods are OK, but the sitting area is never comfortable. The decor is always the owner's homegrown taste, lighting is commonly dim (so that dinner cannot spot the soiled table cloth because they were not done professionally but in the owner's home laundry machine). Most restuarants are run by the owner, who picks up the phone taking take out orders then runs to the wok to cook. The shop is basically ran by the couple, one cooks and the other handles the accounting and hospitality department.

Waitrons are either temporary (grad students working night shift to save for next semester's expense), or the owner couple's relatives, who you see year after year. There were 2 types of owner's wives (not to be discriminative, but most chefs were male). One type is the hard working one, who never manages to make herself look more presentable. She sits behind the counter, making sure the money is collected. She would also put on the plastic glove cleaning up the table or dishes when shorthanded. The other type always keeps herself pretty, have the nails meticulously done. She would articulates her Chinese style, almond eyes and so on. Smile flirtatiously to every male customer (she also remembers their names). Never dirty her fingers with kitchen work.

The quality of ingredients is not of the best because the restaurants constant struggle of saving cost. I was told, in New York, the final batch of fish market's sales is scarvengered by Chinese restaurants. The old China town restaurants keep feeding the city with cheap and somewhat authentic food. They are fine to survive but cannot pocket more to rejuvenile the food and service.

There is a Chinese saying goes like "You would know how to eat and dress after being rich for 3 generations". Oversea china town tends to be too seedy and overly Chinese to have comtemporary high quality dinning experience. Of course, there are exceptions, those who insists to do their food the original way for decades.

The best hope to get nice food is to trace those Hong Kong immigrants after 80s.

5 Short Stories (yes, there're 5 of them, thanks Ata)

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess lived in a small village by the sea. One day tsunami hit the shore and the princess was eaten by a shark.
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Alien attacked the earth and human almost wiped out, but when they all work together they defeat the aliens and the earth is safe. Then a big meteor destroys earth.
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The detective concluded the bulter committed the murder of the millionaire. The bulter protested his innocence, suffered a heart attack and died.
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"Work hard and you can achieve your dreams!" The mother told her son. He then became a world class athlete and he won a gold medal in the olympics.
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A father and son exchange bodies after being struck by lightening. A lot of funny stuff happens regarding kids & adults situations. Then they return to normal.
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This ends my series of SMS haiku stories. Hoep you enjoyed these profound engrossing stories in an SMS (160 character maximum) nutshell.

Broken Fingers

Going to the the Kawaguchiko, the town right next to Mount Fuji. I really need to have a fresh breath of air outside of the concrete jungle. I mean, Tokyo is great but after a while you kinda miss the mountains and trees.

We came to the season where all leaves have fallen the week before, the riverside is under on-going renovation, mud and sand were everywhere. Oh well, it is still good to get out of town for a while.

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As a little girl, I spent a lot of time playing with stray dogs. In fact, I collected them, always took home with me a dog with serious skin problems. Stray dogs were suffering from fugus infection or flea bites. They tend to scratch too much which later develop into infection. Of course, no one was treating them, the ill skin turned into smelly wounds. My parents were too busy to notice what I was doing, I did spend a good deal of time after school in the garage.

I started this fugus infection condition on my fingers since grade 3. During the winter time, the skin broke out no matter how much lotion I applied. It is like the fingers refuesed to obsorb any kind of moisturizer. You can see the small porous holes filled with water underneath the skin on my finger tips. And they itched like hell.

It bothered my mom because my hands were so badly chapped it bleeded all the time. She would squeezed time out from her busy schedule to take to doctors. In my memory, I had tried so many different type of medicine. Sometimes the medical lotion was black greasy like asphalt, sometimes it smelled nice like strawberry. But nothing really helped. The sympton would go away for a while then return. The doctors told me not to play sands or touch dirty stuff, but I guess they don't really know I was taking care of the stray dogs. My mom would sometimes hold my hands while walking, always moving her fingers around mines to check if the condition had been relieved but she always sighed.

After I started attending high school, I had no more time with stray dogs, the condition was getting better but still not fully under control. Sometime later, I got a bottle of medicine for skin diease from the vet and I was applying it on my stray dogs, a couple of weeks later, both my dogs' and my fingers' skin were cured.

Sharing Table with the Iron Chef

I met up with Susie on Sunday for our pilgrimage trip to Muji headquarter near Yurakucho station. When being asked for lunch idea, I suggested the yakitori place that I have read on internet (where people refused to go with me because it is too seedy, too old fashion or whatever the reason is). I walked past this grill chicken paradise a number of times but never had enough courage to walk in and order some grilled skewered chicken with my broken Japanese.

We sat down in the small table, the ceiling is literally above my head (this is the small join underneath the Yurakucho JR station, to be exact, right under the railway. You can feel the wall trembling when trains go by). Later the seats next to us was occupied by 3 Japanese men, the older one started to chat us up, offered us food and drink. It was very much pleasant meeting.

It turned out the old man was one of the iron chef challengers, he runs a restaurant in Ginza and the 2 other young men are also in charge of restaurants in Asakusa and Yebisu. Strange Tokyo, people are so snobbish sometimes yet so friendly if you go to the right place.

The very strange thing is that the youngest chef was doing all the service for the iron chef, I mean, he refilled his glasses and ours with much attention but you don't feel annoyed. He even diluted my drink with water when the iron chef insisted to pour me more liqour while I was eyeing him not to. He skillfully made his master happy and not get me drunk at the same time. Whenever the master talks to him, he would grab his ear (he sat next to the young chef) and dragged him over, the young guy looked exactly like the son being submisive to his father. Is this an act or he is doing it out of an habit?

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Party like the Indians do

We had the Indian theme party on Saturday, just the way Susie likes it to be. She invites people over to her places, supply a lot of alcohol and make them cook for her. I, as usual, became the best amature sous chief you can ever dream of in town. I observe and guess the chef's next move, I am like the worm inside the cook's stomach, constantly think ahead of the chef. I know exactly when I should hand over the spatula or clean the cutting board. I also julian cut or dice any veggie given the dimensions (sometimes I visualise how the veggie should look in a dish without asking, amazingly, it always works out fine).

I finally met another woman who can make louder laughing sound than me. Sunary is such a character. A typical New Yorker, American, being trapped in the small oriental girl's body. We had a blast. Suchi, Arif and Semeer were also extraordinary. The Indian lady Suchi drinks wine, eats everything and looked so young as a mother of a 8 year old. I hurried back to Nyngyocho by the last train with 3 huge bags stuffing a small stereo system. Half drunk, but still managed to take it home alright. Gee, I have been partied too hard these days.

How to Make You Day

Though the project room and the office is filled with the politics shit and people are not very nice in general. I try my best to put on my happy face to everyone, I am very calm and gentle to people I meet. Including the security guards in the bank. I always smile at them when coming in or going out.

We were required to flash our badges when passing through the gate. I always smile sweetly to them although I seem to be the only one doing it (yeah, Tokyo people all have the poker faces, can hardly spare a smile to strangers). I think it somehow pays off.

I was ask to bring back another colleague's badge back to the bank after my Japanese lesson in the office. I flashed his badge to the security guard and smiled sweetly as usualy when entering the bank. I was not stopped.

In the Train

The old Chinese saying goes "it take 10 years in your previous life to brew a chance to share the same boat with a him/her in your present life. And it takes 100 years to share the pillow". I am always wondering what I did to deserve the chance to share a subway train ride with my fellow passengers.

The subway train ride in Tokyo is dead. The moment a group of talkative and energetic teens board the train, they go dead silent. No one looks around to spot anything/anyone interesting, everyone is trying to avoid eye contact with strangers. I am often amused by this, so I just look around and try to catch anyone's eye contact when I am in the train.

When Irene came to Tokyo, we were sitting in the train and talked in Mandarin. "The train is really quite" " Yeah, I know". "Can we pretend to have a fight?" "Do you want to get on TV first then be deported to Canada and me to Taiwan?"

So I rested my case and we kept talking while everyone else in the train was so quiet. Suddenly Irene grab my shirt and asked me agressively if I think she is going to get rich one day.

I was genuiely shocked, thus, my facial expression said it all that we were not joking. The act clicked in my mind almost instantly and I took over the sence . I started to shake my head violently and gave this please-do-not-beat-me-up look. (I found that Japanese people are very sensitve in facial expression, they are very good at picking up your emotion in general, perhpas that's the side effect of living in a highly, densely populated area).

The train car is still in dead silence. I stole a glance over the people, no one was trying to look at us but the air was tense, you can feel that people in the car are starting to feel uncomfortable. The oyaji (old-middle-age man) sitting next to me just stood up and walked to the door, although it is not his stop to get off.

We resumed our conversation in normal pace, as if nothing has happened, so did our fellow passengers.

Meeting with Big Boss

Obviously the management starts to feel the heat that the lucrative project is not properly managed (we are billing the bank almost a million quarterly). The big boss came to Tokyo and wanted to have 1 to 1 session with every consultant. We agreed to meet for dinner. When I first joined 2 months ago, still young and naive, I gave him a very good impression that I am very energetic and uplifting. He wanted to take me out for dinner.

We went to the pub next to his hotel, I was trying hard to look professional and confident. But the moment I set foot into the pub, I started my multiple sneezing non stop and also I really needed to use the bathroom. So I grabbed chance between my violent sneezing saying I need to go pee. He looked at me, obviously amused, said that's too much information. I was a bit embarrassed because I didn't use the proper language in front of the big boss (that must be the voilent sneezes), nevertheless, I set out to the toilet.

The toilet located in the corner of the small pub was occupied, I decided to go back to our table and wait for my turn. As I walked, I tripped over the platform right underneath the bar stool. I literally flew and landed on my knee. The semi-full, noisy restaurant turned dead silent for a couple of seconds while I was on the floor. I managed to get up with my last streak of diginity but my shins were hurting like hell.

The big boss was even more amused, kept telling people around that I am more fun when I am really drunk. I am old enough not to feel really embarrassed but my shins were badly bruised and scratched. The big boss asked for ice from the bar, put them on my foot and instructed me not to mention this to HR. The waitress came to take our orders and asked me sympathetically how is my foot.

The bruises went away today but my arm muscles are so sore and tense. I must thrust my arms forward very hard when falling.

We Love to Party

Made to Stick

I was reading "Made to Stick", explaining what makes an event, an story linger in your audience's mind for a couple of hours, months or even years. Just got to the chapter about the "surprising" factor. The author explains that emotion is supposed to help us to survive. For example, when being angry, our brians literally stop thinking process so we can focus on the event and get out of danger quick.

Anger also enforces the belief that we are correct, do you remember last time when you were angry with someone, you cannot rationalize but only understand "I was right, it is not my fault"?

Similarly, surprise, the emotion urges us to note there is a change in our thinking pattens. We tend to be comfortable to contant events. A out-of-blue change is more likely to make us think, wanting to get to the bottom of the sudden turn. Because it is a signal to change our guessing routine, thus, the unexpected sticks to our minds longer.