Today I saw an apparel store that is going out of business. The store was selling their stock off to clear out the inventory.
Going out of business
What was funny to me was one of the signs in the window. It means “going out of business,” but the literal translation is “I quit!”
“I quit!”
You know how when you want to shape your hedge plants into animal shapes, but you accidentally cut off all the leaves, thus killing the plant? We’ve all been there, right? Don’t you just hate that?
What a lush green color!
No problem: just cover the dead plant with plastic leaves. No one will ever know that it’s fake.
Sure, we all are completely fooled by this very authentic shade of green.
I’m not a so-called foodie, but I do like to eat, and bad food makes me sad. With that information, it isn’t hard to imagine how I feel about airplane food. The word “sad” doesn’t cover the breadth of my sadness or the range of my feelings.
My son Ian said that he recently tried requesting a special meal on a flight, so I thought that I’d try that on my recent trip from China to the U.S. I requested a Halal meal.
One thing that you should remember when requesting a special meal: You will get your meal first, before the crew starts throwing their slop to the rest of the hogs. Ha ha, funny juxtaposition of “Halal” with “hogs.” Religion humor.
On the flight from China, the Halal meal was standard Chinese food. The only difference that I could notice was that there was never a dessert with the meal. I got some fruit instead. Other than that, the food was unremarkable. Not bad, but not great, either. But that wasn’t the real test. Airplane food within Asia and originating from Asia tends to be much better than food on flights that originate from the U.S. If a special meal is going to be better than regular plane food, it would be most noticeable on a flight from a U.S. airport.
So, with great anticipation, I awaited the first meal on my flight from Detroit to Beijing.
I thought that it was funny that although the airline’s website listed the meal request as “Halal,” the flight crew and the label on the food used the term “Moslem.” Not to be nit-picky, but my understanding is that “Moslem” refers to a person who believes in the religion of Islam. If that’s true, then food shouldn’t be called “Moslem” food. I don’t think that my meals believe in any religion.
First meal. The name looks like it is Indian food.
The “Skillet bread” looks sort of like Naan. Doesn’t taste like Naan.
The taste was pretty good. The entree was spicy, and although it was strange, the naan was still edible. All in all, much better than the usual food that I eat on planes.
The second meal service was a small snack. Usually we get a ham sandwich. Ham is definitely not Halal, so I was expecting something different.
Here’s what I got: grapes and carrots.
The most boring and unimaginative snack in the history of snacks.
Grapes and carrots wouldn’t ordinarily be too bad. I like fresh fruit and vegetables, and you don’t get very much of those on an airplane. However, these were probably the worst grapes that I’ve ever had in my life. They were very astringent: eating them made my tongue feel dry, and my teeth felt like they were wearing wool socks. They were literally hard to swallow. I thought maybe they were coated with something, so I washed them off, but that didn’t make them any better. The carrots were also very dry. Disappointing snack!
The final meal service was a light lunch.
Falafel? Try “fal-awful!”
This one was a disaster. I think that it was trying to be a falafel, but it tasted just bad. The cooked carrots weren’t any better. The salad and fruit were OK, but I couldn’t eat the entree. I ate some of my own food that I brought with me to make up for this disappointing meal.
So, the Halal meal experience was one for three. It got off to a great start, but then it went down, waaaay down, from there.
Next time I will still request a special meal, because although this experience wasn’t great, I still had one edible meal on the plane. If I had eaten the regular food, I would have had three bad experiences. Next time I’ll try something different, maybe a Hindu meal.
In the cell phone store today:
Cell phone store guy: you look like an artist or something. What do you do?
Me: ( trying to be low-key about it) well, I’m actually,… a diplomat.
(I prepare myself for the gushing “oh gosh, that must be so interesting! What an exciting career!”)
Cell phone store guy: (sounding a little disappointed that I’m not an artist or something) oh.
I enjoy living in Asia, but my white face, big nose and facial hair make me stand out. I’m used to getting stared at in China, and it doesn’t bother me anymore, but the knowledge that someone is probably always looking at me can be inconvenient. If my nose itches, for example, can I safely scratch it without some stranger thinking that I’m picking my nose? When I have to buy toilet paper, will people notice what brand I buy and speculate about my hygiene habits? How much will people read into the fact that I buy this brand of cola instead of that brand? It gets a little tedious.
Back in the U.S., though, I blend right in. My wife and I went grocery shopping the other day, and the only reason that we received some second glances was probably because we were talking to each other in Chinese. I selected my fresh blueberries, browsed the wine selection, loaded my purchases into the car, and didn’t get stared at once. Bliss!
How celebrities and public figures deal with the lack of privacy every day is a mystery to me. If I couldn’t enjoy a little anonymity in the U.S., I’d probably go crazy.
One of the benefits of serving overseas is R&R. The purpose of R&R is to ease the stress of living in a foreign country. I am currently taking an R&R.
The benefit isn’t very big. The benefit really only consists of a plane ticket to a specific R&R location. For people serving in China, the location is Sydney, Australia. I chose to go home instead. I have to use my vacation time to cover time away from the office. Luckily for me, there are several holidays within the two weeks that I am on vacation.
So I am home for Christmas. Being back together with my family is a wonderful feeling.
My to-do list for this time back in America largely consists of food that I want to eat. My wife made her marvelous lasagne for my first dinner home. We’re off to a great start.
We celebrated birthdays for everyone in the section who had a birthday this month. Chinese birthday cakes are really spectacular.
Crossing the Pacific ocean in an airplane is a time-consuming journey. I’ve made the trip too many times to count, but every time I prepare to get on an airplane for 12 hours, I have to make a big list of things to bring on the plane to help get me through the trip: food, books, movies, etc. Smart phones are a wonderful invention: they can carry a lot of things to keep you amused while sitting in a tin can flying a mile above the ocean.
On Saturday morning, I will get on an airplane and travel east back to America. It has been seven months since I left for China, and I am really looking forward to the trip. It will be very nice to spend Christmas at home with my family.
I have fully charged my Kindle, packed my iPhone with TV shows and movies, and bought a lot of snacks to eat on the plane. With luck, the trip will be uneventful. I may even be able to sleep on the plane.
I’m looking forward to seeing everybody back home.
The other day, I was feeling very discouraged about my Chinese. I felt that I wasn’t going anywhere, that I wasn’t improving. I have been learning Chinese for 27 years, and felt like my language skills were nowhere near where I wanted them to be. Disheartening, depressing, discouraging, take your pick of words to describe my frustration.
But then a coworker lent me a local news magazine, and I was thrilled to find that I could read it without having to look up more than a few words. I noticed many words that I had learned since starting language lessons here in China. I realized that I was actually learning a lot.
So what was the cause of my discouragement? If I was actually improving, why did I feel like I wasn’t? I wondered about this for several days, then I had an epiphany: it was because my notebook was full.
I usually carry a Moleskine notebook to write down new words and phrases in Chinese. However, I bought another notebook a few months ago, and recently used it up. I leafed through it to review what I had written down over the last few months, and was surprised at how many words I didn’t remember. Maybe that is what triggered the feeling that I wasn’t making progress? I was writing down words, then immediately forgetting them?
Well, my new notebook is a Moleskine, and I see now what my problem is. The Moleskine has many more pages than that other notebook. If I don’t review the notebook until I fill it up, and my notebook has so many pages in it that it takes me six months to fill it, then by the time I review the notebook, enough time will have passed that I actually will have made more progress by the time I review it.
The lesson that I learned from this experience is: use notebooks with more pages.
Here’s the notebook that I use
Disclaimer: If you click that link, and subsequently buy the product, I will get a tiny kickback. It’s a way of trying to subsidize the cost of this blog without obnoxious ads.
The Consulate was invited by a local language school to give a talk about the new visa validity. I got to go. The school specializes in preparing students to go to the U.S. for school. There was a lot of interest in the process of applying for a visa, and in the new 10-year tourist visa validity.
We were trained for this kind of venue: there was a live audience, and my talk was being video recorded. Thanks to the training, I managed to control my dancing feet, and stay behind the podium (most of the time).
It was a lot of fun to talk with people, and to field their questions. I love talking. As usual, after it was over, I was so pumped up that I had to walk home.
