Surf Roots, Software Thoughts

Surprisingly enough, I tend to eat a few times each day.  I make a point to explore new places; usually the non-English speaking places are the best.  Street vendors are also good.  Anyway, I got some new eats and stories:

I’ve talked about Noodle Man before.  He’s got the best noodles in town.  We’ve made pretty good friends with him; he let Christophe cook some noodles, mentoring him along the way.  His buddy, Meat-Stick Man, is also doing well.

People don’t use napkins here, and the restaurants usually charge you money if you want them.  Toothpicks are of the highest quality and can be found at nearly all restaurants.

WEIRD FOOD UPDATE: I ate pig intestine.  Jim and I went to a hole-in-the-wall joint that spoke Shanghainese, which is much different than Mandarin, the dialect that Jim speaks.  We pointed at a few different vegetables and got a stir-fry with rice.  The stir-fry had some interesting meat that I knew was weird; I didn’t want to find out what it was.  I speculated that it was octopus head or squid, but Jim realized it was intestine.  I immediately agreed with him, when I realized the circularly cut, squishy meat completely resembled intestine.  It was actually really good.

Also on the weird food update is potato with caramelized sugar.  It was astonishingly good and unlike anything I’ve ever had.  It’s apparently very popular in the Northwest.

Lesson learned: don’t try to leave a restaurant with a beer.  We ordered two beers and planned on finishing one on the walk home.  The waitress grabbed us on our way out and told us in Chinese that they need to keep the bottles.  I think they get a refund on them if they recycle them, just like in Berlin.