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- last entry / next entry - 2005-10-16 | 6:35 p.m.
China 2005-Part 4 of many Tuesday, the conference never started. Well, I take it back. It didn�t start for 5 hours. FIVE HOURS. Do you understand how frustrating that is? I was stuck in a hotel that, while nice, had little to offer in the way of entertainment (no free internet, what kind of heathens are they?) and we had to keep checking to see if the thing had started. Down the escalators, up the escalators, down the stairs, up the stairs� My coworker and I hung out and talked and eyed the bar but thought 10:45a was too early to start (but at home it was 9:45p, so what�s the problem?). Finally it started with a whimper, we sat in on a few presentations, are concluded that it was a waste of time. Back upstairs, wander wander chit chat wander. Everybody we knew had flown over for the conference, so it was easier than I had feared. No having to be awkwardly polite, no disarming chit chat. Nope, most were either from Chicago, had lived in Chicago, or were good business friends of my coworker. Much better. The guys headed out for a night on the town and I declined. I�m a chicken, but a sober chicken who was happy to have missed the insanity of that kind of �boys� night out�.
Wed and Thurs were more meetings and lectures and panel discussions and lots of food. We had a fancy dinner one night with �traditional cuisine� and �traditional entertainment�. Um, right. The food was alright, but as traditional as any banquet ever is. The entertainment was surreal but nice, performed during the appetizer and first main course. Did we eat? Watch? Applaud? Not pay attention? Talk? Not? After a few well-poured drinks, everybody started to talk at full volume and that was that. Back to the hotel for a nightcap as the nightclub duo performed current hits on native instruments (very odd, like they just needed to tune the E string a bit and it�d be fine) and they we all trooped off to bed. The humidity increased on Thursday to unbearable levels, which was the perfect time to go to Tienamen Square and gaze adoringly at Mao�s bas relief of The Workers. Funny how all the archetype workers looked European. It took everything in me to not buy a ice-cool stripe of melon from a street vendor, but I�d been lucky so far and didn�t want to tempt fate. Back to the hotel for another shower (ugh) and some lazy shopping in the high-end mall where prices were definitely boutique. I had high tea in the lobby and was surprised to see guacamole and chips as a featured course. However, it beat the pants off the shitty (and I shall re-emphasize it, SHITTY) high tea I was served at the Beijing Peninsula Hotel, an all-around shit of a high-class hotel and a shame to the rest of the chain (which I love and adore and want to live there forever and ever amen). I still can�t believe I had to pay for it. ANYWAY. Four Seasons, yay. They�re fantastic, and I highly recommend their Beijing hotel. Their concierge had a bit of fun with us when we asked for a local restaurant for our last night in town. He sent us downstairs to a local place that tourists don�t frequent, and booked us our own room/table in the back. There was a bill minimum, but we ordered a bottle of wine and took care of that. The cubby, not so much a room, was covered top to bottom in white faux Yeti. The sunken booths meant the table was the same height as the floor, and there were hanging beads as a door. The server towered over us as she knelt, and we had to watch ankles and shoes pass by instead of the bodies they�re attached to. Very surreal. We ordered a variety of dishes, and had some shark fin casserole. I couldn�t do the soup, too much pressure and uncertainy. But a casserole? How bad could it be? I�d just pick out the icky shark fin bits if necessary. As it turned out, shark fin tastes like chicken (or something else tastes like chicken and shark fin is indistinguishable from anything else, being cartilage and all) and we will never order it again. A few final purchases and creative packing and then sleep. By the way, I finally started sleeping when I was supposed to by Wednesday, which was fantastic. - last entry / next entry - |
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