Wednesday 18 February 2009

Mmm, pudding

I just found out (through a funny exchange at the milk tea shop) that the word for 'pudding' in Chinese is bù dīng (布丁), which is excellent, as now I can order both pudding milk tea, and mango pudding.  Things are on the up and up.

Yang' sfry dumplings

I am at YANG' SFRY DUMPLINGS (exactly how it's punctuated on all their signs and on their chopstick wrappers).  This place is always always busy (the setup on the food stall street always has a huge queue), but isn't now as I guess am taking lunch at an unpopular time.  I just ordered some soup and dumplings, when I meant to order a different soup and dumplings.  The woman suggested a beef noodle soup which I hadn't even seen on the menu, which sounded nice.  So, why not eh?

On the way to work today, I saw an elderly couple travelling by bicycle.  Not unusual, especially in Asia, but the man was pushing the bike, and the woman was sitting on the back of it (not on the seat), leaning backwards, and using her cane to both stabilise and help push.  It was funny, and oddly cute. 

I just had a hilarious interchange with the waitress and the cashier.  I got my soup, no problem, and then they gave me my plate of four dumplings.  Cool.  Then apparently there was some mix up with a takeaway order, so they took my plate away.  Then they gave me another plate with 8 dumplings on it (two orders of 4).  I tried to tell them that I'd only ordered 4, and then they brought back someone else's receipt which had two orders on it.  I said it wasn't mine (was I being foolishly honest here?), and stumblingly tried to explain the situation.  Eventually the cashier got involved, and then they took away the 8, and brought back 4.  They are good enough that they were worth the wait.  The soup is good, too.

I'd almost forgotten how to eat these dumplings.  The least messy and least scaldy way I've worked out to eat them is by biting/squeezing a small hole in the outside, and sucking the juice out before eating the rest of the dumpling.  Otherwise, burning and messiness ensues.  I suppose I could've taken a photo so you could see, but suffice to say that they contain some hot juices inside.  Oh, here, they look like this.

Tuesday 17 February 2009

Things I can't get at my local supermarket:

  • brown sugar
  • tinfoil (alumin(i)um foil)
  • baking paper
  • paper towels
  • can opener
  • sponges (for cleaning)
  • fish sauce (although there's a possibility that I can't read the fish sauce bottle).
I have made trips especially for almost all of these items, only to stand around in what I think are the appropriate aisles and not be able to find what I want. 

We currently need (subjective) all of these things, except for the brown sugar, which I found at the other market on the same street.  Couldn't find any of the other things, though.

Monday 16 February 2009

On the way to work today...

...I saw a man twirling two giant golden balls in his hand as he walked down the street.*

*I'm really busy at the moment but I'm going to try to add something here much more frequently, even if it's just a reminder to myself about how weirdly wonderful China is sometimes.