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.

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.

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.

Ouch

I burnt my tongue on the soup from a soup dumpling today. 

I then tried to read our table's food docket (which was all in Chinese), and I must've had a combination pained/puzzled look on my face, because my friend asked me if everything was okay.

"Oh yeah, I'm just trying to read this thingy..."

Curse you, delicious soup dumpling.

It's probably better that I don't know

I don't know what one of the components of my dinner was tonight.  I'm not sure if it's a good or a bad thing.

I went to a nearby little restaurant that I haven't tried before.  I ordered takeaway beef on rice with green veges.  Fairly safe, I hoped.

Unfortunately, they were all out, so I had to make another choice.  I had a look at the pictures, and nothing else really looked appetizing (or recognisable).  The guy suggested the last picture, which looked kind of like pork ribs, although I didn't recognise any of the characters in the name (there wasn't even the one for meat!).  So I hope it was some fancy name for something that I'm happy eating, because it was more expensive than the beef.

In any case, it was pretty average.  The soup was fine and so were the rice and veges.  The meat was ribby, and a little gristly. 

I still ate most of it.

I'm really not that picky, especially when I make an effort not to think about the possibilities.

Mmm. Medicine I can't read.

One of my new coworkers has been sick since he started, and, bless him, he's concerned about my wellbeing. I have blamed being really tired for being late to work the last three days (it's a six-day week, and I stay late, dammit), and yesterday he gave me a packet of some kind of medicine to take. He didn't want me to pick anything up from him, which is lovely.

This morning I did wake up feeling sketchy, so upon arrival at work (slightly late), I decided to give the magic packet of something a go. I poured it out into a glass, and it looked kind of like Bisto (the granules, not the powder). I've also had ginseng tea that came in the same sort of form. I added some hot water, and it still looks like Bisto. It smells and tastes like liquid Ryvita, though, which is really weird. Not entirely unpleasant, but I'm going to let it cool down a little before I chug the lot. Let's hope it doesn't make me feel worse.