The fancy duck place was the first we actually got to sit face to face with other team members. Suave, smart and respectable ‘online’ mugshots of the participants metamorphosed into the real people. I guess I was not the only one with a misleading profile picture J. Sufficient to say, the flesh and blood was more human than earlier assumed.
 |
| The fancy Duck place |
We ordered duck… and plenty of it. It was the first exposure to the Great Wasteful Eating style of the Chinese and I realized that the country survives by not only feeding 1.3 billion people, but wasting food enough for another few billions.
 |
| The Duck in question |
This was also the first exposure to the dietary mix in the team and everyone began making mental notes. Meat-but-no-egg, no-meat-no-egg-no-garlic-no-onion, no-crustaceans, no-spice, no-garlic, just-a-little-garlic. I felt horribly out of place with no restrictions… I just realized the people with constraints (self imposed, psychological, belief related or otherwise) get a lot of air time.
Mental note to myself: Get on the no-something list.. and think of something fancy and unique… how about no-salt? Mess with everyone’s food!!
The fancy city of Beijing has a horrid cab crisis… we couldn’t flag a single one down and ended up roughing out in the underground subway to reach our hotel. Saved on the cab to pay for the duck, eh?
You we'rent alone. I had nothing on that list as well. ;-)
ReplyDelete