Lobster Feast

Happy Thanksgiving! After having 3 days of turkey, it was time for a change. With my brother (Jervis) and his girl friend(Michelle) in town, we decided to live it up and try the famous Maine Lobster. We went to Carrie's in Providence. It's sounded like my kinda place, not too expensive and fancy, but good food and the lobster comes highly recommended.

To Traci's credit, she did give it a try. (she wouldn't let me take a picture of her reaction) It was very cute, she made a quick squinty-face (indicating her disapproval) and reverted to the quick-swallowing-it-whole-Fear-Factor-survival tactic.

The lobster was definitely a thumbs up from the rest of us, it weighed in at 3+ pounds. Stuffed with all kinds of seafood, prawns, scallops, and calamares. (Kinda random, but it reminded me of aliens. The imagery of Jervis pulling a giant prawn out of the lobster's chest is still vivid in my memory.)

As you can see from the progressions of pictures above, we had a lot of fun with our lobster. Unlike true New Englanders, eating lobster is very much a novelty and we could not resist playing with our lobster.

So if you ever get to New England, make sure you put on a lobster bib and enjoy a tasty Maine Lobster!

ps - I managed to find a picture of Traci's aforementioned expression, this is the result of drinking honey Kumquat juice.

Priority Handling?

I wonder what the priority tag actually means to the baggage handler behind the scenes. Do they set it aside in the priority pile? Do they put it into the plane last so it comes out first?

I was pleasantly surprised when they placed a priority tag on my bag when I flew from Hong Kong to Chiang Mai. "Alright, it's my lucky day" Boy was I wrong.

Apparently, it did not mean much to the baggage handler at the Chiang Mai Airport. One by one, the tagless luggages came rolling out on the conveyor belt, each one seeming to mock me and my "Priority" handling. It felt like a cruel joke. My bag ended coming out last.

Actually, now I think about it, the baggage handlers probably did not speak English and could not understand the tag. Maybe what they should have is a more universal system to help the baggage handlers. And why is the priority tag red? If I couldn't read the langauge there, I would associate the color that's with stop, caution, or fragile, but not priority. I say it should be green light the traffic lights. That's a pretty universal color for go.

Well any ways here is me waiting for my priority handling bag ... and waiting ...

















While waiting I realized that all my traveling to Asia has slowly turned me Asian. You'll note that I am squating as I am waiting, that's a very Chinese thing to do. Not the western squat where your heels are off the ground. That gets tiring fast. The heel is on the ground in the Chinese squat. The Chinese squat is not for everyone, some people, like my wife, are not anatomically built to do the Chinese squat. (Not sure if it is a question of nature or nurture...)

Can you do the Chinese Squat?

Over 115 Million Served

Quanjude, definitely one of the most famous restaurants when it comes to Peking Duck.

They roast their duck in a brick oven much like we do our pizzas here in the US. And each duck comes with a commemorative card certifying the duck's place in history. Our duck was the 115,145,626th duck served since the establishment of the restaurant.

Well, just by numbers along this may not be as impressive as McDonald's over one billion served. But when you take a look behind the numbers, the real story emerges. How many burgers make up a cow? Let's say that we get 10 burgers out of a cow. That would bring McDonald's number down to over 100 million cows served. Now we see how impressive the Quanjude number is. (It's practically a duck genocide, though we will not go there)

After that totally unprofound and utterly futile analysis of burger patty to cow ratio, let me just say that the Peking Duck there is again very tasty (my mouth is watering just thinking about it now) and business is as good as usual at the most famous Peking Duck place in China, in spite of the scare of the Avian flu and all.

(After doing some research for this post, I feel a bit slighted, I found out that Bianyifang is the oldes Peking duck place in Beijing and I've never tried it. Next time I will be sure to try it and provide a full report.)

Shower Toilet - Tokyo Style

The Japanese have always been know to be on the edge of technology, and on my layover through Narita airport I had a close and personal encounter with this phenomena. Yup, like the picture shows, it's the "Shower Toilet" folks...

After you get over the initial shock of the "posterior shower" and relax a bit, it is acutally quite an enjoyable experience. (It's very hygenic too if you think about it.) What I can't get over is how well it aims, very impressive! It's just what my aching posterior needs after a 14 hour trans-pacific flight - a nice shower. So give your weary posteriors a nice shower if you are ever in the Tokyo Airport, they will thank you for it. (but be fore-warned the water strength buttons does not really work, I could not tell a difference between weak and strong. It all felt like the same water pressure and as a newbie, I must say that it's a little more water than my posterior is accustomed to)