Picture menus

Saturday night was a blast. We all were feeling the need to dance and those of you who know me know that I love to dance like nobody's business. We met up and the bar from Friday night Q Bar had a couple of drinks and moved on to a club where we could dance. Someone had read that The World According to Suzie Wong was a good place so we went. Place is multi-level with a outdoor roof deck where you can lounge and cool off. Main room is really big but the dance floor is really small. (They may want to rethink the design in the very near future, it just wasn't working for the number of people that the place attracts.) The bar takes up a huge portion of the space with seating along one wall and small seating groups around high chairs and table. It's smoke filled, loud and crowded. And this is what we walked into on Saturday night. A small group of 6 but striking in appearance. Carol, Jasmin and Sophia beautiful. Hugo, Marco and I over 6' and not bad looking either. The question as soon as we walked in was "drinks or dance?" An overwhelming response of dance and we cut a swarth through the crowd to the dance floor that only had two people dancing on it. (Someone had early predicted that we would make the club jump and jump it did when we hit the dance floor.) After getting initial stares from those that were drinking at tables throughout the space as we dance they decided to join us and within a minute and a half the floor was packed. Funny thing is after dancing for a while we went up the outdoor deck to just cool and chat. When we went back downstairs the dance floor was empty. No one to be found on it anywhere. Again, we started dancing and with seconds it was packed again. Too funny.

I woke up Sunday morning at 113oam after getting in at 420am. Was supposed to study because I have a test xingqiyi (monday) or xingqier (tuesday). Our instructor wouldn't specify which day. I'm hoping it's xingqier because I really didn't want to be cooped up today studying. I decided to explore Panjiayuan, an antique market. I thought it was an outside flea market thingy but I was wrong. It's any enclosed building with serious high end chinese antiquities and extremely detailed jade carvings and jewelry just a name a couple of things. Def not a flea market. I ended up getting a couple of things but had to bargain a little for them. I'm not to bad at the bargaining thing actually. This surprises me.

On my way to the Panjiayuan I took a wrong turn somewhere and got a little lost, but it's okay because I only have happy accidents. This happy accident had me stumbling upon a local asian restaurant. I hadn't eaten since 6pm the day before and here it was now 130 pm. I was starved. I still don't know the name of the place. Alls I know if that the food was so darn good!!! As walked in and every head turned to look at me. I was the only foreigner in the place. I'm glad that I don't intimidate easily. Was given a menu and thank God it had pictures!!! If it wasn't for the picture menu I'd waste away to nothing. With them I can smile and point and all I have to say is xie xie (shay shay) which means thank you. There's one draw back to the picture menu. You can't judge how much food you are getting or how many it will feed. This became apparent when my stewed fish in chili sauce arrived. The bowl was huge. It could have fed me, my three roommates and my five classmates bu yong xie (no problem.) And it was all for me. I'm sure the wait staff got a kick out of that. I put a major dent in it. The fish, and it was a whole fish cut up head and tail, was very tasty. The chilie sauce set it all off very nicely. The leftovers occupy a space in my bag as I sit at Starbucks (Xing Ba Ke) and write this in my journal to be transferred later to my blog. I'll have leftovers tonight and probably tomorrow as well.

All in all a good day. Some exploration, a happy accident, extremely good food. Now I can go home and study?

Hopefully that damn test is xingqi er (tuesday) and not mingtian (tomorrow.)

Until next time. "And hey be careful out there." (Can you name which tv drama series of the 80's this comes from?) If you are the first to answer you may win a prize. ;-)

- Wil