01 August: Mmm...gotta love that beef tendon...

Did the title today's of update get your attention? Cool, because that was the plan. Stay with me until later in this update and I'll satisfy your curiosity about it...

...But first...by special request...the REST of the staff in the China ODC.

BIG NEWS: Tony (see the first photo) is either on his way with Steven (see 28 July post) to the U.S. or already there by now. Be sure to welcome both Steven and Tony very warmly and show them both your best hospitality!

This is (L-R) Michael and Tony. Unfortunately, Michael (a Project Manager) has already left as of last Friday. He was a very nice guy and the whole office was sorry to see him leave. He needed to go to Canada for several months on a visa pursuit.














This is Joe, a BA.














Here's Johnson, a developer.














This is (L-R) Tim and Max, who are developers.













These three guys are (L-R) Alex, Leo, and Bee (or Rhett). All three are developers.














Here's Vincent, a developer.














This is Shelen, the office superwoman. She has seen to it that everything I've asked for is taken care of swiftly. Shelen was the first person I met when I arrived in Xi'an. There just isn't a nicer lady and there is simply no way to adequately describe how incredibly helpful and pleasant she is to work with.














This is Jenny, the Director of the China ODC. Jenny has seen to it that I never have had to eat dinner or lunch by myself! She also took me around to the Tang Paradise park on Sunday and to the park by the Big Goose Pagoda to watch the night-time fountain show last week. She's also very pleasant to work with and we both like to laugh a lot. (Either that or she's just been really politely laughing at all my lame jokes...)














This is the newest member of the ODC staff, David. David started on Monday 31 July and is the new test team lead. David and I will be spending a lot more time talking before I leave at the end of the week!














Well, if you're reading this then you've stayed with me long enough for a payoff now on the title to today's update. Here it is!

At today's dinner (me - of course - and Jenny, Shelen, and Duncan) we had...you guessed it...beef tendon. It looked a lot like a hunk of beef fat but it wasn't that greasy. I expected it to be tough and full of gristle, but it was really pretty tender. Truth be told, though, I didn't care that much for it and only ate the one hunk. We also had something called "lion's head" soup, which was basically this BIG HONKIN' pork meatball (this thing was the size of a SOFTBALL, for cryin' out loud!) in a bowl of broth with a few more vegetables. There was only a little broth and a few vegetables in the bowl because most of it was the huge meatball. Geez, was this thing big. This BIG HONKIN' meatball was pretty good but by the time the soup came I was really full so I only ate part of it. By the way, in case I forgot to mention it, that meatball was HUGE!

Oh, yeah, I also ate frog tonight. Not frog legs. Frog. The whole critter. It was OK (tasted JUST LIKE CHICKEN!) but it was a lot of work to get the meat from those little bones.

We also had a chicken. (And it tasted JUST LIKE CHICKEN!) It was originally brought to the table whole but we had them cut it up for us. You should all appreciate this: the chicken head came along for the ride. Ha ha! It was definitely the subject of some dinner-table discussion. I didn't look for or even think about it until right now, but I imagine the plate probably also held other parts too, like the legs and feet. They are, after all, available in restaurants here.

We did, on the other hand, opt not to try the fish heads tonight. The picture, which was supposed to make them look appetizing, did the opposite for me. Something about those two eyes staring up at you while you eat it... :-)

So, I guess I really have been adventurous in my dining experiences here. I've shared a lot of the more "interesting" things I've tried. Some were good, some were OK. I think only the beef tendon tonight and the fungus one night last week were some things I don't really feel the need to try again. Besides all the things I've mentioned along the way, I've also had eel more than once (tasted JUST LIKE CHICKEN!) along with Lotus root (this is actually quite good), and seaweed a few times. The seaweed isn't bad either. Oh, and the other night at dinner we had fish again, but this time it was even more "different" than the fish neck. This time the fish was real small, maybe 6 or 7 inches in length from the tip of its tail to the front of its head. These little guys were good but they were hard to eat, a little like tonight's frog, because you had to work so hard to get the meat from the bones, and work around the fins, tail, gills, and head.

Anway, enough about my eating habits for now. :-)

Today I actually did some "power shopping". Shelen had told me to let her know what things I was looking for and she'd find out where to get them at the best price. She did more than that. She did all the research, and took me there personally! And one of the items I picked up, I got for just 20% of what the same item is priced in the hotel shop! (Even better, it costed me about 1/8 the price for the same thing in the U.S.)

I was pretty focused on just what I wanted, which wasn't really very much because of size, space, and weight concerns on the continuation and conclusion travel of my trip. So, we managed to get everything but one item on my very short shopping list in one trip, and in under 2 hours total including taxi to and from the office when we went late in the day today.

And I think, watching Shelen as she negotiated prices down on my behalf, that she really enjoys the bargaining. It was quite entertaining to watch her bicker on price, me not understanding a syllable of it, and to see how tenacious she was about it. Word of advice (almost, but not quite a PITT) for those of you who are going to be traveling here after me: ask Shelen to help you find what you're seeking at the best price. She's a real tiger on this! :-)

By the way, I was asked from home what the exchange rate is here. Basically, 100RMB is about $13US. Another way to do chainsaw math is to divide the amount in RMB by 8 to get the $US equivalent. Also, I've been hearing "RMB" (pronounced "are-emm-en-bee") and "Yuan" both. They are the same thing.


Finally for today, a few random thoughts to catch up on some things I have forgotten to mention in past updates.

First, it's worth commenting that the visit to the Terra Cotta Army museum was easily the highlight of my trip so far, followed by Sunday's visit to the Tang Paradise and specifically the water screen theater.

Next, a funny story about my visit to the Terra Cotta Army. When we were all done with the tour and we were standing in the queue to take the electic cart back to the parking area, I was approached by some local, shall we call him, "businessman", wanting to sell me a boxed set of figurines from the museum. These things are available in the museum shop for about 400-600RMB, depending on how much they want to discount them. This fellow wanted to offer me the unheard-of low price of just 175RMB. Nope, I told him, not intereseted. By the way, he understood that much English just fine. When I told him no, he immediately dropped it to 150RMB. Still no, I said. OK, sez he, 125RMB. This routine went on until I walked to the electric cart, at which time he had dropped the price to 50RMB! It was pretty funny, actually.

When I split off from Cathy and Andy on the way to the car after visiting the museum, so I could shoot a picture of the statue of emperor QinShihuang, I had not taken more than 10 steps (and was on my own, of course) when another local "businessman" started after me with the same box of figurines. This time I was out of patience and simply waved my hand at him and said, "NO". This guy must have understood English OK also because he dropped it instantly, which was actually a bit of a surprise.

The book on the Terra Cotta Army that I picked up at the museum was autographed while I stood there by the farmer who first discovered the burial area. This old guy was just sitting there in the gift shop at the museum smoking this incredibly long, incredibly thin pipe, wating to sign these books when people bought them. It was interesting to see him there.

Final comment for tonight. During the taxi ride to the shopping today, the driver told Shelen that there had been a 30-meter section of the City Wall around Xi'an collapse. Maybe it was just a side of it, because the driver wasn't really clear about it. As it turns out, it supposedly happened just two days after she and I rode that tandem bicycle around the top of it the day after I arrived. Interesting. I'm sure it won't slow much down, though. At dinner we talked about a similar collapse that Duncan had seen shortly after it had happened and by the next morning the wall was good as new. Of course, that day President Clinton was to visit Xi'an so that maybe, might have just had something to do with it.

Until the next update...