Busy in Beijing

Been to Beijing twice since my last post. (Yes, I know it's been a while)

It's only on this most recent trip that I've been able to see more than just conference rooms and airports. And I'm getting close to changing my mind that Shanghai is the way cooler of the two.

Shanghai's overt. In your face. Shanghai is Jessica Rabbit in a cheongsam at a smoke-filled bar. Beijing's the quieter, more intellectual older sister that you've got to spend time to get to know. (I still prefer Shanghainese food. Also, Shanghainese guys dress better.)

So...I'm with a bunch of reporters from Asean and we've just had dinner around Hou Hai. So I get into the cab with them and tell the cabbie, in Mandarin, that I want to go to the Hyatt. I'm pretty sure I said jun yue jiu dian. But he's like going on and on about directions and stuff and says the address on the Hyatt card is too small for him to read, so I ring up the Hyatt on my cell and pass him the receptionist.

The cabbie's hangs up after speaking to her for a while and he's like "You mean JUN YUE. You said JIN YUAN. And now you're taking me out of my way and I'll never get a fare at the Hyatt at this time of evening." And on and on. I'm pretty sure I said jun yue...but anyway...we're talking and talking (and I'm trying to prove that I'm not really a banana and that I do speak half decent Chinese...) And he says to me I've got a Southern Chinese accent. Uh...OK...and when I tell him I'm Cantonese...that clinches it. Definitely a flawed Mandarin accent. Er...Ok. Whatever. So anyway, by the time we get to the hotel I feel so bad I gave him 30 kuai instead of 15.

The next day one of the reporters and I, after work, go on a hutong tour. OK so it's really touristy but it was the COOLEST non-work part of the trip. One of the hutong owners was of Manchurian descent. And he's turned his hutong into a B&B. Pretty cool. Think I'll stay there the next time I'm there with a free weekend. Later we went to a larger one and were told how traditionally, the oldest son got the choice East-facing bedroom, the younger son got the West facing one (harsh afternoon sun - what else). And the girls? Well...uh...they had the smaller back rooms with the flat roofs. They were only girls, after all.

One of the reporters summed the hutong visit this way, "I'd rather see the hutongs than the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City will still be around the next time I visit Beijing. But I'm not so sure about the hutongs."

Saturday at Starbucks

I'm sitting at Starbucks logging to free nationwide wireless. OK, it's only 11Mbps but I think I'll live. I just won't be downloading any HEROES off iTunes in the next hour or so. If the sun weren't blazing away outside I could easily think I were in some other country. There's a mixture of skin and hair colours and accents in here - and lots of laptops.

A guy in a Delta Kappa Epsilon T shirt just walked in, reminding me that I haven't seen anyone in a frat T shirt for a long time. I can't believe I used to cover fraternities and sororities for the university newspaper. A little foreign girl, fresh off the plane, with fewer prejudices than the rest of the reporters at the Bruin maybe? But uh...I had just seen Animal House and Revenge of the Nerds. I was definitely on the nerds' side. And probably on the nerdy side as well. Yep, that was me in California.

This morning I woke up listening to Terry Gross on Fresh Air played off my iPod. A couple of hours later I felt like I should have been on my way to the Tarrytown train station to catch the Metro North into Manhattan.

My ex roommate in California. Fahti, who now lives in Menlo Park, just had a birthday this week. I sent her an e-card telling I've just been back from a hectic India two-cities-in-two-days work trip, and I added "we've been friends for TWENTY years can you believe it?" And she replied and said it's been MORE than 20 years. She expects me...the only Asian in a college remedial math class...to know how to count?)

And by the way, she said, her daughter's first grade teacher also likes this Persian chicken/ pomegranate rice dish called Fessenjoon that Fahti cooked for me the last time I saw her. I miss Fahti a lot. She was soooo part of my growing up. She was was there through my first apartment, my first boyfriend, my first major heartbreak (different guy). OK, she warned me, I never listened.

When we were teenagers we used to joke about babysitting each other's kids one day.

In her email last week Fahti said she sometimes envies my travelling. I told her I envy her having her two beautiful kids.

Saturday Morning in Siem Reap

Saturday morning and I'm at the Blue Pumpkin at the Old Market area. Breakfast is a croissant, toast, marmalade with HUGE chunks orange peel, a small cup of coffee.

There's wireless, and upstairs is white, modern, minimalist. People with laptops, people with backpacks (expensive ones), people caffeinating. There's a N American couple next to me with a Lonely Planet Vietnam guidebook. next stop Saigon? Taiwanese couples on the table behind, with their guide. In front of me a Western guy, my age, hops on a motorbike with a takeaway cup of coffee and a bag of Blue Pumpkin pastries. Their breads and pastries are as good as any I've had in NY and better than many places at home.

Last night I took a tuk tuk back after dinner and there was this old couple getting off the tuk tuk behind me. The guy was trying to pay the driver 1USD instead of 2. It's like DUDE! If you can afford to stay at the Grand Angkor - you can afford the extra buck.

Next door at the high-end craft store Kokoon there's handmade soap for three bucks a pop, place-mat sets for 12, silk handbags and scarves for a lot more; across the street the storekeeper's sweeping. In the front of the dark, narrow store, is a dusty glass cabinet with detergent, anti-perspirant, and stacks and stacks of film. Who uses film anymore?

A guy with no legs is on a "bike" he's peddling with his hands. He goes to the table next to mine and holds out a card to ask for money. I stare, more intently, at the Gish Jen novel I've been carrying around. He leaves, and goes to the next restaurant.

Indochina ... with a difference

We're in Cambodia for a regional meeting. After our meeting this morning we all went to do volunteer work at a village school as a team building event.

Cuz of my broken foot, I went to the reading room to read to the kids while my colleagues built a fence with concrete poles and barbed wire.

The kids were like - shoving at each other to get to me and they kept bringing books to read to them. The books were seriously-old, English language kiddie books. Many of the kids didn't understand anything beyond "Hi" and 1-10 and maybe the first third of the alphabet.

But they totally wanted to just hang out and repeat what I was reading to them. One of the boys ... he was, maybe 7...was trying to hand gesture "hot" and started fanning me with a book. Broke my heart. I almost started crying. A kid in a developed country would be too busy watching TV or playing X Box to want to do anything like that.

Life as a Klutz

Three broken metatarsals, Christmas Eve, DEFINITELY no alcohol involved. Although I do remember there was lots of sugar. Christmas cake from all over and macaroons from Paris.

Anyway, it was 2 30 in the morning and I slipped on a wet sidewalk going to my car. Carrie comes and picks me up, takes me to A&E at East Shore Hospital where I expect to see a bunch of drunk people but no, I'm the only idiot there.

I'm in a backslab for 10 days - that's like half a cast and lots of bandages; the doc removes it, which makes me really happy and hopeful even though I'm still on crutches, and when I see him a week later, he says the bones aren't healing and puts me back on them again. Lemme tell ya - hobbling on crutches, showering with a plastic Kinokuniya bag up to your knee, and depending on everyone else except yourself for transport and everything else is no walk in the park. In fact, there's no walking involved at all. it's mostly hobbling.

Anyway, six weeks later and the backslab's been off for like...two weeks now. I'm still on crutches although less and less. I can drive. My foot is slowly starting to look normal again. Until recently it looked like I had elephantisis. Last weekend I was able to buy a pair of closed toe shoes - OF THE SAME SIZE! Now THAT is a major milestone. This weekend I was able to hobble around DKNY. Except the shoes cost like $400 Sing and up so that's out. Next week Ferragamo? Looking only...no buying.

So...since the gym and the running track have been pretty much off limits for me, I decided to take an online writing class from UCLA Extension. It's a TON of fun. Been reading a bunch of short stories for the class - Tobias Wolff, Joyce Carol Oates, Eudora Welty, and I mean really, really reading - and discussing plot and character and all.

I figured taking a class would beat Mike's suggestion of taking up competitive eating. Less damage to my wardrobe that way.

And yes Gene, I did travel. Was in Tokyo for work. Try hobbling around Ropponggi and Chiyoda on crutches. I dare you.

More Running Around

Did a Half Marathon last Sunday. YAY!! Was slower than when I did one in NY...but ...uh...I'll blame the humidity...

Got back from Vietnam on Friday and the run was on Sunday. So had to do a few runs in Hue and Hoi An.

NO ONE runs in Hue and Hoi An, I swear. People were totally staring - wondering who that crazy, sweaty tourist was.

Unlike in Hanoi, where I could do a few laps around the lake across from the Zephyr Hotel (and across from Bobby Chinn's from those who would find it easier to have a BAR as a landmark), I pretty much had to run along the main roads this time around. So, in Hoi An, I ran from the old quarter...past 18th century houses, padi fields, rickety shophouses, uniformed schoolkids on bikes...towards a bunch of newly-built resorts beside a beach.

Hue was very, VERY cool. I ran across a bridge to the ancient Citadel and Imperial Palace and ran around the palace. Something about running around a really, really old pile of stones.

So this year, I've run under the Sydney Harbour bridge, across from the Opera House in Sydney; I've run along the designer stores on Via Nationale to the Roman Forum and a lap around Circus Maximus; and around the Imperial Palace in Hue. Way cool.

And oh - Vietnam photos here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/geri.wanjun/HoiAnAndHueVietnam

Goooood Morning Vietnam

Went back to Vietnam again for a vacation with my NY friends Adam and Lauree. This time I went to Hue and Hoi An, in central Vietnam.We were walking by the river in Hue one night and saw this girl, reading, by herself, under a bridge. She looked like an Edward Hopper painting.

Hue's the old capital of Vietnam. The main draw's a citadel and a huge palace that's survived a number of wars. Walking into the palace was like walking into the set of a Chinese Kung Fu movie.

I was half expecting mandarins and swordfighters. Didn't see them, but did visit a temple in the palace that was a memorial to the emporers - thirteen of them including a couple who were exiled to French colonies in Africa by the French after Vietnam was colonised.