weird food day

the first weird thing tht happened today is that we had our first experience being ripped off.
breakfast of tea eggs, congee, wonton soup, and steamed dumpings at a bare-bones restaurant should have cost about $5 cost us about $20....and when you have not a word of the language, it is hard to argue. oh well,averaged in with all our other cheap meals makes it ok, but still burns. Then we went to a fancy grocery store, and apentless than that for 3 bags of groceries so we can pack lunch for our trip to th great wall tomorrow. then we grabbed cab togo to the Temple of Heaven park, a series of beautiful temples in a large park. Cab ride gettng there was another adventure....we have a map with all the tourist sites in chinese, but somehow, maps seemto be culturally unfamiliar & confusing.

Our day started to get better when awomanaddressed us in the park andinvited us to see some art. we were suspicious--felt lik a time-share pitch--but turned out to be gorgous, inexpensive art. we bought three pieces--2 for our dining room, and one for our bedroom or my office.

Next, headed to the famous "snack street" that you may have seen on the news. Stalls lined up selling strange food on sticks: seahorses, bees, pupee, sme kind of testes, etc. We tried scorpians (tasted like popcorn), crabs (shell & all), centipede, bbq eel, and some yummy candied fruit,among other thins. add that to some of the other interesting food adam's tried here: sea cucumbers, sheep stomach stew, ox face meet (yesterday's weird experience). Hock schew, they say here--good eats!

After snacking quite a lot, we walked down a closed pedestian shopping street -- lots of beijingers and foreigners out on a nice night enjoying the end-of-olympics festive mood.Little bous with olympic rings shaved on their heads, pairs of orange-clad geisha-types. EVERYone swarming the official souvenier stores (why weren't they selling all this stuff at the olympic venues? They're still new to capitalism, but catching up fast. Customer service is going to take a little longer!) More drama getting a cab home, but the rid took us past Tiennaman square, where all the buildings were outlined with lights and barricades set up for what looks like a HUGE end of olympics party tomorrow night. Looks a lot like Chairman Mao will be supervising the start of 'the Chinese century" from his perch over Tienamon Square.

view from the birdsnest

The scene is so dramatic! From left to right, this is what you see: 1st, a 5-building (hotel/office/mall) complex in the form of a stylized dragon. The head is about 20 stories high. the body abut 15, and each building has a gigantic video screen showing olympic highlights. Then the water cube; lit mostly blue, but changing lots of different ways. In front of the water cube is a huge waterpark/fountain with coored lights and people dashing through in the warm night. All around rhe grounds, the 5-headed light poles also light up with little led lights. Then there's a tower called the pagoda--pobably a security tower, looks like a series of suspended glass pyramids, and it also lights up in a different changing color patterns. Then there's another buiding, called digital Beijing,that lights up with circuit-like patterns, and the national stadium, low, with an inverted parabola roof. And over it all looms the birdsnest, glowing red like a jack o lantern. The level of detail is just "fantasmagical", says adam, who loved the fact that the path way lights are designed to look like the birds nest. We wish we could buy some to install at krisana park. One poorly lanned detail, however, was a lack o designated taxi stands. We walked for miles to find a place to catch a cab, and when we finally found one, no one wanted to drive to our hotel (about 45 minutes away.) We were rejected by about 5 cabs and didn't get home until 1 am!

Amazing!!

Just back at 1 am from our second nite @ olympics.. !st nightwas cold & rainy, & we didn't really have a chance tolook around because ittook longerto get in & through securitythan we realized it would. but we saw lots of cool events, and the very sad dropped relay. Thr lead male runner, rodney martin, gave us his tix, so we were very sad for him.

2nite, in contrast, was a gorgous blue sky day,& we got to to the site early enough to just walk around & soak in the olympic spirit. So many people dressed up in their nat'l colors, all taking pictures of each other. Wegot some great pix showing how much nat'l pride there is hr. However, the chinese still have a lot to learn about capitalsm....very minimal food choices inside,so I hd some space-age, self-heating rice bowl that tasted like chinese baby food. Into the stadium just fte 7, to see the last evets of the decathalon, the women'slong jump, and the amazing 1500 m, and the thrilling high jump. Not sure if they showed this in the US, but the aussie won with 5.85M, then decided to keep going to see ifhe could break the olympic record, which he did on his3rd attempt.

the olympicgreen is scene is even more spectacular than on tv. Yes, the bids nest is a beauty queen with no bad angles, but the view FROm it is even better. I'll try to post a description tom; it is very late here & as you might be able to tell, this computer keyboard sucks. i feel like archy & mehitabl, if anyone gets that reference. toujours gay!

Going to the meet 2night

Have been in chinafor 24 hours now -- having lots of adventures. English is definitely not very useful here, but Adam has picked up a a bit of Chinese! Last night we wandered in the hutong neighborhood near our hotel (which is actually a big apartment complex). The hutong is a maze of allys - big enough for bikes, which make them kind of peaceful. This am we got up very early to get to the olympic village to meet up with Rodney Martin, a sprinter who gave us his family tix for tonight and tommorrow's track finals. It was pouring, so we got pretty soaked, but we're excited to be going. After getting the tix, we wandered around in the rain to find some breakfast; found a little hole-in-the wall place selling yummy steamed dumplings with tea eggs & hot &sour soup for $2.50 for2! Fortified, we then went to the forbidden city. now we're resting & putting on our usa apparal for tonight. goUSA


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Beijing bound!

While Adam is still seemingly being held captive at a hotel with a golf course truthfully called "Monopoly," I'm getting ready to leave for Beijing early tomorrow morning. I'm a bit nervous about landing in such a big new city by myself and finding my way to my hotel (a driver has been hired, but who knows if they'll show up.) and about a vacation where we're more or less winging it in a country where English is not very useful, but excited too. I hope we'll be able to blog from China, but it seems that internet access is very limited due to security restrictions. So, you might not get the whole story until we return.

Thanks for following along!

Olympic Glory for Adam!

Astute brother-in-law Darren Dorkin alerted me to the fact that Adam's been mentioned in several athlete's blogs about the games. Check these out (including the one from the Colorado Higher Ed Journal that uses the Johnson and Wales press release but a photo of Adam from his time at Uno's Chicago Grill!

http://www.jwu.edu/media/co08_04_08.htm

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/08/15/SPBF12ANSV.DTL

http://www.kpcnews.com/articles/2008/08/11/online_features/olympics08/blog/doc48a10c391f75f509152229.txt

http://glutenfreenyc.blogspot.com/

http://coloradohigherednews.com/Pages/Articles.php?id=372

http://rockymountaintrade.com/events.aspx

Groundhog day

Oh, dear, when words like "groundhog day" and "sea-side prison" start being used, you know it has been a long few weeks!

Many of the track and field athletes have started leaving Dailan to go to Beijing for the start of their competitions. Before they left, Adam had them all sign one of his track and field T-shirts.... which has now apparently been stolen! How sad. In just one week, we'll be in Beijing for the end of the Olympics, so Adam can check out the athletes there. We're working on getting tickets to some of the events!

Wow!!!

That's the only word for the opening ceremony last night -- WOW, all caps, exclamation mark. What artistry, what a amazing feats of coordination and imagination.

And just a tad bit creepy, too. Definitely won't ever be replicated by any country with a minimum wage. I hope the goverment was paying attention to their own propaganda about the importance of finding harmonious solutions to the world's environmental issues. OK, I better stop before my visa is revoked. (Yes, you need a Visa to go to China.... $200, make your check out right to the government treasury.)

Here in Denver, we had a family party, complete with Chinese food (or, as they call it in China, "food") and Tsingtao beer. Word from Dalian is that they had a party there too, although no Chinese food. Most of the track and field athletes are still in Dalian until Tuesday or so, training and keeping focused until their competitions begin. (Wouldn't want them to get distracted by watching the beach vollyball competition, would you?)

Adventurous Eating

Yes, you all know that Adam and I like to think we're fairly adventurous eaters..... I can't speak for Adam, but this article highlights some examples of things we probably won't be eating (OK, I might be willing to try scorpian, but probably not donkey pizzle!)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1041266/Scorpion-kebab--Its-fast-food-Beijing-style---But-Olympic-visitors-stomach-it.html

No wonder they love him!

(posted by Stephanie) Wondering what's on the menu on a typical day at the Track and Field training center?

Well, there's an omlet station and a crepe station; hot cereals like grits, cinnamon oatmeal, and congee (hot rice cereal)

French toast, pancakes, chicken sausage, bacon, homestyle potatos, soy sauce eggs,
special cream cheeses like smoked salmon and pinapple creme cheese.

Smoothies are always available, and there are fresh fruit platters... he's even sneaking in some vegetables into the breakfasts.

Dinner and lunch are roughly the same, featuring comfort food staples like chicken parm, rotisserie chicken, chili, fresh fish, a beef dish, and a pork dish

There's a big salad bar, sandwich station, and a pizza station

Starches include the choice between white, fried, and black rice, homemade potato chips, homemade french fries, pasta, chinese noodles, chinese vegetables, western vegetables

The athlete's favorite hot meals: anything fried, anything with sweet and sour sauce, Italian specialties, black rice

And great desserts (hey, they're burning a lot of calories out there!)

People are really digging the food. An NBC film crew has been enjoying the food, and are talking about doing a feature about the dining center. The track and field coaches are hoping to have Adam speak at a convention of coaches being planned for Las Vegas. And apparently there's a crew from Birmingham, England, where the Track and Field training center will be held in 2012, who are interested in bringing Adam on board!

But, he's most excited about the way he's been supporting the athletes by meeting their food needs, like having smoothies ready for certain athletes, or a birthday cake for another athlete, and by motivating and encouraging them. He gave one athlete a pep talk about how competition was like cooking: you need to have your "mis en place" (a cooking term refering to having everthing chopped, diced, and ready before you begin to cook) of body, mind, and spirit in place before a competition.

And, looks like we scored tickets to see one of the track events on August 21!

The King of Charades

(posted by Stephanie) According to Adam, next time he's invited to a casual game of charades, he's going to rule! Getting a lot of practice in demonstrating American recipes to his Chinese cooking staff. He said that he spent 45 minutes one day trying to explain that cornmeal was flour made out of corn, not flour with pieces of corn in it (I think he was trying to cook corndogs for the athletes.) Imagine how complicated lasagna would be to chefs not familiar with Italian cooking!

Despite 15 hour days, he's having the time of his life. The athletes are incredibly grateful for what he's doing for them, and he is truly thrilled to be spending so much time with world class athletes and their coaches. Apparently, quite a few of them are mentioning the great food at Dalian in their own blogs.

Although Adam has moved into a room with better Internet access a few days ago, he's working such long hours that he doesn't have energy to blog or download pix. Things might calm down a little later in the week as the athletes start leaving to go to Beijing for the opening ceremonies and their competitions. We're hoping to score some tickets to events in Beijing when I've joined Adam there.

How many people does it take to install a countertop?

Twelve, actually:
One person to tear out the countertop, after a plumber disconnects the sink.
Two more people to deliver and install the new countertop, and to accidentally sever some wires leading to the dishwasher.
Three supervisors to come and inspect the severed wire, and verify that it needs an electrician to fix it.
Two electricians (thank goodness I wasn't paying for their time; they worked for 2.5 hours)
One nextdoor neighbor and his carpenter to build a temporary prop for the breakfast bar and to critique the installation of the dishwasher.
The installation company supervisor, to check the dishwasher.
The plumber at 7:30 p.m. to reinstall the sink (I was paying for his time, and it wasn't pretty.)

Oh, and a 13th person: Me, to juggle all the phone calls and doorbells involved in the above, all while trying to participate on conference calls, too.

Photos to follow. Hopefully before Adam gets Internet access.

Mah Jong Coincidence

(posted by Stephanie) After not speaking live with Adam since last Friday, he finally got through to me Tuesday night while I was learning to play jewish-style Mah Jong with my mom, aunt, and cousins. Turns out that he had gone out drinking with his kitchen staff on Tuesday night (his time) and had learned how to play Chinese-style Mah Jong with them!

Sounds like things are going much better: he now has a real translator, and has been busily teaching the hotel's Chinese staff how to make hommous, pizza, and other American fare. He says that there is real respect and excitement from the staff to learn something new, and that this Chinese-American cooperation is a real "first" brought about by the Olympics. He has also been spending time with the coaches and training staff -- many of whom are former Olympians and world-class athletes -- who are on site getting ready for tomorrow's arrival of the first competitors. They have been very enthusiastic consumers of Adam's efforts in the kitchen, as they were getting tired of the hotel's Chinese food.

Internet communication remains a challenge, though. He's still in temporary housing with little internet access, so no blogging directly from Adam for the time being. He's hoping that he'll have more access next week when he moves into the main hotel; I'm hoping he'll be able to post a few pictures by then. And see the exciting pictures of our new kitchen countertop that I'll plan to post tomorrow!

So Andrew Zimmerman

(from an e-mail from Adam. You can see why I'm in charge of writing most of this blog!) Was in town (Dalian) yesterday with gang... it was all too familiar...seemed more like Singapore than a (perceived) communist country. I had the best squid.. cooked entire cephlapod on griddle with spicy sambal. folks with me thought that I was crazy... but I knew better. I am so Andrew Zimmerman.

Today dealing with kitchen and going for a tour of track and field venue in Dailain.

(for those who've never heard of Andrew Zimmerman - he is a very large American guy who has a show on the Travel channel where he goes around eating the strangest things he can find in every corner of the world. Sea horses, stewed pieces of male anatomy, pigs ears.... nothing is exempt from his enthusiastic voraciousness. And he nearly always has something positive to say about what he's eating. The only thing I've seen him really dislike is the infamous durian fruit beloved in southeast asia that smells a lot like vomit.)

Something's in the air

(posted by Stephanie)
Thanks to the urging of many, I've booked a flight to Beijing for the last 8 days of Adam's trip. It is a once-in-a-lifetime chance, but not exactly the bike trip through Europe that I had envisioned (in the days before rising gas prices and falling exchange rates) for this summer. Spoke to day with my dear friend Teresa Sobiezsczyk, who just returned from a trip to China that included sight-seeing in Beijing. She says that it is hot, chaotic, with air so heavy with pollutants that you can't see more three buildings away clearly.

Here's what the Washington Post reported a few months ago about the problems that the Olympic athletes will have with these levels of pollutants:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/23/AR2008012303954_pf.html

De Spiegel had an even more dire article about China's "green olympics":

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,491184,00.html

What am I getting myself into? And don't even get me started about China's human rights record. That was my original hesitation for booking a trip (not that a one-woman boycott would scare anyone in China.) But, the ticket's booked, so going I am. Besides, I think Adam will be very happy to have a friendly face by the time I arrive!

Technical Difficulties

(posted by Stephanie) Adam finally got through to me using Skype to call my cellphone, but apparently internet access is hard to come by at the hotel... he thinks things may improve when the athletes arrive and he moves into the main hotel (he's currently staying in a villa, which sounds like it should be more exclusive, but apparently at this hotel it just means sidewalk-hard beds.)

Internet connectivity is not the only technical problem he's having. Among them: communication to the hotel staff about Adam's arrival got muddled, so no one was at the airport to pick him up. Although he knew the English name of his hotel, he didn't have it written in Chinese so had quite an adventure getting there. At the hotel, he was told, the head cook spoke English, but in reality his English is very minimal, and the menu that Adam developed for the athletes had not been translated into Chinese. He said that he spent 16 hours trying to communicate about the menu to start the process of ordering food. Then there's the biggest problem: the track and field association shipped food from the US (donated mostly by Tyson & Kellog) and it has not cleared customs yet. There's no telling when or if it will show up, so Adam has to order local food without knowing whether to expect his American shipments.

I know they picked the right man for this job - Adam's a wiz at improvising in the kitchen, and he'll make sure those athletes are fed right. But, he says that it is taking quite a lot of patience and humor, and he hasn't slept much since he left home. There are people from the Track and Field organization at the hotel, but they are mostly focused on the coaching and coordinating the athletes.

Weather report is that it is quite humid, like we experienced in Singapore, and that the coastline is quite beautiful.

Where is Dalian?

For those of you wondering where Dalian is located in relation to Beijing.... it is actually just as close to Seoul as to Beijing!

Leaving for China Tomorrow!

(Posted by Stephanie) Tomorrow's the big day..... after waiting for this for months and months, Adam is leaving for Dailan China tomorrow, with his huge Track and Field suitcase filled with swag from Nike - tons of shirts, jackets, hats, and other stuff with the Track and Field insignia.

His flight goes through LA and Seoul Korea before arriving in Dailan, a resort town on a peninsula that juts into the Yellow Sea. Communist Party leaders usually stay at the hotel where Adam will be based, but for 4 weeks it will be the "training camp" for the Track and Field team, where they will acclimate, prepare for competition, and compete in early heats. Adam will be supervising the hotel's Chinese chefs to prepare a western menu for the athletes. The hotel's head chef will act as his translator. At any one time, there may be between 8 and 300 athletes on site, along with coaches, etc. They'll be served familiar western food (don't want any upset tummies before a competition!) The final competitions will take place in Beijing, an hour flight away.

In the last week, I've gotten regretful about not having booked a ticket to go, so I'm now considering joining him for the last week! It's only money, right?