I had to break the bad news to our birthday boy, Edoardo, that he can no longer qualify as a youngun since he has now officially entered middle age or the Dark Side as I like to call it. "Luke, You are starting to sound like your Father". (sotto voci Darth Vader) I made a grown Italian man cry. I quickly told him that he was eligible to maintain his youngun status for another five years by acting as a mentor to the other younguns. Sort of like the Past President position maintained by many organizations, created to allow the passing on of all the accumulated wisdom of the policies and procedures of the organization. Of course he will discover that the younguns won't listen as they fully believe they know everything and that what input he has is ancient and of little use in their lives. Those of us who have entered our senior years have had to face that stigma for the last 25 years so it is now second nature to us, to be regulated to "old news" status.
We celebrated his birthday on Saturday night with a lovely meal in a large private room at a local restaurant with over 20 people attending. Most Chinese restaurants provide one or more rooms for their guests to dine in privacy. The nicer ones provide only private rooms and have no public seating areas. Some of the larger restaurants occupy 3 or more floors of a building with small rooms seating 8 and growing to larger rooms with seating for up to 20 or more. The room will always have a round table with a Lazy Susan occupying the centre of the table. The Lazy Susan on a table for 20+ is huge but it may need to hold 15-20 different dishes. The one on our table was a round piece of 1/2" glass over 5' in diameter. It looked strong enough to stop a puck.
There is some unwritten rule about the ratio of the number of food dishes to people but I have yet to figure it out. I think it is based solely on the appetite of the person or persons ordering the meal. Kind of like the rule "never go grocery shopping when you are hungry as you will have a tendency to buy too much". Ordering food is quite a process. Some restaurants have the food artfully displayed on tables in a room usually located where you enter the restaurant while other make do with pictures. You point to the dishes you want or in some cases, to the fish swimming around in huge tanks. Over the last year we have seen some interesting dishes. From live silk worms to turtles poking their little heads out and staring at you as you ponder their fate.
You return to your room and twenty minutes later the dishes start arriving. Typically, they will arrive one at a time, delivered 5 or 10 minutes apart. Once a few dishes have arrived people will start to eat while more dishes continue to arrive over the next 40 minutes or so. The Lazy Susan will be in continuous motion so you need to be quick when one of your favorite dishes goes by. That is a challenge for me as I have not grasped the intricacies of chopstick use yet. I think it has something to do with the missing piece of my thumb. There are no serving spoons for the dishes, you just dig in with your chopsticks. This can involve lots of work as most dishes are usually carved up into small chopstick size portions so it can involve quite a few transfers to your plate. The plates are usually no larger than a coaster making it difficult to pile on a lot of food. This helps to reduce your food intake and may explain my shedding pounds during our time in China.
The nicer rooms will also contain couches, and all the makings for a karaoke party. Wandering around the restaurant, you will often hear some really bad singing. The room is yours for as long as you want it so most diners make a night of it. You can carry on as crazily as you want, as long as you keep it in your room. As a long time people watcher, the private rooms do not satisfy my needs but it is more civilized. Nothing can spoil a nice meal than watching some sloppy drunk at the next table unless he is your sloppy drunk.
Life has settled into a nice rhythm since Nonie has returned, with long lunches and surprisingly late nights for us. Our switch to late afternoon and evening classes has thrown both our Circadian clocks into disarray. We are staying up till 10, sometimes 11 o'clock at night and sleeping in till 6:30 or 7:00. I not sure if we will become night owls but it is actually a nice change all be it a temporary one.
We celebrated his birthday on Saturday night with a lovely meal in a large private room at a local restaurant with over 20 people attending. Most Chinese restaurants provide one or more rooms for their guests to dine in privacy. The nicer ones provide only private rooms and have no public seating areas. Some of the larger restaurants occupy 3 or more floors of a building with small rooms seating 8 and growing to larger rooms with seating for up to 20 or more. The room will always have a round table with a Lazy Susan occupying the centre of the table. The Lazy Susan on a table for 20+ is huge but it may need to hold 15-20 different dishes. The one on our table was a round piece of 1/2" glass over 5' in diameter. It looked strong enough to stop a puck.
There is some unwritten rule about the ratio of the number of food dishes to people but I have yet to figure it out. I think it is based solely on the appetite of the person or persons ordering the meal. Kind of like the rule "never go grocery shopping when you are hungry as you will have a tendency to buy too much". Ordering food is quite a process. Some restaurants have the food artfully displayed on tables in a room usually located where you enter the restaurant while other make do with pictures. You point to the dishes you want or in some cases, to the fish swimming around in huge tanks. Over the last year we have seen some interesting dishes. From live silk worms to turtles poking their little heads out and staring at you as you ponder their fate.
You return to your room and twenty minutes later the dishes start arriving. Typically, they will arrive one at a time, delivered 5 or 10 minutes apart. Once a few dishes have arrived people will start to eat while more dishes continue to arrive over the next 40 minutes or so. The Lazy Susan will be in continuous motion so you need to be quick when one of your favorite dishes goes by. That is a challenge for me as I have not grasped the intricacies of chopstick use yet. I think it has something to do with the missing piece of my thumb. There are no serving spoons for the dishes, you just dig in with your chopsticks. This can involve lots of work as most dishes are usually carved up into small chopstick size portions so it can involve quite a few transfers to your plate. The plates are usually no larger than a coaster making it difficult to pile on a lot of food. This helps to reduce your food intake and may explain my shedding pounds during our time in China.
The nicer rooms will also contain couches, and all the makings for a karaoke party. Wandering around the restaurant, you will often hear some really bad singing. The room is yours for as long as you want it so most diners make a night of it. You can carry on as crazily as you want, as long as you keep it in your room. As a long time people watcher, the private rooms do not satisfy my needs but it is more civilized. Nothing can spoil a nice meal than watching some sloppy drunk at the next table unless he is your sloppy drunk.
Life has settled into a nice rhythm since Nonie has returned, with long lunches and surprisingly late nights for us. Our switch to late afternoon and evening classes has thrown both our Circadian clocks into disarray. We are staying up till 10, sometimes 11 o'clock at night and sleeping in till 6:30 or 7:00. I not sure if we will become night owls but it is actually a nice change all be it a temporary one.
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