Short stay in Paris to wind down...

My Spring '08 world tour is winding down after almost a week here in Paris. Work was quite productive here with with colleagues, partners, and customers, but fortunately I had a little time to wander around the city and and enjoy a brisk early spring here. I love to explore cities by just walking...though obviously much more fun with Katz around. It's been almost five years since were were last here ... and I had almost forgotten how beautifully the historic buildings are lit, so that was a real treat. And as a bonus, in most places at night there weren't too many tourists -- the Marais and even the Ill de la Cite were surprisingly peaceful.

Our office is near Trocadero by the Eiffel Tower, and I so was quite surprised by the hordes of tourists even in 8-12 degree weather. On Tuesday evening I thought I might try to blend into the crowd and take the elevator to the top for a view of the city at dusk ... but the queue was so long and I wasn't terribly patient, so I decided to go for two other tourist activities instead -- avoiding sidewalk landmines, and having a warm crepe fromage from a street-side vendor.

Other than going for evening strolls, I haven't had much time to explore the city on this trip. But I have had a few wonderful meals. On Wednesday night I went to a lovely restaurant in the western part of the city: Les Jardins de Camille with lovely food, good company, and a wonderful glass wall with a view of La Defense and the Eiffel Tower. I guess I can say I've never gone to the top, but have seen the twinkly strobe lights at the top of several hours...

For my last full meal in Paris, I was in an intimate bistro in St. Germain called "Au 35", located on 35 rue Jacob. This was fitting end to the trip - a salad with duck confit, a sublime chicken pastilla with a spiced honey sauce, and an assortment of cheeses for dessert. Very tasty food, with reasonable prices in a convenient location.

Asia Travel Update

I guess it's been a few days since I last blogged. I spent most of the week in Tokyo for business. I did make some time to do a little sightseeing, and also got to go out and eat some good Japanese food. I had tried to go to Sen, but unfortunately the owner is sick and they're only doing lunch at the moment, and the reservations are booked through April...so we went to Nagamine instead which was great.

On Thursday morning before I left Japan, I went to the auction and fish market at Tsukiji at 4:45. It was an interesting experience to see huge numbers of marlin, tuna, etc, auctioned off to a growing crowd of fishmongers...but I actually had a lot more fun wandering around the warehouses of vegetables and fruit. (This may be related to the fact that I don't eat seafood. Though in general the market didn't smell too much.) While walking around I ran into two friends who were taking a nap:

I arrived into Hong Kong on Friday for a meeting with one of our customers, and went to dinner with a colleague afterwards. I'm staying on the Kowloon side, which is a first for me, but has been pretty convenient, even though I spent most of my day on Hong Kong island today. I started early and took the express bus to Stanley to try to beat the crowds, and found a really nice (blue; surprise) shirt for about 80HKD. I enjoy treasure hunting at Stanley, but it's always hit-or-miss, so I also picked up a few shirts from my tailor while I was in town here.

I guess today's theme was, fittingly, dim sum. Based upon Chiu-Ki and Francois' suggestion last month I went for dim sum at Maxim's above city hall. When they suggested it initially I was quite puzzled, because I didn't understand that "City Hall" is not a government building as it would be at home. It's a municipal building that has performance venues, and other meeting places...with a number of shops and restaurants above. Maxim's is on the second floor with a wide swath of windows with a view of the harbor. At least where I was seated, I didn't get much of the view ... that would've meant I couldn't see the carts going around. The food was very good -- classic dim sum items...most of which I can visually identify, though only about three or four by name (Char Siu Bao; Siu Mai; Har Gow). Dim sum really needs a large crowd such that one can sample variety, so going alone today limited my options.

I wandered around Hong Kong a bit longer after lunch and then came back to Kowloon to go to two museums: the science museum and the Hong Kong history museum. The science museum had a bunch of interactive exhibits about E&M, energy efficiency, and a number of other topics focussed on life in Hong Kong. One interesting thing was how the energy efficiency exhibit talked about advances in appliances...and right up there with air conditioners and washing machines was "rice cookers"; induction-based cookers are much more efficient than stovetop cooking.

Without a doubt my favorite part of the museum was a little room that showed a bunch of "process" videos. For example, there was a five minute video showing a tour of an instant noodle factory, going through mixing the dough, steaming, frying, weighing for quality control etc. A number of other region-focussed videos too: making bean curd and soya milk, making moon cakes, as well as making ice cream and a bunch of other ones.

These brought back memories of my childhood. I loved sesame street and PBS (and as y'all can attest, still do) but one of my favorite segments was the crayon video. This was a fifteen minute tour of Crayola -- starting with a girl drawing with crayons and then staring at a peach colored one. The video of making crayons is actually on YouTube! And it turns out it isn't fifteen minutes long, but barely two--which shows what my attention span was. Anyway, I may no longer be doing engineering work, but I've always been an engineer at heart.

I spent a few hours in the HK history museum, seeing how the government presents the history of the opium wars, British occupation, etc, and then went back to Hong Kong island for dinner. I went to what I think was Marah and my favorite restaurant here -- I think this is my fourth time now? I'm a little embarrassed by the name-- it really is called "Dim Sum", and is located at 63 Sing Woo Road in Happy Valley. But the food is that good. In fact, it was featured on a recent episode of the PBS show "Gourmet Diary of a Foodie". Their char siu bao also includes bits of roast duck, and their pak choi/mushroom dumplings are tasty with an good/interesting mixture of textures that I haven't been able to find in California (yet).

Anyway, that's an update from here in Asia. Tomorrow I fly on to New Delhi for business.

Contrasts during a Sunday in Tokyo

I had a wonderful Sunday in Tokyo. I woke up a bit early - about 5:30 here, and called home to California for a bit; did some online banking; tried unsuccessfully to fall back asleep; and then finally decided to shower and head out. The default jetlagged-tourist event here is to head to Tsukuji, the wholesale fish market, but it isn't open on Sundays, so I had to come up with my own plan.

Breakfast was a bit of a scavenger hunt. To start I had a lovely hot bowl of udon at the Ebisu train station. It's a great little haunt where one gets to choose from a set of doughy fried vegetables and other toppings for a bowl of hot noodles. My favorite this morning was the bundle of fried shimeji mushrooms. I think I might go slurp there again tomorrow on the way to the office. I then went north on the Yamanote line to Harajuku, where on the first Sunday of the month at the Togo Shrine is a flea market. Not quite Portobello Road or Stanley Market, but a small little place where locals have brought arts, crafts, and dated music records. I got to wander around a bit and skip the mostly closed shops on Takeshita-Dori on a nice, brisk, sunny Tokyo morning.

After that I decided to wander around a bit. I think I walked about 8km this morning, heading via Aoyama Cemetaryon to Roppongi Hills, and then eventually back to Ebisu via Sengakuji near Shinagawa station. (I will admit the last part of the walk was not quite as planned, but I got distracted and then a bit lost on the way back to Ebisu and didn't have a detailed map of the area and couldn't read the Kanji describing the chome I was in...but it was fun.)

I happened to wander by the Prada building in Tokyo while walking this morning. The Herzog /de Meuron building was something that has been on "my list" for a number of years, but finding it this morning was really serendipity. When I walked by at 9:46, it was pretty quiet and the store wasn't open. The building has sets of flat, convex, and concave diamonds of glass that undulate in the light and offer almost "funhouse mirror" reflections of the area. I spent maybe 10-15 minutes just wandering around the building looking at the different light and reflections. I'm not quite sure why, but I was almost endlessly amused watching this woman go back and forth polishing the glass.

I spent the afternoon with Fuji-san and his wife Chiko-san. We went to the Tokyo-Edo museum to get a feel for the city history of Tokyo since 1603. It was interesting to see the development of the city as a view of Japanese culture and expansion. In some ways it was similar to the Barcelona city history museum that Marah and I visited last October--the museum showed progressive maps of the city, with depictions of the reclamation of Tokyo Bay. We had a tour guide for a bit and a young couple from eastern India joined us. The guy from India clearly had studied Japanese history quite a bit, and offered several comments and opinions during the tour. They did note many customs-like taking shoes off before entering a home, and keeping a small shrine inside one's house- transcended cultures and countries.

The couple had an interesting point about Japan (esp. juxtaposed with India), though without an accurate quote this may not convey the nuance. "You rely on electricity a lot," said the young woman. I really was not sure what she meant nor how to respond. She clarified, that in India they would rely upon stairs in buildings but here in Japan they have elevators and escalators for everything. (I didn't really interject about this transcending Japan, US, EU, ...) Chiko-san and I were both puzzled.

After the museum we headed over to the Senso temple, and then went in search of a Tonkatsu (deep fried pork cutlet) restaurant he had heard great things about. When we found it, there was a sign that indicated it was closed due to renovations ... which reminded me of the sign that I recently saw at my favorite Columbus Bakery in NYC. (For those of you without the history, it was a tasty place on 82nd/Columbus with a cool "Toasty Man" logo. Unfortunately, the silly people didn't appear to be upfront about so-called renovations, and have since closed/changed ownership.)

Oh, but I digress. We went to find another Tonkatsu place, and had a tasty dinner. They're both lovely people, and I had a great time with them in the afternoon. Meanwhile, it's just about nine o'clock here and I think I'm going to try to stay awake for a few more hours such that I can make it through my day at work tomorrow.

Around the world in 22 days...

Here's the start of another round-the-world business trip. On "Leap Day" I hopped on a United flight from SFO to Tokyo. The rest of the trip will take me to Hong Kong, New Delhi, Singapore (briefly), and then on to Europe.

The flight to Tokyo was pretty decent, and oddly enough, I actually enjoyed the meal. I was a bit scared, since it was one of the "designed by Charlie Trotter" menu items--in past experience the big T logo means "Truly disgusting"...but it was an apricot curry braised lamb shoulder, with Israeli couscous and spinach. We didn't take off on time since the folks on the ground decided to hold out for 20 passengers connecting from Denver, but we made up for it and arrived roughly on schedule at 15:30 on Saturday March 1.

Downtown Tokyo is 60+ km away from the Narita airport. Last time I took the "Narita Express" train, which while speedy required a change either at Tokyo or Shinagawa...and with baggage is really a stupid thing to do at rushhour since the trains are packed. So instead I took the "limo bus", which brought me straight to the Westin. Very easy, but took two hours. That's on par with what the train would've taken, but after a 10 hour flight (in first), it's not terribly fun to sit on a bus and get motion sick while reading two months of old NYTimes dining sections.

More details later.