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.