mullerb's musings

Hi Girlies. Can't wait to see you again soon and to crank up the barbecue. I'm enjoying the food but I'm finding myself looking around for something a bit more Western at times. I actually think a Big Mac would be quite tasty right now. We had a formal banquet last night and they served all sorts of very traditional Cantonese food in our honor. We've been going out to eat pretty much every night and enjoying all sorts of different Chinese style foods. Like on Wednesday eve, we went to a really spicy and tasty Sechuan restaurant. But the banquet was pretty special. I had a couple of firsts: Roasted Peking duck, rabbit legs, chicken legs (pickled and baked), sea cucumber, jelly fish, a bunch of other unnamed sea foods things, and what I thought at first were grasshoppers which actually ended up being duck tongue. How can you mistake a duck tongue with a grasshopper? Well, it wasn't just the tongue, but also the vocal cords. Together, those two pieces of tasty roasted ...

I'm a hero now. Or so they say in China since I've now walked on the Great Wall. The conference is nicely scheduled with Wednesday set aside for an official excursion to the Badaling section of the Great Wall, a visit to a "Friendship" store for lunch, and then a tour of one of the thirteen Ming-era tombs north of town. I sauntered on down to the hotel breakfast a bit earlier than usual this morning in order to catch the excursion bus before 8. I've been eating a very European breakfast these past few days (yogurt, fruit, croissant with tea) not so much because that's what a I want, but more because the alternative is just not quite in line with my morning needs. I graze off of the small section of the buffet, hidden off to the corner of the dining room. Instead, if I were a bit more of a hardy breakfast kind of guy, I could help myself to what looks like a full-on Chinese food buffet. Chicken, fish, soups, rice, steamed veggies, you name it. But having to eat...

So I had to sit in the conference most of the day. That is a pretty tough thing to do when you know that there is so much to see out in the city and you know that it might be a long while before you can come back for a visit. But the conference is why I'm here and I had to support my boss, Pat, in getting things going today. He is one of the two main organizers of the conference. Most of the day was taken up by 6 or 7 Chinese folks presenting all about how they do weather forecasting here and how they educate their forecasters. It was a real struggle for some of them to present in English. I have lots of respect for their willingness to do so. The real fun was after the official dinner ended. Being kind of tired of talking so much with so many people today, I decided to head out for a walk in the local neighborhood on my own. Walking out of the nicely air conditioned dining hall was like walking into a wall of wet cotton balls. The sun had just set but it was still at least 90F an...

Hi Girlies, The conference started this afternoon so I doubt I'll be taking many pics over the next two days. I added the few that I took in the Forbidden City today to the web album: http://picasaweb.google.com/mullerb/BeijingJune28July82007 I had an hour to myself before dinner tonight so I wandered over to a local market where they sell every kind of piece of sports equipment you can think of (all of it with name brands but non of it the real thing - I might go back tomorrow to pick up a pair of "Adidas" running shoes for $8). Then I visited a large department and grocery store. The meat section was pretty cool, kind of like going to a farm and aquarium all at once. They had live fish, clams, river eels, turtles, crabs, sea weed, snails, etc. The farm meat was already dead but there where big chunks of the bodies still on display. The place was packed, shoulder to shoulder. So was the electronics stores next door. I think the Chinese are even more into buying stuff tha...