Home for the holidays =)

After a fairly smooth trans-Pacific flight with Matt, dropping him off safely in SF, then 36 hours of flight cancellations/delays and two trips back-and-forth to Aunt Karen/Uncle Peter's house, I'm finally back in NJ =D

Traveling started Saturday, December 19 (Macau time), when Matt and I wrestled our bags downstairs and caught a taxi to the airport. There was only a slight delay at the bridge, when a police-escorted convoy was passing through, apparently going to pick up PRC President Hu Jintao at the airport for the tenth anniversary of Macau's handover celebrations. Still, we got to the airport in plenty of time to get through security and all, only to wait an extra 20 minutes at the gate because EVA hadn't finished boarding their previous flight! We also picked up lunch for Matt at the airport cafe, since we weren't sure how the "diabetic meal" on the plane would be (it was just as well - they asked Matt if he wanted orange, apple, or tomato juice, none of which are exactly good for diabetics unless they need the sugar boost!)

Taipei airport was relatively easy to navigate once we picked up a luggage cart, though I have yet to find those massage chairs (maybe when I go in January). Matt picked up a t-shirt (since he's never been to Taiwan and is not likely to come back anytime soon) and we sent status update emails home, then just hung out at the food court for a while, where "authentic Taiwanese snacks" (more like appetizers) and Diet Coke were both conveniently nearby =P Thanks to the free wireless, I was even able to check-in for my Delta flight from SFO to JFK. Again, being unsure of the EVA "diabetic meal" quality, we picked up dumplings-to-go for Matt's dinner, then headed for the plane so we could board early and get settled in for the 11-hour flight to SFO. Besides a short stretch of turbulence (which will probably hit CA as a big storm in the next few days), it was an uneventful flight...I got a couple hours of sleep between watching the kung-fu parody In His Majesty's Secret Service and most of the Disney guinea pig movie G-Force, both of which were pretty funny.

Things started going downhill once we touched down in SF and I called home only to find out that my flight had already been canceled because of the massive blizzard bearing down on the tri-state area. Matt and I got through customs surprisingly quickly (30 minutes has got to be some sort of record), then he met up with Marlyann, so I was free to head for the domestic terminal to see what I could salvage to get home. Unfortunately, Delta informed me that all of their flights to anywhere on the northeast coast (aka anything between Maine and Maryland) had been canceled for at least the next 12 hours, so I couldn't even get into Boston or DC and Amtrak it home from there. The best they could do was put me on the standby list for the 1:45 PM flight Sunday afternoon and confirm a seat on a Tuesday two-part flight, connecting through Minneapolis.

It seemed like a good time to switch to Plan B, so to speak, so I called my aunt/uncle and they graciously came to save me from spending a night in the airport. Instead, I shared a comfy sofabed with the family cat =P Sunday morning I checked the standby list and was #3 of 3, but the website said 6 seats were available in coach, so we decided to give it a try. As I found out when I got to the airport, however, the flight had already been overbooked, so they even had to ask for additional volunteers to change their travel plans in order to get all the ticketed passengers on the plane. No one got off the standby list.

Fast-forward a couple hours, and I was still in the airport hoping to see if I could get on the Sunday red-eye flight, which would get me to JFK 24 hours after I was supposed to get there. I had also changed my confirmed seat to a direct flight 9 AM Tuesday morning because I didn't think 40 minutes was enough time to make a connection, and I definitely didn't want to get stuck in Minneapolis. Around 6 PM, I was #8 on the standby list, so things were not looking good...I went back to the Delta counter to ask if there was anything else available. The guy looked at me and asked kindly, "Didn't I talk to you yesterday?" (It was true - he had helped me Saturday night.) Consequently, he was noticeably more persistent than the other agents I had talked to: after about 10 minutes of searching, someone's cancellation opened up a seat on the 9 AM flight Monday morning, and I grabbed it.

Thus, after one more night with the cat, I got on the BART around 5:30 AM to get to the airport by 7:00, got through security, and was finally in the air by 9:15 AM. By 6 PM EST, I was back in snowy, icy NJ...cold, but glad to be home =)

December birthday bash

A few weeks ago, Sam, Susan, and I realized that no fewer than five of our friends in Macau all had birthdays in mid-to-late December: ETAs Austin and Holly, Grinnell fellow Brian, UM GA Karen, and UM student Henry. (Actually, we later realized there were a couple more, but those were the main ones we were celebrating). Unfortunately, late December is exactly the time that we will all be split up traveling with different family members/friends, so we decided to plan a preemptive surprise joint birthday party, aka big family-style dinner + cake, then go out for drinks afterward.

The evening started off at Azita's parents' restaurant, a small place near the border gate with 7-8 tables, and we took up two of them! Susan and I went early to sneak in the cake (a 1-pound fruit and cream confection from St. Honore's), then the others came in dribs and drabs, eventually totaling 17 people. Azita's parents were super-nice...her dad is apparently the only chef in the kitchen, so we felt bad about getting so much food, but I guess it wasn't any more than that number of ordinary customers would have ordered. We even tried to help by pre-ordering some things so he could prepare them earlier, but then we realized that wasn't going to be nearly enough food...we ended up getting about 15 different dishes ^^;

Some of the many delicious things

The devious part of the night was that we had told all the birthday people that it was a "big holiday gathering" to celebrate the end of the semester before we all split up to travel, but once everyone was there, we whipped out the birthday crowns!

Karen and Brian putting on their crowns

Niko (an exchange student from Finland), Austin, and Emily

The second part of the birthday surprise was the cake, and also this massive card that St. Honore's had thrown in for free. All the birthday people took photos with the card, but we eventually decided to save it and all sign it for Holly, since she wasn't at the dinner (she was busy at debate team). After we looked like we couldn't eat any more dinner, Azita's mom brought out the cake, with just enough candles so each of the birthday people got one to blow out.

Happy birthday...

Dinly and Henry with their candles

Karen taking a stab at cutting the cake (pun intended)

Azita insisting that Henry "read" the card

With many thanks to Azita's parents, we departed for NAPE, the "party zone" of Macau near the statue of Kun Iam, on the waterfront of the channel between Macau and Taipa. We ended up spending most of the night (until we went home around 1 AM) at this relatively new bar called House Cafe, which was shiny and white and clean, but the drinks were only ok (for the price) and the smell of perfumed potpourri inside was overpowering. Luckily, it wasn't that chilly out, so we put a bunch of tables together and basically took over half the patio area. Perhaps the most amusing thing was a big screen that was playing fairly old/awkward music videos...it would have been a lot more fun if there was karaoke to go with it heh.

I didn't get much sleep once I got home because I had to proctor the ACT this morning, but no time for a nap now because I have to get some gift-shopping done before my friend Matt flies in to HK tomorrow. I know I've failed at blogging catch-up so far (I thought I was doing pretty well to have at least one post a week) but I'll definitely be working on it over break, between baking cookies and doing all that other holiday stuff back at home =D

Cooking for myself part 3

Tonight, I arrived home with three big bags of groceries, and Sam asks, "Oo, cooking something elaborate tonight?" My answer was no, because the groceries were meant to last me the whole week. I initially didn't have plans to make anything fancy because I was just plain hungry, but I guess it did turn into quite an undertaking. The result, however, was quite yummy =D

Yet another characteristically colorful plate

In case you can't see what's there, the plate has chewy udon-like noodles (they're a little thin to be real udon), pepper-marinated steak buried under slightly caramelized onions, lightly broiled Chinese vegetables (the name on the label is just 菜 心, literally meaning vegetable hearts, but I think think the English name is Chinese broccoli), topped with some stir-fried yellow pepper slices and sweet pea pods. In the bowl is a salad of lettuce, cherry tomatoes, more yellow pepper slices, pumpkin seeds, raisins, and slices of dried apricot, all in a light Italian herb vinaigrette.

I've gotten pretty good at the make-everything-in-one-pan approach...tonight I fried the meat, adding the onions about halfway through, then cooked the noodles, then finally the vegetables, so both the noodles and the veggies had a bit of the savory beef flavor. Working in this order, it was also much easier to clean the pan heh.

However, one of the frustrating things about cooking in Macau is that it's not that much cheaper than eating out. All things considered, this meal probably cost me about 25 MOP (about $3 USD) to buy the ingredients, plus at least half an hour of prep/cooking time, whereas I could have gotten a big bowl of noodles with meat/veggies or 20+ dumplings for the same amount. On the plus side, cooking for myself is admittedly infinitely healthier, so I guess I'll keep working on it =P

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

As in the USA, the Christmas decorations started popping up around Macau just after Thanksgiving, along with the holiday carols playing in every Watsons store (FYI: Watsons is a HK pharmacy chain kind of like Walgreens or Rite-Aid) and in many other public places as well (e.g. Senado Square). Only about 10% of Macau's population is Christian, and most of that is Roman Catholic because of the Portuguese colonization, but it still seems to be a huge deal here just judging from what I've seen so far. Some photos below:

Decorations in the Venetian

Even the gondoliers have Santa hats!

Hanging icicle lights and tinsel along the roads
(this photo taken from a bus)

One of the many fabric/wire Santa figures
(think back to the bunnies from Mid-Autumn Festival)

Setting up more stuff in Taipa

At the airport (the deer actually move up and down like carousel ponies)

Something random but semi-related...you know the song "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire..."? Well, Susan and I have been on a roast chestnut kick recently - they're relatively healthy, quite tasty, and they make great handwarmers on the bus ride home =P We started off buying the 8-9 MOP bags from Sanmiu, but found those were always not very fresh, even to the point where we had to throw out half the bag because they were moldy or charred or otherwise inedible.

Thankfully, we discovered one vendor in Senado who roasts them fresh in a rotating urn...the chestnuts are consequently more expensive (a small bag is 10 MOP, medium is 20 MOP, and large is 34 MOP for some strange reason), but we feel they are worthwhile because we can actually eat all of them, and they're actually good! It's gotten to the point where Susan and I will call/text when we happen to pass by Senado, just to ask if the other person wants chestnuts ^^;

The hardworking roaster/vendor

Yes, they're annoying to crack, but they're worth it.

De-shelled and ready for consumption...I used to pretend that eating chestnuts was like eating mini-brains =P

In other news, we have just three weeks left in the semester but so much more to cram in...my students just handed in their final writing projects (topic: write a cover letter pretending to be a fairy-tale character applying for a real life job), the final exam begins at the end of this week (administering it in class over two days), and the students still have to do final presentations (they worked in groups of 3-4 to create an advertisement for a product, either real or imaginary). Oh well...back to grading!

Thanksgiving in Macau

Without an oven and many critical ingredients for the usual spread (e.g. cranberries), what are some hungry Americans supposed to do on Thanksgiving? The answer: eat out! Thanks to a tip from another expat, Austin/Susan/Mari/Brian/Carlos/I ended up at the Rossio restaurant in the MGM last night, where they had a huge Thanksgiving special: all-you-can-eat buffet for 268 MOP per person, plus 10% service charge. The restaurant was open from 6-11 PM and we made sure to get our money's worth.


As you can see above, the restaurant itself was quite nice, with soothing beige/gray color palette, running waterfalls over glass, a big open kitchen in the middle and decorations of squashes/gourds on many of the tables. Service was impressive - every time one of us got up to get a fresh plate, the old one would be whisked away, but they would also refold the napkin and place it neatly back on the table! However, what we were there for was the food (of course), and they didn't disappoint. When we made the reservations, we were already pretty excited about the menu, which read as follows:

Classic dishes:
- Roasted prime rib with red wine and horseradish sauce
- Whole roasted turkey with gravy and cranberry sauce
- Glazed holiday ham with applesauce and honey mustard
- Carrots braised in beet juice with honey and cumin
- Potato, corn, and crab gratin
- Turkey stuffing
- Braised collard greens with with apple/chestnut/sausage
- Braised sweet potatoes in apple cider
- Oysters casino
- Mustard-braised Brussel sprouts with smoked bacon lardons
- Garlic mashed potatoes
- Braised lamb shank stew
- Turkey pot pie

Sumptuous Desserts:
- Pumpkin pie with cinnamon cream
- Cranberry apple pie with walnut brindle ice cream
- Mississippi pecan pie
- Cherry pie
- Ginger Creme Brulee
- Baked banana cheesecake with caramelized pecans

What we found when we got there, however, was not only did they have all this, there was more! Seafood-on-ice bar, sushi and sashimi, pasta bar (fresh ravioli or fettuccini), freshly fried crabcakes, at least 5 kinds of salad, antipasta area, sliced meats like prosciutto, lots of fresh-cut fruit, and even more kinds of dessert than the menu had promised. Many mouthwatering photos below:
Carrots in beet juice, lamb shank stew, turkey pot pie

*gobble gobble*

We were puzzled by this at first, but it turned out to be Beef Wellington

Snow crab legs, yum!

More of the seafood bar (they also had clams and scallops)

Sushi bar
As I mentioned before, we stayed for a good three hours, carefully pacing ourselves and sampling a little bit of many dishes rather than eating a lot of any one thing. I had sushi, snow crab legs, crabcakes, asparagus/grapefruit/crab salad, turkey pot pie, mashed potatoes, carrots in beet juice, sliced prosciutto and other meats with rosemary/pumpkin seed lavash, and a bunch of different desserts. It wasn't just all eating - we went around the table to say what we were grateful for, and Susan/I even managed to get some grading done while taking a break from the food =P
Salads galore

Half of the antipasta spread (the figs were sooo good)

Fruit bar

This photo only shows about 20% of the available desserts...they kept rotating them out

Crabcake with green apple/celery garnish

My desserts: blueberry cheesecake, chocolate/raspberry jam tartlets, pear/almond/blueberry tart, and baked pineapple with cinnamon/palm sugar

Also, crepe with (rapidly melting) banana ice cream, bananas foster, chocolate topping, and candied pecans
After dinner, Susan and I staggered home to work on grading and the others went home to Taipa, but we all agreed that the buffet had been worth the (admittedly high) price. If you went to a buffet like this in America, it would easily cost over $100 USD per person, but we ended up paying about 300 MOP each ($37.50 USD)...I easily got more than my money's worth from just the sushi/snow crab legs! Even better, we didn't have to cook or clean up! All in all, an excellent Thanksgiving feast =D

Calling the fashion police!

Something that I see on the way to work every day: at least nine wedding gown/fancy dress stores within a 15-minute walk's radius of my apartment. It was initially baffling why there are so many of these in such a small area, especially since there aren't many fancy-dress occasions for young people (e.g. Homecoming or high school proms) and there are often 2-3 of these stores together in a row. What we found out however, is that couples apparently love going to these stores to rent out a bunch of outfits, then going around shooting photos in various scenic spots. The couple doesn't even have to be engaged - they could do it just for fun - but it's pretty expensive so I imagine most people only do it if they're serious.

A couple going out on photo tour
(I've seen others photographing at Venetian, Grand Lisboa, and Senado)

What astounded me even more was the, uhh, vast range of styles. There are a few I actually wouldn't mind wearing, with simple, flowing lines and not too much ornamentation. For example, the red strapless dress (second from the left) in the picture below, or the navy blue v-neck gown (pardon the glare from the shop windows). For all photos, click to get a larger version if you wish to see the gowns in their "full glory" =P
Most of the dresses I've seen, however, would make even the most jaded bridesmaid cringe. It's not that the fabrics are cheap or slathered in sequins (although some are) - it's usually the style of the design and/or the unfortunate combination of bright colors that should never go together. I'm constantly reminded of Professor Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady, despising dresses with "weeds here, weeds there." He would be horrified at these...I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Wrapped in Romaine (lettuce)?

Country-girl calico

The second one (from L) isn't so bad, but the rest...

No peach, please.

Seafoam green bell skirt with ruffles *shudder*

No clue what this designer was thinking

How women wearing these would actually walk/dance without crashing into things (especially wearing high heels) I'm not sure, but that's a question for another day.

Mixing east and west: a tour of the MUST hospital

Yesterday afternoon, Susan and I went to tour the hospital at the Macau University of Science and Technology (MUST), where Brian and Mari teach English. While Macau doesn’t have a proper medical school, the hospital is associated with MUST’s Chinese medicine program, but it also offers Western medical treatments. We were invited by Dr. Morgan, the director of the Hope Clinic in Macau, who has also graciously allowed us to shadow a few times.

The first stop (and perhaps place of greatest interest) was the Chinese pharmacy, located right on the ground floor next to the Western one. While the room was gleamingly hygienic and scientific-looking, the contents of the drawers were straight out of an apothecary's shop.

Some of the rarer ingredients: snakeskin and centipedes

Dried lizards o_O

One of the interesting things about the pharmacy is that they try to make things more convenient for patients by pre-boiling the prescribed ingredients to make packets of dark, syrupy concentrate that the patients then take by the spoonful. From a prescription, the ingredients are tossed together on to a clean cheesecloth (this process seemed rather haphazard, involving handfuls rather than a graduated cylinder or electronic balance). The bundle is placed in a bag in a big metal urn with holes like a sieve, and the top is covered with more cheesecloth. In another room (that really smells like an apothecary's shop), the urns are placed inside glass containers which are filled with water. The whole outfit is then boiled for 1-3 hours to distill (presumably) the essences of the ingredients, which are decanted into jars or bags that are given to the patient. Scorpion soup, anyone?

Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble...

We continued the tour upstairs where there is a traditional Chinese medical clinic that offers treatments such as acupuncture, cupping, moxibustion, etc. Again, the rooms had interesting juxtapositions: standard-issue hospital beds and a nice window view, but instead of a model skeleton in the corner, there was a small model on the desk showing the various chi lines and nodes. The stainless steel trays and individually-sealed packets followed standard hygienic protocol, but the trays held rows of glass domes and the packets had super-fine acupuncture needles of varying lengths.

For those who might dismiss all this as superstitious nonsense, consider the training that the Chinese doctors must go through, which is fairly comparable to what I'll be starting next year at NYU. The attending physician we spoke to had gone through five years of training, then since he wanted to practice in Macau, he had to work as a sort of intern/resident for 1-2 years before getting his official certification. Also, 5000+ years of observation must have come up with some sort of insights and semi-effective treatment, otherwise people wouldn't still be using it, right?

MUST is also trying to adapt traditional practices to Western ideals of "scientific medicine" through standardizing treatments and drug dosages, as well as introducing some fancy new machines, like this one, which is supposed to show which of the six major systems is out of balance based on measurements of surface temperature (e.g. on palms and feet), pulse rate, blood pressure, and a few other things. I'm a little skeptical about how accurate it can be, but they're trying, at least.

The third floor we visited was the research wing, mostly used for analyzing samples of traditional medicine to determine composition and purity. For example, if the medicine is supposed to be an aphrodisiac/increase potency, did someone just add Viagra to the pill? Again, there were many interesting juxtapositions - any biochemical lab would have been justifiably proud of the state-of-the art equipment (e.g. mass chromatography machines), but the substances they were testing ranged from bits of dried leaves to pungent black liquid. Our tour guide, one of the researchers, mentioned that they were also trying to get approval for clinic trials on the efficacy of traditional Chinese medicine for treating H1N1 cases, though I'm not sure if that ever got off the ground because they were planning to use MUST students as subjects, making the ethics a little murky.

Anyway, the whole tour was quite intriguing, and it helped me fulfill one of my original Fulbright side project goals of learning more about Chinese medicine. Although I still don't know enough to help me in seeing patients, e.g. figuring out what herbs a little old lady has been taking for arthritis that might interact with her other prescriptions, it was a good place to start.

Top Restaurant + Food Festival

This past Friday, Susan/Mari/Sam/Emily/Amy/I went to see "The Top Restaurant," a play staged by the Beijing People's Art Theater (BPAT) at the Macau Cultural Center (MCC). The Chinese name is "天下第一樓" literally meaning "the first floor under the sky," though that may be a metaphorical description for something else in the play that I didn't get. The description on the Macau Cultural Center website said that the play

"is centered on a famous Beijing duck restaurant: the owner is retiring, and his bickering sons are unable to assume their father's role as restaurant manager. Eventually, he finds an outsider that is perfect for the part - he is talented, sharp, and manages to tackle the restaurant's problems. Ten years pass and the business' prestige and wealth grows, but now the two quarreling sons want a piece of the pie..."

From this description, we thought it would be a drama-comedy, but it turned out to be more of a drama/tragedy, with a rather abrupt, anti-climatic ending (I won't say what happens). The play was performed in Mandarin, but Susan and I agreed that we could only understand about half of it because of the antiquated language and the heavy Beijing accent the actors used (of course, since the play is set in early 1900s Beijing). Imagine watching Shakespeare performed in Elizabethan English with a heavy Scottish accent, and you'll have some idea of how it was. Fortunately, there were Chinese and English subtitles (most of the Cantonese-speaking audience would have relied on these as well), so we were able to get the gist of the plot, if not the subtleties of the dialogue. Overall, it was a worthwhile investment of 3 hours and 96 MOP (yay for group discount!) to get a glimpse of Chinese drama beyond the Beijing Opera.

BPAT curtain call

Also this past weekend was the opening of the Ninth Macau International Food Festival, held in Nam Van Square near the Macau Tower. While all the vendors were local restaurants, food ranged the gamut from the usual Chinese/Portuguese to Malay/Japanese/Indian and even a little French/Italian for good measure. Each type of cuisine had its own area, making it easier to navigate and sample a bit of everything =D

Gate to the Food Festival

Because of the bitterly cold weather (ok, it was super-cold by Macau standards plus it was windy because we were close to the water), Austin/Susan/I mostly stuck to the hot foods (sorry LemonCello!) that could double as handwarmers. Examples below:

Massive scallion pancakes at the Taiwanese "Night Market"

Banana-chocolate crepe =D

'Allo? Vould you like to join me in zees varm baff?

Some less-fortunate crayfish comrades
(Austin tried some; I didn't.)

One of the crowd favorites was the roti stall, where a master maker whirled and spun cakes of dough into paper-thin sheets, upon which he might add egg, butter, or banana slices, depending on the order. They were basically like the pratas I had in Singapore, which only makes sense considering roti is a Malaysian food. I opted for roti telur (with egg, same as the Bentara appetizer for you Yalies), which also came with a tasty curry dipping sauce.

Spin, spin, spin!

Roti in various stages of completion

Overall, this food festival was much more satisfying than the little one in Three Lamps, so I will probably be back for another round next week when it's not so cold out =P