2 September 2012
Sleep now please
I walked into the centre of town, and it was difficult! Still super tired from last night and todays long walks. Todays up hill in the heat probably had the most effect.
I will now describe my observations of eating in fairly nice restaurants in Nanjing. I watch those around me closely and listen in!
1. Walk in and sit down wherever you want, reservations are not possible, you line up if theres no tables available.
2. Yell at the nearest waitress as soon as you sit down, there are a lot of waitresses compared to Australian restaurants.
3. Feel free to bring in drinks from outside. Not wine (no one drinks and im yet to find a restaurant that even serves alcohol), but bubble tea or some other sort of milk based sweet drink. Also its OK to get up and get more drinks from another place during your meal.
4. If you dont have drinks with you, tea and water is free. Water is often hot, as in boiling hot. Even when its 37C outside boiling water is the preferred drink of most.
5. The waitress generally waits once you have sat down after handing you the menu for you to order. You have seconds to decide. Generally you have lined up out the front reading the menu first.
6. The waitress enters your order into a smart phone of some description, dont expect her to tell you whats good, if something contains something, or to be able to change the food in anyway. China doesnt care if you are allergic to anything, and frankly neither do I, this system suits me fine.
7. Soon after the waitress will return with a mini clipboard with a receipt on it, feel free to pay that at any point, before the food comes if you wish.
8. The food can come in any order, starters after mains, desserts first, drink can come after the meal if you ordered one. Its your choice if you want to wait for the food to come in the order you wish to eat it. And never expect all the food to come at once if you are at a table with more than one person.
9. As soon as you finish eating, GET OUT. They need the table. Never wait at the table to pay, or for the change etc.
Whilst I was waiting for my food to arrive tonight, I half fell asleep and felt my head falling towards the table, this was of great amusement to the girls at the table next to me, who were already whispering about me drinking their dairy queen milkshakes.
I thought it best to eat dinner and go home!
Anyway, I decided to hope to watch the formula 1, and am currently doing so via an illegal internet stream, I dont know if it will last.
So not many pictures, but I took enough earlier.
These guys deserve bravery awards. After the rain the roads become chaos. Most scooters dont seem to have brakes, just squealers to warn people that their brakes dont work.
Standing in the middle of the traffic in such circumstances seems silly, I dont even know what they were achieving as theres working traffic lights.
I watched for a while, camera trained on them ready for disaster, they seemed worried.
Dinner was predictably beef noodle soup, hoping for it to give me magical super powers, as it often does.
Apperntly this is Nanjing style though, the noodles were different, heavier and chewier. The broth was very red, but not overly spicy. Well not until I emptied the chilli pot into it.