Frankly, Live-blogging makes a great dinner companion--probably the best I have had in the past few months (no offense to any of you whom with I have eaten recently, except Kent--I hope to offend you). The anecdotes were poignant, the banter witty, and the observations astute. Live-blogging correctly pointed out that pretty much all of the 20+ waitresses were exceptionally young and attractive, even if one had pointy Spock ears. Live-blogging also keenly noticed the slit on the side of one young woman's skirt went up right up to her hip. Always an eye-drifter, that Live-blogging....
But the food...oh the food. The Shangri-La caters to a number of different customers--Japanese, Chinese, Filipinos, Americans, Europeans, and they had a sign up for halal (Indonesian muslims or Arabs?)--so think a buffet many times over. They have all the main components of any successful buffet:
Things on a Stick: No joke, all 5 and 1/5 food groups are served on a stick--your basic four, plus desserts (which you stick in the flowing fountains of chocolate and strawberry-dip-that-looks-like-french-dressing) and baby octopus (which I think deserves its own baby food group).
Things that are Roasted: All of the cast of Animal Farm, minus the horse, turned out for this one. Now that I have wikipedia-ed* Animal Farm, most of the cast in fact stayed away. How would you even prepare Moses the raven? Ms. Lemon, I expect a recipe for candied raven's claw in the comments and on your totally awesome candy site for which you get paid to write and bake and eat. Anyway, Squealer was definitely laid out on the table. Maybe the turkey, goose, beef, and duck came from Charlotte's Web.
Things in Shells: Everything you would expect--if you expect that I would refine that statement with something that clearly negates it to try to be humorous like "if you expect sea monsters" (the actual text of my first draft), you are wrong. Cleverly they stacked the more traditional snails and spiders of the sea in ice sculptures that spelled RED--the theme of the night (the restaurant is called Heat, you get the picture).
Things That Are Desserts***: The mini cold-stone ice-cream bar and the fresh crepe and ice-cream dish were both tempting, as were the cakes, pies, and breads. My favorite, however, had to be the sub-category of Things That Are Desserts But Are Also in Cute Dishes and Backlit Dramatically.
After the main meal, Live-blogging and I played a traditional family Thanksgiving game called the Candy Game****--each square of a 20-square board has candy on it and you take turns getting goodies. I think dice are involved somehow, but it's not gambling because you always get something for nothing. But instead of playing it, we just talked about it. And instead of talking about the Candy Game, we talked about money.
Conversations about money while dining luxuriously in a third-world country are always sobering, although Live-blogging would prefer the term buzz-kill. The smart, dedicated Filipino analysts I work with (who have a great job by local standards) make less than 1/10th of what I do. Live-blogging mentioned something about market forces etc., me being 10 times as valuable, and was distracted by Slit-Skirt talking to Spock-Ears.
I don't know that I am 10 times as valuable. I think a lot about the relative wealth disparity among nations while I am here. Why hasn't reform come to Philippines? Why isn't there better infrastructure, education, and health care? Live-blogging, the bastard, asks why I am so concerned about this when on the way to work on Monday I couldn't be bothered to scoot over to the other side of the taxi, roll down the window, and give a blind old woman a few pesos? You know, why I can't I do my part? Multiply my apathy and selfishness by billions, he says, and there is your answer to how national resources get squandered. Like I said, a real jerk--mentioning that while knowing that I sat on the other side of the taxi each day since then hoping to see the woman again.
Anyway, a true Thanksgiving this year. The trip has highlighted a number of things that I enjoy quite by accident--health, employment, family, etc. I could make a Venn diagram to show how the intersection of all of these elements is so rare, but I don't know to represent the irony of saying you are thankful for family while adios-ing them to work through the holidays. Maybe just a dotted circle.
Notes:
*I just started a revolution by verbizing** Wikipedia
** Dido with verbizing
*** Parallelism is a feature of good writing. That's why I tortured that construction to fit with the rest of the categories. I mean, I wanted the categories to feel as tortured as the body of the post.
**** While Grandpa's definition of "candy" included candy, it also included knives, hammers, scimitars, battle axes, BB guns, and all manner of junk he could find at a discount hardware store. I understood the subtext of what he was trying to say though--violence, and the tools of violence, are sweet.
You can use the same argument that I used to convince a friend to spurn his family and come make a rap album with me on Thanksgiving day. That is that Thanksgiving is too close to Christmas for family time to be effective - the logical poles of family gathering are the 4th of July and Christmas.
ReplyDeleteSweeeet, my own 30-Rockified* shout-out! I was going to devise candy made from hoofed mammals first, but for you, I can bump ravens to the front of the list.
ReplyDelete*I too practice the fine art of verbifying.