So I used it! The note! I totally used the note.
On my first trip to Hong Kong, last year, a particular restaurant caught my eye, but I never got to eat there (image: thanx, Google Maps Streetview). For those who don't hit the link: this intriguing restaurant is the "Best Food Restaurant" -- at least that's how its name has been rendered in English.
I liked this place because of its look, and because its (Englishly renderèd) name reminded me of Yeah Shanghai Deluxe Restaurant, a nice place in New York's Chinatown that I like for 3 reasons:
(1) delicious sea cucumber;
(2) misreading its business card, I for a long time thought it was called "Yeah Shanghai Deluxe Best Restaurant" (rather than just "Yeah Shanghai Deluxe Rest." ⇐ I confused "Rest." for "Best", and added the "Restaurant" implicitly, because I did not expect ornate cursive script on a business card to be abbreviated); and
(3) Yeah Shanghai Deluxe is located at the address at which, or is at least very close to the address at which, we believe my grandfather was born 10 days after his parents arrived in America.
So thanks to these associations, as well as on its own scrappy merits, I'd wanted to try "Best Food Restaurant" on Belcher's Street, but hadn't had quite the time or the courage last year.
I walked in; I sat down.
I was not, in fact, that hungry. I'd been fed on campus. I had leftover food at home from other meals. I'd eaten some soy chicken already (and had, I suspected, gotten a little ripped off on the price).
But I'd kind of decided: this is what I am doing tonight. So I was doing it.
The place had the unprepossessing look of the kind of eateries I like in Hong Kong. Simple laminate-surface tables; light metal chairs; big groups of people clumped around tables with other tables unfilled. Not unhygienic. Not the cleanest room you've ever been in.
The waitress handed me 'the English menu'. This was disappointing; the existence of an English menu sort of turned my Note into a precious mannerism. They've got a nice menu for me right here! In my language! Why do this performative charade where I make them read some note in Cantonese Who am I impressing here?
However, the Best restaurant had mercy on me. Its English menu was almost surely incomplete: it had a pretty limited selection of not-very-interesting dishes. This was not just the menu, in English. This was the menu, redacted for speakers of English and their bankrupt paucity of food taste.
In other words: this was why I had the Note.
The waitress arrived. She was diminutive, round, ~60s with short-cut saltpepper hair and teeth that were hard to believe: two, only, in her whole mouth; on her lower jaw; one at each extreme visible edge of the jaw. The impression that this upward fanged-ness created was sweet and friendly, although it's possible that my view of her appearance is colored by the fact that she treated me with sweet friendliness.
I brought out the Note. She hesitated, then took it; then read it hesitantly then settled into reading it in earnest. A complex set of expressions passed over her face as she read. She ended on what I'm pretty sure was something like amused acceptance.
She held it up in her hand and looked at me. "No por' no beef?"
"Right." I nodded.
"Fish okay." She's staring; two teeth upwards.
I gave a thumbs-up; I'm not getting into which fish are 'okay' in this context; hopeless.
"Soup rice."
This was harder. Was that a choice? Was she asking if I...chose to eat soup, and/or rice? But I sort of knew (from recent dining experiences, I think, although I'm not sure how I knew, actually) that she was proposing a set meal involving both soup and rice.
I didn't really want rice.
"Yes, " I said. Thumbs up.
"Lemon tea milk tea."
Hard, again. It was clear-ish, but the very prospect of milk tea was so exciting to me that it mangled my thinking, especially since I thought milk tea was kind of a breakfast thing, and I hadn't expected it, so I vacillated but settled on "Lemon tea, lemon tea."
We got back on track. "Hot cold," she asked.
For some reason I felt the need to perform 'thinking about it' for like three full seconds before: "Hot."
And off she went. She seemed to confiscate the note -- she walked away with it, with no indication of any intention to return it to me. I was cool with that; it felt like part of the deal, somehow. Anyway I still had one printout in my bag could always print more at the office.
Within ~two minutes I got "soup". A delicious soup, probably a chicken stock, with some green leafy roughage and bits of almost-certainly not-chicken meat (probably pork). I had accepted this possibility. I ate the soup. It was tasty.
I guess rice came I don't remember? Maybe she read my mind and I didn't get rice? That's weird.
And then the entree! Now, I'm not sure. But there was one interesting dish on the English menu: something about fish with preserved vegetables. And I think perhaps (and this is no bad thing) that that's what I got. Certainly, it was a fish dish, with some slightly pickled/brined/something'ed vegetables.
Which made me happy, because it meant that the Note had yielded a result consonant with my desires, even if it it also meant that either their English menu was in fact less limited than I'd thought, or that they'd still limited my choices to the white-people options.
I ate well. It was a good meal. And I took some home; that interaction was pretty simple -- getting the takeaway containers.
Somehow, paying, I got myself totally confused again. Numbers aren't hard in these settings; what they do is they write it down on your receipt and point at it. I somehow thought at first that the meal cost implausibly much (like twenty dollars) then impossibly little (like a buck) before settling on actual price which was of course just the number the woman had written on the sheet all along which I believe was 58 HKD.
And here's where I got really happy that I'd done this.
It had been a neat experience and a lovely meal. I'd used the Note! I had tasty leftovers. I'd almost talked myself out of it; I was tired and a little down; I'd gotten semi-ripped off by the 40 HKD soy chicken a bit earlier. I'd been thinking: you get used to things. Even amazing, novel things like magical new cities. They become ordinary places where you are a bit tired and not actually that hungry because you snacked at work and also that guy maybe ripped you off for that chicken, that's a bummer. I'd fallen off my game.
And I'd forced myself to get back on it and go to this place I'd had a good feeling about for like over a year with the Note that my nice colleagues made for me, and I got the "fish with preserved something-something" and it was really delicious. Not just in a hearty greasy spoon ironic pleasure way; it was some good-a$$ food. And I'd had this really nice interaction with this charming and sweet waitress who'd totally rolled my Note and all that.
Out. World. Things. People.
Oh, and one last thing. I had a good idea during dinner. A writing idea. Maybe a good idea; I won't know for awhile because it's for a project I'm not working actively on right now. But even if it wasn't a gooood idea, i.e. isn't an idea I wind up doing (and, again: it might be, in a big way), the whole idea that you shake up your brain when you do things, that stimulating yourself and engaging novel experiences creates new pathways that lead...who knows where! That idea, which is an idea that I both find nice/optimistic and compelling, felt kinda validated.
Using the Note was really good.
On my first trip to Hong Kong, last year, a particular restaurant caught my eye, but I never got to eat there (image: thanx, Google Maps Streetview). For those who don't hit the link: this intriguing restaurant is the "Best Food Restaurant" -- at least that's how its name has been rendered in English.
I liked this place because of its look, and because its (Englishly renderèd) name reminded me of Yeah Shanghai Deluxe Restaurant, a nice place in New York's Chinatown that I like for 3 reasons:
(1) delicious sea cucumber;
(2) misreading its business card, I for a long time thought it was called "Yeah Shanghai Deluxe Best Restaurant" (rather than just "Yeah Shanghai Deluxe Rest." ⇐ I confused "Rest." for "Best", and added the "Restaurant" implicitly, because I did not expect ornate cursive script on a business card to be abbreviated); and
(3) Yeah Shanghai Deluxe is located at the address at which, or is at least very close to the address at which, we believe my grandfather was born 10 days after his parents arrived in America.
So thanks to these associations, as well as on its own scrappy merits, I'd wanted to try "Best Food Restaurant" on Belcher's Street, but hadn't had quite the time or the courage last year.
I walked in; I sat down.
I was not, in fact, that hungry. I'd been fed on campus. I had leftover food at home from other meals. I'd eaten some soy chicken already (and had, I suspected, gotten a little ripped off on the price).
But I'd kind of decided: this is what I am doing tonight. So I was doing it.
The place had the unprepossessing look of the kind of eateries I like in Hong Kong. Simple laminate-surface tables; light metal chairs; big groups of people clumped around tables with other tables unfilled. Not unhygienic. Not the cleanest room you've ever been in.
The waitress handed me 'the English menu'. This was disappointing; the existence of an English menu sort of turned my Note into a precious mannerism. They've got a nice menu for me right here! In my language! Why do this performative charade where I make them read some note in Cantonese Who am I impressing here?
However, the Best restaurant had mercy on me. Its English menu was almost surely incomplete: it had a pretty limited selection of not-very-interesting dishes. This was not just the menu, in English. This was the menu, redacted for speakers of English and their bankrupt paucity of food taste.
In other words: this was why I had the Note.
The waitress arrived. She was diminutive, round, ~60s with short-cut saltpepper hair and teeth that were hard to believe: two, only, in her whole mouth; on her lower jaw; one at each extreme visible edge of the jaw. The impression that this upward fanged-ness created was sweet and friendly, although it's possible that my view of her appearance is colored by the fact that she treated me with sweet friendliness.
I brought out the Note. She hesitated, then took it; then read it hesitantly then settled into reading it in earnest. A complex set of expressions passed over her face as she read. She ended on what I'm pretty sure was something like amused acceptance.
She held it up in her hand and looked at me. "No por' no beef?"
"Right." I nodded.
"Fish okay." She's staring; two teeth upwards.
I gave a thumbs-up; I'm not getting into which fish are 'okay' in this context; hopeless.
"Soup rice."
This was harder. Was that a choice? Was she asking if I...chose to eat soup, and/or rice? But I sort of knew (from recent dining experiences, I think, although I'm not sure how I knew, actually) that she was proposing a set meal involving both soup and rice.
I didn't really want rice.
"Yes, " I said. Thumbs up.
"Lemon tea milk tea."
Hard, again. It was clear-ish, but the very prospect of milk tea was so exciting to me that it mangled my thinking, especially since I thought milk tea was kind of a breakfast thing, and I hadn't expected it, so I vacillated but settled on "Lemon tea, lemon tea."
We got back on track. "Hot cold," she asked.
For some reason I felt the need to perform 'thinking about it' for like three full seconds before: "Hot."
And off she went. She seemed to confiscate the note -- she walked away with it, with no indication of any intention to return it to me. I was cool with that; it felt like part of the deal, somehow. Anyway I still had one printout in my bag could always print more at the office.
Within ~two minutes I got "soup". A delicious soup, probably a chicken stock, with some green leafy roughage and bits of almost-certainly not-chicken meat (probably pork). I had accepted this possibility. I ate the soup. It was tasty.
I guess rice came I don't remember? Maybe she read my mind and I didn't get rice? That's weird.
And then the entree! Now, I'm not sure. But there was one interesting dish on the English menu: something about fish with preserved vegetables. And I think perhaps (and this is no bad thing) that that's what I got. Certainly, it was a fish dish, with some slightly pickled/brined/something'ed vegetables.
Which made me happy, because it meant that the Note had yielded a result consonant with my desires, even if it it also meant that either their English menu was in fact less limited than I'd thought, or that they'd still limited my choices to the white-people options.
I ate well. It was a good meal. And I took some home; that interaction was pretty simple -- getting the takeaway containers.
Somehow, paying, I got myself totally confused again. Numbers aren't hard in these settings; what they do is they write it down on your receipt and point at it. I somehow thought at first that the meal cost implausibly much (like twenty dollars) then impossibly little (like a buck) before settling on actual price which was of course just the number the woman had written on the sheet all along which I believe was 58 HKD.
And here's where I got really happy that I'd done this.
It had been a neat experience and a lovely meal. I'd used the Note! I had tasty leftovers. I'd almost talked myself out of it; I was tired and a little down; I'd gotten semi-ripped off by the 40 HKD soy chicken a bit earlier. I'd been thinking: you get used to things. Even amazing, novel things like magical new cities. They become ordinary places where you are a bit tired and not actually that hungry because you snacked at work and also that guy maybe ripped you off for that chicken, that's a bummer. I'd fallen off my game.
And I'd forced myself to get back on it and go to this place I'd had a good feeling about for like over a year with the Note that my nice colleagues made for me, and I got the "fish with preserved something-something" and it was really delicious. Not just in a hearty greasy spoon ironic pleasure way; it was some good-a$$ food. And I'd had this really nice interaction with this charming and sweet waitress who'd totally rolled my Note and all that.
Out. World. Things. People.
Oh, and one last thing. I had a good idea during dinner. A writing idea. Maybe a good idea; I won't know for awhile because it's for a project I'm not working actively on right now. But even if it wasn't a gooood idea, i.e. isn't an idea I wind up doing (and, again: it might be, in a big way), the whole idea that you shake up your brain when you do things, that stimulating yourself and engaging novel experiences creates new pathways that lead...who knows where! That idea, which is an idea that I both find nice/optimistic and compelling, felt kinda validated.
Using the Note was really good.
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