Wednesday, January 20 – Mike Miller’s First Day in the office

I Met Mike at 8:15am in the lobby for his first breakfast here in Dalian. My first question to him was, “How did you sleep last night?” This is because no matter how tired you may be, the fact that nighttime here is the middle of the day back home, makes falling asleep difficult (at least for me). He replied that he fell asleep around 10:30pm and awoke in the pre-dawn morning feeling like he just had a solid, interrupted nights sleep. He rolled over to look at the alarm clock and realized that it was only midnight (10am back home). From there the standard jet-lagged sleep occurred, with him stating that he thought he woke up about every hour. He will have a fun afternoon/evening to be sure.

As we left the hotel for the walk to the office, we were immediately hit with a fierce, biting, ice-filled wind. Wow – It was cold and blowing gusts to 40mph (my best guess). I briefly thought about trying to flag down a taxi, but didn’t want Mike to get spoiled, so, both of us being from Wisconsin, felt capable of doing the walk. It was very slippery out there, and the gusts seemed to settle down as we got away from our hotel, but it sure was cold. By 9:00am, we were in the office safe and sound.

For lunch, I took two people from the office and Mike to the Japanese restaurant behind work again – it is called “Uminosato” (the rough translation is “Simple Japanese restaurant offering a pleasant variety of mainly seafood dishes and just the right amount of atmosphere for a pleasant lunch every time” (I made that up – duh!). I had the fish, again, while Mike went with the shrimp tempura.

(lunch pictures coming soon)

For dinner, the group that Mike is working with on his visit took us to the Szechwan (spicy) restaurant about 1 block east of the office. We sat down at our large round table in our private dining room around 5:45pm, and began to pick out our dishes. I shot a couple of pictures of the menu and the food:




P.S. That small plate to the left of the raw plate is eel!

Please pay particular attention to the very large plate of sashimi on ice. Actually, pay really good attention to large shrimp on it. The plate was placed on the table and spun over to Mike and I for first choice. As it got over to our side, I thought I saw a piece of food fall off, no, make that JUMP off of the plate! It was the shrimp. OMG. (yeah, that’s right, I typed OMG – it fits). The shrimp was still alive and kicking (and jumping). I think it actually surprised everyone at the table. I looked around and asked who would try this, and nobody moved, finally, one of the ladies grabbed it, tore it in half, and ate the tail. My rule over here is if you try it, I will too, so I next grabbed one. In my hands I could very easily feel it move, surprisingly strongly, in fact. I then pulled the tail off (yup still moving, but at least silent), peeled the tail quickly and ate it. As I bit into the tail, it definitely recoiled in my mouth – wow. After eating it I became slightly nervous about going back to raw seafood after my encounter with bad oysters here a couple of years ago. Because of that, I am writing this story as soon as I got back to my hotel room – just in case things go badly tonight.

Dinner was terrific, with a few other surprise dishes as well – stomach (pretty spicy, and a little texture problem, but not horrible), and another episode of pig knuckles. Didn’t care for that, again. I had a couple of small glasses of a local beer (sorry, forgot the name), had a bunch of laughs, and with Mike Miller now completely silent and in a daze, we wrapped up dinner (about 7:45pm). After a brisk walk back to the hotel, I sat down to write this blog, and that was the night. Cross your fingers that the next entry is not me saying I was sick!

(NOTE: From Thursday morning - all was fine - whew!)