A Little More Conversation, a Little Less Action, Please!

Work is going slowly today. The fact that it's going at all is a minor miracle. Sunglasses and very quiet music are the order of the day after a lively night last night.

Through family friends, one of whom is a very well renowned sculptor and the other an academic, I was invited for dinner with a top Chinese science academician. This is a big honor and I was a little nervous about the meeting. Arriving at the Szechuan restaurant we were taken to one of the private rooms, the most lavish I've seen yet, with a round table for ten or so, an emperor's style bed and its own private bathroom. We chatted until the great man arrived. Making small talk and attempting to use a little Chinese, food was ordered and wine procured. The wine was moutai, an infamous devil of a spirit, with a price-tag as high as its proof.

(JES can skip the following paragraph)

Amongst the dishes was a new one for me. I can now tick camel off the list of the weird and wonderful. Camel foot is a strange combination of textures and flavours, it's a little tough with fatty attachments and doesn't taste all that strong. In searching for information on how it had been cooked I came across this website boasting information on some of the world's strangest foods. I'm doing pretty well, but not that well apparently. Doing a little research on wikipedia it turns out that while the camel does not fall under the cloven hoof criteria, it is considered unclean and banned in the Torah. It also appears that some recent cases of eating raw camel liver have resulted in human plague, great! Most camel meat is extremely fat free because almost all the fat is in the hump, however it appears that the foot still has its fair share.

Toasting in China is big business and when the host toasts in your direction you drink. Our host likes his Moutai and can take it. Somehow whenever anything of any positive nature was mentioned, be that food, mountains, friends, Chinese history, Moutai, travel...we drank to it. Gambei is the equivalent of bottoms up, so every toast you finish your drink. After 15 or so I lost count and it was only because of the speed of consumption and relatively early finish to the meal that I didn't have time to embarrass myself completely. I really enjoyable night chatting about many things, meeting new people and trying some new delicacies, until I got home and paid the inevitable price.

Still, I'm in work and attempting to finish the calculation that I started many months ago with my Japanese collaborator. Life and other calculations have simply got in the way but I now want to push to finish this one off.

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Away from tales of dangerous Chinese liquors I have a couple of good friends staying here at the moment, having arrived at the beginning of the week on the train from Moscow. I'm still not sure what they thought of the trip which I'd like to take some day. Six days going through what sounds like rather barren countryside on a very dusty train with just a few minutes here and there to buy supplies from the platforms seems a bit too quick so I would hope to stop off a couple of times on the way to see what little there is to see.

One of these friends is not only vegetarian, a problem in itself in China, but she's also exceedingly allergic to nuts. So much so that she carries a needle round with her in case of going into anaphylactic shock . I've given her a Chinese note to be taken round at all times and shown to waiters wherever she goes to eat. Thus far she hasn't been laughed out of a restaurant by what is a rather rare request here. I'm told that there are very very few Chinese people with this particular allergy, I fear I may know why!

Plenty of photos to put up soon but I should be finishing this mathematica script for now.