Season 6 Episode 10, the reads are amazing.  This is why I’d never make it at a professional poker player, I could never lay down a full house by putting someone on a better full house.  In the next episode Ivy lays down a flush to a full house again out of this world read.

But I am, feels good to be justified about something once in a while.  There were about 65 people.

I am at the Westin Bund in Shanghai. It’s a very different experience being in China compared to any other country I have been to and not only because I am suddenly one of the people who can help us navigate taxis and waiters at restaurants. I was pleasantly surprised when I found out that I can still cobble together some Mandarin but almost immediately disappointed that I had a hard time understanding the Beijing accent. The fact that people from Taiwan have the same problem provides a bit of solace.

As part of our class trip we have been meeting various companies and you can see the full schedule on http://www.haas.berkeley.edu/HaasGlobal/china2010.htm . It has been a great mix of NGO, finance firm and startups. But also very disappointing for the future of the US. The amount of resources available from the government sector is incomparable to that of the US. Almost everyone we met was very positive about their future in China, well except for Google and they couldn’t tell us much which is understandable. From interest free loans to land deeds to subsidies for hiring PhDs or interns every local government is in competition to draw the most talent and flush with cash.

Two weeks is not enough to learn about a country properly but even in that short of a time you can catch a glimpse, and in this case this is scary. That’s not to say that everything is rosy, bribes were an accept part of the IT industry as were DoS attacks. Guna Xi was mentioned by almost everyone and one outsider was clear that you have to pay your dues or “tuition” before you were allowed to participate in the boom. Three years was counted as average years of tuition before you had enough Guan Xi to be a player.

Shanghai is more modern than Beijing in every aspect except lamb skewers. Almost from the instant I stepped out of our hotel in Beijing I caught a familiar smell. That of lamb kabobs. I am certain the lamb that we buy in the US is a completely different species compared to the lamb I grew up eating in Iran. They have the same species in China. I call this the delicious species or d-lamb for short. D-lamb has a certain smell, grilled on charcoal it has a primal smell, you can’t pass it by without your mouth watering. My love of lamb become a joke as classmates would point out to empty grass field and say that a week before they were full of sheep and my assault on the lamb sellers of Beijing had forced them to empty the fields. The sweet of smell of charred meat overlaid with the melting sheep fat sizzling on hot charcoal took me back to when I was two years old. In addition to lamb skewers vendors had plenty of lamb and beef liver skewers, many also advertised kidney on a stick but unfortunately every sigle vendor I tried was sold out. I could go on for another 2-3 paragraphs on the deliciousness of d-lambs but I have to stop now, since I just ate dinner and yet I am hungry once again.

Oh well it’s good to be back. I missed Tina and Kian.

So for valentine day I ordered custom m&ms from http://www.mymms.com/ with Tina and Kians picture, they had a special and promised delivery.  3 days after valentine day I email them to see where the hell is my package.  This is the amazing follow up.

Tue  Me: where is the package ?
Thu: M&M: what’s your order number # and address
Me: umm it’s in the email I responded to, you know the one you sent me, here it is again.
Fri:  M&M: Thank you for contacting us, please call us about your order
10 min later M&M: your pictures were not usable, we are going to cancel your order in two days unless you send us new pictures at no charge to you.

So after missing the order, ignoring the deadline and giving me the run around for a week I should be happy that they are not charging me.  M&M business idea fail.  Thank god Tina and Kian are still in Taiwan and I didn’t really need the M&Ms.

Chess

I try to play chess, it comes as the default game with the Mac much like minesweeper comes with Windows.  I don’t remember much about playing chess except that there is a name for moving your knight as your opening move.  I alwasy thought this was pretty cool and often use this as  my opening move.  I never found out what was the second move after this so the coolness doesn’t last long.

As a sign of of the superiority of the Mac over Windows the computer quickly beats me into submission.  I look at the crappy graphic and the simple sentence “Black Wins!” and close the program my enthusiasm for playing chess having dried up as quickly as a puddle on a hot summer day.

The last time I played chess seriously was when I was in high school, we didn’t have a chess club and even if we did no one would have joined it for fear of being made fun of thanks to Saved By the Bell.  We did have a math club which was filled with our math professors favorite students.  One day I noticed another one of my fellow math students had a chess board with him, I don’t know why or how I made a joke about chess being easy. And of course he challenged me, I beat him the first few times we played but then he improved and it became impossible for me to beat him. Since this was the only area he could beat me in he would needle me about it endlessly, it was probably the high point of his day.

That was until I discovered chess books in the library, this would seem quaint to most people today but back then we had no internet and very few of us had computers and there was no internet to speak of so when you needed information you went to the library.

I don’t know if he had done the same or if he had practiced on his own, I suspect the latter since the first time we played after I had read one of those chess books I crushed him.  Cruelly I taunted him by claiming I had only let him win previously to help his confidence.  We never played again.

Thankfully the computer does not taunt me after winning, just to make sure I drag the chess icon to the trash and delete the program.  After all I was just letting the program win to boost the computers confidence it would not do for it to become overconfident.

The past three days in NJ were not that different from any other three days and yet they were completely unlike any other three days.

Watching my dad crawl around with son, both smiling seemed to signal something.  That the world was more connected than we know and expect.  Tina pointed out that my dad scratches his head the exact same way my son scratches his head which is also the exact same way I scratch my head.  Which according to her is the weirdest way anyone would ever scratch their head, after hearing that I had to scratch my head.  My sister’s parking spot is 402 which is also the number of the hotel room we got while we were in NJ.  What does it mean ?  Probably something to someone somewhere and nothing to me.

Pulling out of the parking lot some sort of woodchuck seemed to be chewing on something, totally unafraid of us. He seemed to wave to us, busy on his way but for some reason he did not have a watch, did not run away and was not late for an appointment. He simply sat there holding something in both paws and chewing happily.

Connections abound, 45 or so many years ago 28 students settled into a dorm, one was from Kermanshah, one from Sanandaj and the other from Isfahan. They were probably nervous, far away from their homes for the first time.  The kid from Isfahan tells them the funniest jokes they had ever heard, he tells jokes till they fall over and can’t get up, none of them had ever laughed that hard in their lives.  Finally with hurting stomachs they go to bed, there are 14 bunk beds.  The kid from Isfahan takes the top bunk, the kid from Kermanshah the bottom bunk and the kid from Sanandaj the bottom bunk next to them. In the middle of the night the kid from Isfahan falls down on the hard tiled ground.  As the kid from Kermanshah wakes up and groggily tries to help him, feeling around in the dark he can’t help but remember the earlier jokes and starts to laugh, he laughs and tries to help the kid from Isfahan get up but can’t because the jokes he remembers are too funny. His laughter and the other kids cries of pain mix together in the dark night.

A few years later the kid from Isfahan goes to jail because of a few verses of a revolutionary song he sang dealing with sheep and shepherds. The kid from Kermanshah and the kid from Sanandaj take some noon-roghnai to jail and visit him.  The kids grow up, years later the kid from Kermanshah has his own kid, and that kid has his own kid and when they all get together somehow the kid from Kermanshah discovers that his kid is friends with the Isfahani’s brother’s daughter. No one thinks to chastise the Isfahani kid’s niece for abandoning her blog.

And it’s strange and normal, why wouldn’t there be so many connections ? maybe it’s just life reminding you that it is bizarre  and unpredictable.  My flight should be flight number 402 but it’s not, instead it’s flight 95.  It seems to lack something, like it’s cut off from the abnormal flow of things and is instead grounded firmly in reality.

My son is asleep and somehow I know my dad is asleep too. It’s an instant but it’s an important instant that has to be grasped and enjoyed, much like the woodchuck grasping his piece of wood I grasp the instant in both hands, burn it in my mind and vow to remember it.  My dad crawling around with my son, both smiling.

Naked Baby

Tomorrow school starts again.  Another year of 1 day weekends, homework and projects, late night meetings and presentations.  I can’t wait to see all of my classmates again but I dread the deadlines and having to keep up with so many smart people.

I asked an ex Harvard Business School (HBS) guy how it felt since he left HBS.  He said he never stopped missing those years so I am trying to enjoy it as much as I can. Of course it’s hard to study or get ready for school when a naked baby randomly crawls into the room so once the semester starts I’ll have to lock myself in the office again.

Getting old, it’s interesting how you manage to convince yourself that you still haven’t aged. I keep forgetting that I am also aging, I kept telling everyone I was 32 until someone else reminded me my b-day was 6 months ago and I am officially 33. A nice symmetrical age.

Talking to one friend he was concerned that he was getting old since he realized for the first time ever girls half his age are legal in the US, I pointed out that they have been legal in Holland for years and that seemed to cheer him up a bit.

Another friend laughed at that, saying in 91 he bought his first house.  That was the year I started high school in the US and seems particularly ancient by now. There was no internet, email was just a wacky thing people with no life used.  BBS, Gopher, finger, telnet, usenet, irs, all those things didn’t really take off till 94-95 and of course most people don’t even know what I am talking about now.

It’s all relative till you die, for Kian 91 is something only heard about from the parents hippie time, for me and my friend it’s the start of adolescent.  For the girl turning 18 it’s just when her parents got frisky.  For other “old” people like me take a look at the top music of 1991, it totally beats what the kids are listening to these days.

So it might not be fair to post twice within minutes of each post, I could have easily put both posts together but I am after all trying to keep my mark of blogging once a day this week so even though I am cheating a bit by posting twice one day I keep the count going.

So keeping on the food theme I cooked chilean sea bass and stir fried udon, snow peas and broccoli. The sea bass I simply dusted with cumin, salt and pepper.  It then cooked for a few minutes on a hot cast iron pan before going to a 500 degree oven for 7 minutes.  The noodles were cooked with 1/3 cup of oyster sauce, 2 t spoon hoisen sauce, 1 t spoon grated ginger, 3 cloves finely chopped garlic, 1 t spoon sesame  oil, 2 t spoon chile past and salt & pepper. Since the udon noodles were pre-cooked I just warmed them up in the same water I had cooked the broccli in.  All the ingredients then went into the wok for a quick 3 min stir. Amazing flavors, the fish went great with the noodles.  I didn’t miss the sauce that came from this recipe .  But you can give it a shot if you want a more complex flavor.

Amazingly it took 2 days before I missed a posting, work as suspected is busy even when it doesn’t seem busy. The rhythm of life (sounds like the Jungle Book) takes on even more time.  But I digress, as promised here is the rib recipe.

The ribs came out absolutely delicious, it’s only fair to say that I found the recipe over here, you can see pictures there.  To be fair I gave everyone half a rck not 1-2 pieces as she did.  I plan on doing half a rack again for Kian’s b-day but I don’t think our oven will be big enough I might have to work in batches.