Lunching!
This will stay with me for a long time - literally! Or at least, as long as I stay in China!
The work day in the office here usually starts at 8.30am. I had just met with the team members, had had a discussion with my contact here and was just settling in to start my work, when this girl from my team came to me and said "Shall we go for lunch?" I thought time had really flown past for it to be lunch time already. And the strange thing was that my stomach had not grumbled even once. I happened to check the time to find out it was 11.30! Yep, 11.30! I thought I had misheard... maybe she meant do you want to go for coffee or something! But no, barely had I digested my breakfast and we were already walking to the cafeteria to eat lunch!
Once there, I figured that I could never go to lunch all by myself. The staff didn't understand/speak a word of English so all my attempts of saying 'No meat, no chicken, no fish' were falling on deaf ears! With the help of my team member, I managed to get one dish which was vegetables only with rice.
I looked around to find a fork and a spoon... and kept looking! There were none available!
The only 2 options were chopsticks and a.. soup spoon. Considering I don't really know how to use chopsticks, no prizes for guessing what I chose.
Finally sat down to eat my food... soup spoon and all. Except that eating sticky rice and vegetables with a plastic soup spoon is way too much fun. The sticky rice is very selectively sticky... it sticks only to each other and refuses to do so with the spoon. And the vegetables... sigh! do I even need to go there?!
You can very well imagine where half my food was landing. All my south indian roots were anyways coming out what with eating rice at 11.30 in the morning! Was so close to going full-fledged tamu and using my hands!
Anyway, I somehow managed to get that ordeal (yes, lunch is an ordeal for me) but then I discovered something more interesting.... lunch hour in China is from 11.30 - 1. which means that you go for lunch at 11.30 and till 1, no one works. They either don't come back to their workstations or if they do, they take a nap! Ah, bliss....!
The work day in the office here usually starts at 8.30am. I had just met with the team members, had had a discussion with my contact here and was just settling in to start my work, when this girl from my team came to me and said "Shall we go for lunch?" I thought time had really flown past for it to be lunch time already. And the strange thing was that my stomach had not grumbled even once. I happened to check the time to find out it was 11.30! Yep, 11.30! I thought I had misheard... maybe she meant do you want to go for coffee or something! But no, barely had I digested my breakfast and we were already walking to the cafeteria to eat lunch!
Once there, I figured that I could never go to lunch all by myself. The staff didn't understand/speak a word of English so all my attempts of saying 'No meat, no chicken, no fish' were falling on deaf ears! With the help of my team member, I managed to get one dish which was vegetables only with rice.
I looked around to find a fork and a spoon... and kept looking! There were none available!
The only 2 options were chopsticks and a.. soup spoon. Considering I don't really know how to use chopsticks, no prizes for guessing what I chose.
Finally sat down to eat my food... soup spoon and all. Except that eating sticky rice and vegetables with a plastic soup spoon is way too much fun. The sticky rice is very selectively sticky... it sticks only to each other and refuses to do so with the spoon. And the vegetables... sigh! do I even need to go there?!
You can very well imagine where half my food was landing. All my south indian roots were anyways coming out what with eating rice at 11.30 in the morning! Was so close to going full-fledged tamu and using my hands!
Anyway, I somehow managed to get that ordeal (yes, lunch is an ordeal for me) but then I discovered something more interesting.... lunch hour in China is from 11.30 - 1. which means that you go for lunch at 11.30 and till 1, no one works. They either don't come back to their workstations or if they do, they take a nap! Ah, bliss....!
Labels: China Adventures
posted by Wandering Soul at
10:05 PM
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