Category: Food

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Day 162: Stray Asia

It’s been a while since I’ve talked about a good food find in Suzhou, so let me introduce you to Stray Asia!

This hidden gem is located within an underground passageway that leads from the Xinghai Square subway station (星海广场站) to what is now called Global 188; it used to be called Frasier Suites.

Stray Asia specializes in what I would call Vietnamese-Thai fusion. So far everything I’ve had is delicious but would definitely suggest getting rice dishes with any of their Thai curries instead of noodles. When it comes to spice levels, what they call spicy I call wimpy, so don’t worry too much if you’re spice adverse. (I might also be getting the “white man” spice consideration, even after confirming in Chinese that I like it spicy! 辛辣!)

Ordering is easy as you just mark what you want on a dry-erase menu, hand the menu to one of the cashier’s, and then wait for it to be prepared. Eating “in” (they have tables in the underground passage way, not inside a store) or taking your meal home is perfectly acceptable. You can even order from Sherpa (the Seamless of Suzhou & Shanghai for English speakers) if you’re feeling lazy.

Best of all, Stray Asia is located about 100 metres away from another hidden gem of this underground passage way: the cheap beer, wine, and liquor store! Cherry Story Store is the name, but why they have welcoming Americana print tables with chairs outside the shop I have no idea! 

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Day 20 – Getting caught

No, no … Don’t worry, I didn’t get in trouble or anything even close to that concept, but I did get caught in the rain today. The PM team at work wanted to get together for lunch and invited me to join them. We want to a restaurant for a Hunan style lunch of soup broth, toppings, and rice noodles. Gosh it was delicious! So delicious in fact, I forgot to take a picture. 

During the middle of lunch the skies opened up and it poured for a good 30 minutes. Neither me nor my future coworkers had umbrellas so we tried waiting it out. Unfortunately a couple of people had 2pm meetings so we had to brave the rain. It did let up a bit, but it was still heavier than a drizzle. 

About four blocks from home and two blocks away from the restaurant, it started to pour again. Fortunately I was near a subway entrance and hopped inside there full well knowing I could walk underground for a couple blocks and not get completely soaked. By the time I got to the exit and up to ground level, the rain stopped and the remainder of the walk home was relatively dry.

While annoying for not having an umbrella with me in such a downpour, the rain did clear the pollutants out of the air and dropped the humidity levels a bit.

Lunch, besides delicious, introduced a new concept. I’ve seen QR codes on tables here before but did not know why they were there. It turns out if you scan the QR code it will open a web page. On that web page you place — and pay for — your order! There is either a QR code for every seat at each table or one for the entire table. 

Not only does this type of food ordering work great, it removes two potential bottlenecks and issues for restaurants: the waiter and the cashier. You don’t wait for anyone to take your food order nor do you need to flag someone down for the bill or use cash for payment! If your phone has WeChat Wallet or AliPay installed, you’re able to pay through those apps. Perfect! You just need to read enough Chinese to understand what you’re ordering 🙂
Now I need to go get a Chinese phone and number so I can utilize this new found knowledge. It’s a good thing the phones are manufactured in this country as the phones come cheap and off-contract!

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Day 18 – An evening in Ligongdi Rd

Last evening I went out for dinner and some beer in Ligongdi Rd / Water Alley Neighborhood. I probably went a bit too early as around 9pm the area started to get busier, but I was getting tired and wanted to head home.

Dinner was at a TexMex restaurant called Amigos. The food was very passable Mexican, and was served with proper hot sauce! I had the Combo Plate #1 which included a cheese enchilada and a crispy beef taco. The refried beans were just OK, but the rest the meal was great!

Night out in Ligongdi

Combo Plate #1 from Amigos: Crispy beef taco and cheese enchilada.

After dinner I went to Ollie’s right across the alley. If you remember from earlier in the week, Ollie’s is the place where the Suzhou Poker Club has their games. When I ordered a beer, the waiter, Scott, remembered me from Thursday night and asked if I wanted to play in the poker game they were having that night. It’s good to be remembered!

While drinking the beer I was just observing everything going on. There was a birthday celebration, some live music from a guitarist and singer, and a couple families with their children having a night out. Apparently there’s no rules on kids drinking beer in a pub, as this one drank a good couple inches of his dad’s beer in plain sight! You can even see his small hand on the bottom of the glass. And yes, the TV had on professional table tennis instead of baseball or soccer. Only in China!

 

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After a few songs of the live music, it was time to leave because it was that good. Also, instead of grabbing a taxi home I decided to catch one of the busses before the mostly direct (#146) one stopped running for the night.

On the way towards the bus stop there were a few good spots for pictures. A couple of lit up bridges over the canals, half a green camel, and some weird type of bowling alley and massage parlor rolled into one were spotted. That’s likely one massage I’ll pass up!

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Day 10 – Recapping the team offsite to Hangzhou

Even though my first day has yet to happen, my team at work allowed me to join them on an offsite event at a nearby city called Hangzhou (杭州). The city of Hangzhou is known as one of the two most beautiful cities in China, with Suzhou being the other one! The city hosted the G-20 Summit in 2016 and is also the home to e-commerce giant Alibaba.

The goal of the offsite was to allow the team to get to know one another better through a series of games, events, and elaborate meals. Most of the “getting to know you better” time was spent over these meals, so that’s what I took pictures of! OMG was there such delicious food. You can see a lot of the pictures in my Suzhou album on Google Photos. Each meal featured various vegetable, meat, fowl, fish, and crustaceans including items like bullfrog in spicy chili oil, smoked duck tongue, various soups, jellyfish, squash, pumpkin, pork belly “sandwiches”, and this fish that’s seen better days.

The fish has seen better days

Hangzhou has a really nice park & lake area called Westlake. After dinner on Thursday, a number of us from the team went to Westlake to go walk around and have a good time. Westlake was billed as a beautiful area with lots of little shops and a great walking trail; it did not disappoint! The pictures I took at night did not come out all that great as the camera I’m using (an older point-and-shoot Nikon Coolpix) does not have the best settings for nighttime photography nor did I have a tripod with me. Most of the shots came out terrible, sans a few like the one below. (Others are posted in the aforementioned Google Photos album.)

SOX Offsite Hangzhou-6

The Hangzhou event was a big success as many team members got to know one another better, learned how to work together as a team on non-work related tasks, and we got to explore a place not everyone previously visited. With some now friendly faces known at work apart from my immediate team, I’m quite looking forward to my first official day of work in a few weeks.

No new word of the day today, but look for that list to start up again tomorrow!

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Day 2 – Food and beer, cheap!

Day two and jet lag is still getting me good. This morning I was up by 5am. Hopefully my first jog here in China (3.4 miles) will help tire me out so I can sleep longer and through the night. Oh, the air quality today was pretty good and as the sun is setting I can actually see across Dushu Lake — the view is pretty stunning!

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Today was my first trip back to the office since the interviews in February. The idea was to introduce me around to the team but turns out most of them left a bit early today after a great product review with the corporate VPs. My new manager decided it was time for some food and beer so we hopped into his car and went to a place he’s been before. Needless to say this was my first litre — yes 1L — of beer and man did it taste good with those skewered meats, dumplings, and boiled crawfish!

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Today’s word of the day is 鸡 (Jī), meaning chicken. 鸡胸肉 (Jīxiōng ròu) though, is chicken breast, probably more useful.

Oh, and for some reason I cannot get my VPN to work on my iPad 🙁 Seeing as that tablet is 5 years old that doesn’t surprise me much, but it’s a shame … there goes my favorite Netflix watching device!

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Words of the Day

Below is a list of words or phrases that I’m learning to help get me settled into China. Please comment if you read Chinese or speak Mandarin and have an alternate suggestion for the translation!

  • 2017-06-20: 花园 (Huāyuán), meaning garden.
  • 2017-06-19: 雨 (Yǔ), meaning rain.
  • 2017-06-18: 总线 (Zǒngxiàn), meaning bus. NOTE: This might not be the correct translation!
  • 2017-06-14: 手机 (Shǒujī), meaning cellphone.
  • 2017-06-13: 技术 (Jìshù), meaning technology.
  • 2017-06-12: 出租车 (Chūzū chē), meaning taxi.
  • 2017-06-11: 地铁 (Dìtiě), meaning subway.
  • 2017-06-10: 面条 (Miàntiáo), meaning noodles.
  • 2017-06-09: 鸡 (Jī), meaning chicken. 鸡胸肉 (Jīxiōng ròu) is chicken breast, probably more useful.
  • 2017-06-08: 星巴克 (Xīngbākè), meaning Starbucks.
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Day 1 – Getting Settled

8 Dollar Lunch

What the equivalent of $8 will buy you for lunch in SIP (Suzhou Industrial Park)

It can’t be blamed on leaving the drapes open last night, but rather the inevitable jet lag that caused me to be wide awake at 5:15am, even after taking a sleeping pill before bed last night! Not being able to sleep in allowed me to settle into the apartment by putting away my personal items.

As I was putting things away I kept cursing myself for not purchasing any Starbucks Via or packing my french press in my carry-on luggage. Guess I’ll have to get used to having tea in the morning instead of a cup of joe!

In hopes of speaking better Mandarin, a word or phrase a day is being learned. Today’s word is 星巴克 (Xīngbākè), meaning Starbucks. Yup, I had to find the closest one too me to pick up some decent tea as the stuff they stock in my apt (which is in a hotel…) is just meh.

While I might not post a picture every day on this blog, I am occasionally going to post a shot looking out of my apartment window that depicts the air pollution. This morning started off a lot worse, but as the day went on the buildings across Dushu Lake (独墅湖) could be spotted off in the distance.

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The view across Dushu Lake with the air quality index around 115

Maybe one of these days I will have enough pictures to show a range of AQI (Air Quality Index) for the same view! To be fair, an AQI of 115 is listed as “lightly polluted” and I did not have much in the way of issues walking around or breathing, even with the humidity about 55% and the temps reaching 30C (86F).

Not sure what is on tap for tomorrow, but I’ll see how much of an adventure can be had!