Food Court Navigation Assessment: Needs Improvement

Today was pretty good - slept in a little later than usual but still made it to my guilty pleasure breakfast with Beth before they turned the menu over to lunch at 11.  Then I had a nice chat with my folks and got to hear some of Dad's bowhunting misfortunes and Mom's Thanksgiving plans.  I got a lot of good talking time in this weekend actually, Skyped with Jay and Liv on Saturday and had an extended texting session with Alison - just like the good old days.  All very enjoyable, but it did nothing to help with my grading.  I got another pile done today, but too many remain.  Regardless, by dinner time I decided I needed to get out of my chair for a while and took a walk.  On my way, I came across a craft fair in the square near my house where I saw them putting up tents last week.  Cool stuff!  If I had been in a more relaxed state of mind, I would have looked around a bit more.  As it was, I just gave it a quick browse.

Here's a short pan of what it looked like.  This band was really pretty decent - sounded like 80's rock in Chinese - but in a good way.

There was all kinds of jewelry for sale, but I especially liked this table where the artists were drawing portraits on the spot.  The little pendants and pins are wooden disks, which they draw on with marker and then seal with clear nail polish.  Cool!


















I was also excited to see this booth.  I've seen these crazy stickers about in the city.  Remember "Too shiny"?  Same guys.  Regrettably they did not have that design in stock, or I would have gotten a copy for each and every one of you, but many of these stickers are not, shall we say, super P.C.  I did make a few relevant purchases for Liv and Shaw and Bobby though, cause they're not P.C. anyway.

Finally I arrived at my destination - the New Yaohan department store.  I've heard about this place a number of times, but this was my first visit.  The reason I made the journey was that a fellow coworker, Miranda, posted a picture of some pad thai on Facebook and it looked so good I couldn't get it out of my mind.  Stupid Facebook!  Anyway, she said she'd gotten it at the New Yaohan foodcourt, which is in the top of the building, above 7 or 8 floors of merchandise.

When I arrived, I took a quick walkthrough and soon found the Thai place.  There were Korean, Japanese and several other Chinese options too.  I deduced that I needed to figure out the order numbers of what I wanted and then pay at the central cashier - full marks for that step.  I ordered 3 things, because I was hungry and thought it would be nice to have leftovers.  But I forgot to ask for takeaway dishes - mistake number 1.

What I didn't realize is that they would treat each item as a separate order and put it on its own tray with its own plasticware and expect me to juggle them all.  As you can see, the food court is a hoppin' spot, and finding a table was tricky.  So they'd already called up my coconut and mango with sticky rice before I'd had any luck.  I grabbed the plate off the extra tray and just added it to my coconut tray, which the lady behind the counter didn't like at all.  Then she seemed annoyed because I couldn't instantly see which tickets were the right ones to give her because I was trying to maneuver the food on the trays. 

Anyway, the pad thai wasn't ready yet, so I wrapped around to the far side of the FC and managed to snag a table.  Setting down my heavy tray, I put my hoodie on the chair as a marker and looked for my third ticket.  Gone.  Must have fluttered off in the wind as I cruised around.  I need to have Carol teach me some Cantonese curse words.  That's what I'll ask her to teach me this week.  So I retraced my steps all over the food court trying to find my missing ticket.  No dice.  Luckily, I at least remembered my number, so I wrote it down on a notepad and sheepishly went back to the food nazi and tried to explain using my oh-so-famous gesturing system of communication.  She scolded me and shook her head, but finally handed over my noodles.  What a pain! 

On top of it all, the pad thai was only so-so.  It was really salty on account of all the shrimp it contained.  "Nothing Special", as my favorite admin likes to say.  Luckily, I'd brought just the right book for the occasion.  Read another chapter of "you are here" and totally let it all go.  Walked home relaxed and got some more work done.  Great book.  Even if you don't know anything about Buddhism or have never thought about it, it's worth checking out.  I can't recommend it highly enough.

I managed to get a nice vid of the Hotel Lisboa on my way home.  In case you're not sick of the Blade Runner comparisons yet, here's one more.  The lit up elevators you can see from the outside.  Check it out!

Finally, I should mention that if you'd like to see even more of Macau, (or have something to look at on the days I flake), check out Beth's blog!  She wasn't putting stuff up very often at first, but now she has a great collection of photos and tidbits about our crazy life here.  I'll add her to my sidebar as well, so you don't forget. 

Beth's blog: http://enroute-beth.blogspot.com/