Some of you may have been reading Brendan and Kun's adventures in and around Chengdu. They are two of my favorite China Blog Mafia® personalities, but I have to confess incredulous disappointment that they haven't yet addressed Sichuan food. Well, actually Kun did mention a place in Chengdu that serves decent milkshakes. Milkshakes?!?!? Here's what I think of milkshakes: From Hell's Heart I Stab at Thee....Right there is all you need to know about Chengdu cuisine. Served up right here in Madras. The name of this boiling, liquid, molten chilied concoction is "hotpot", close but not quite the same as the Chinese 火锅 [lit: "firepot"]. Hotpot is easily the most popular food in Chengdu. It's not hard to understand why. You'd be hard pressed to come up with a more socially interactive way of eating. Everyone sits around a table. In the middle is a steaming, boiling pot of broth. Restaurant attendants bring around skewers of meat (or plates, as you see here) and a multitude of vegetables. You just keep dumping stuff in and fish around for something that's ready. These meals typically last several hours, and in China are ridiculously inexpensive. The only problem is that Sichuanese tend to go for entrails, intestines, tripe, stomach, etc. I prefer beancurds, mushrooms and veggies. Spicygirl brought back hotpot seasoning packages on her last trip to Chengdu. We have our own electric hotpot (in China they mostly use propane), so we invited a few friends over for our inaugural Madras 麻辣烫. Here you can see what meats we used: chicken, beef, and in the middle there is a plate of vienna sausages and a kind of chicken spam imitation. I have to say the vienna sausages go quite well with hotpot, because they have a wonderful smoky flavor. I steered clear of the spam. Sichuanese that I've met in the US love spam, especially in hotpot. I don't know why whatever company that manufactures it doesn't make a beeline for Sichuan and get some kind of deal together. They'd increase their sales ten-fold and get rich. They could send their kids to good schools so they wouldn't have to grow up and make spam for a living. I'm more of a tofu and potatoes kind of guy, and in hotpot I especially love carrots. I think I finished most of the carrots in that plate there, and even had our maid peel some more. That wasn't all the veggies though: from top left and clockwise, cabbage and cauliflower, five kinds of mushrooms including tree-ear fungus, sweet potato noodles, tofu skin and soft tofu, tofu jerky, cucumbers and wintermelon. Here's who showed up: at the head of the table, my Indian readers will surely recognize Yardboy. Look at him all bright-eyed, bushytailed and raring to go! I wonder if he had any idea of what he was getting into? Proceeding clockwise is Teresa. She spent several years in Beijing where she was even in a motorcycle gang. She drove around in one of those BMW knock-offs with a cool sidecar. She's got her own claim to cyberfame, because Carla King rode a motorcycle all over China, and Teresa gets a write-up in the Beijing portion of the journey. You should definitely check out Carla's site. Next is the lady of the hour, who needs no introduction, Spicygirl. She made it all happen and I'm forever in awe of her amazing culinary skill, although she'll tell you she's only the third-best cook in her family, after her brother and father. Next is Teresa's mom, Beverly, who is visiting India for a few months. My hat's off to Beverly, who is extraordinarily adventurous when it comes to food. She'll try anything, and what's more, she invariably likes it! Last but not least is Bruce, Teresa's significant other. They met in Beijing, where they both worked a number of years. He's a kindred spirit of Prince Roy in that he also appreciates the finer qualities of Chinese spirits, or baijiu. They're going back to China for good in a few months, which is great for them, but Spicygirl and I are really sad to see them go. They live right down the street from us, and it just won't be the same without them around. Dueling Chopsticks Teresa and Spicygirl duke it out for tree-ear fungus Probably the best thing about hotpot at home is that there are enough leftovers for several days. Also, the broth is extremely healthy, because of all the vegetables. It becomes even more flavorful over subsequent days, as all the spices, flavors and nutrients settle and merge together. It's like that old catch-phrase from those Prego pasta sauce commercials: "It's in there!" Here's a final eye-ppetizer to end the night: You may be wondering about all those beer cans you see. Well, nothing goes better with hotpot than ice cold beer. There's no Qingdao to be had in Chennai, so we had to settle for Heineken. I think even Kingfisher would taste great with hotpot, and that is not an easy admission for me to make. So what are you waiting for? Go out and try hotpot today!
- posted by Prince Roy @ 1/31/2005 11:40:00 PM| |

 
The Pho, the whole Pho, and nothing but the Pho If you are anywhere near Chennai, do your best to get to Benjarong before the weekend. This place is normally a Thai restaurant, but for one week they are doing a Vietnamese food festival. Management flew in a Vietnamese chef, and also a three-person band that plays traditional Vietnamese music. I would have more pictures, but my camera batteries died after that shot above. But never fear, we will definitely be going back, probably two or three more times. We've already gone for the past two nights. Anyway, the food is the thing, so I'm glad I got at least one picture on record. Pho is pronounced 'fuh' (粉 fěn in Chinese), and it is probably the national dish of Vietnam. It basically is just noodle soup with very thinly sliced beef, though it comes in chicken, seafood, veg and other versions. You can also add mint leaves, chilies, and bean sprouts. We went last night and ordered the Hue-style pho which the chef said was the spiciest. Hue is a city in central Vietnam, and was the former capital from 1802 to 1945, during the Nguyen dynasty. The noodles weren't spicy at all, in our opinion, but we added many, many red chilies so they tasted just fine. Since we've never had any Vietnamese food before, except for pho in LA and DC, we also decided to try some main courses. Big mistake. They tasted nothing like what I expected Vietnamese food to be like, and both dishes we ordered had the thick brown sauce and overly sweet, slightly sour taste that is the hallmark of Tamil-style Asian food. The pho, however, was superb. So when we went back tonight we didn't mess around. We each ordered two bowls of pho apiece: one Hue-style and one regular. We didn't waste our time with anything else (well, we did go in on some egg rolls with the couple who went with us). The regular is 168 rupees and the Hue-style is 248. The only difference in the two seems to be the noodles. Regular style uses flat rice noodles and Hue-style uses spaghetti. The place has been packed out since they started this over the weekend, and I guess that just proves how starved Chennai-ites are for something new. We'd never actually gone to this restaurant before. There was a rumor going around that the Indian owner hired a Thai chef when he first opened Benjarong, got him to train the Indian assistants how to prepare every dish on the authentic Thai menu, then summarily fired him without paying him one rupee. The poor guy had to call his family in Thailand to send him money for a plane ticket home. I don't know if that is true or not, as these alleged events took place before we arrived, but it doesn't strike me as out of character for this part of the world, and it was enough to keep me away. I hope that doesn't happen to the Vietnamese. Man, will it be a shame when they leave. I bet that same 168 rupee bowl of pho costs just 10 cents in Vietnam, but after being here for nine months, I'll gladly fork over the markup.
- posted by Prince Roy @ 1/25/2005 12:10:00 AM| |

 
Wheels Up... Prince Roy (center) with BK and his Evil Twin "Wheels Up" is a term of art used by people in State. It refers to someone leaving post, either a colleague or VIP visitor, usually permanently. The phrase denotes an airplane's landing gear retracting upon takeoff. Departing colleagues are something you have to get used to in our line of work, where our first two tours last two years each, and subsequent ones average 3-4. It's a lot like the Army, but since the corps of foreign service officers is infinitesimally smaller than the military, there's often not the same sense of permanence behind a departure that I recall from my four years at Fort Sill when my buddies in 3/9 Field Artillery rotated out. And since many of us in State have similar interests regarding geopolitical regions, there is a good chance we will run into each other at some future point in our careers.

The "Wheels Up" party is another tradition we have, at least here in Chennai, because almost all international flights take off after 2300. These normally begin right after work, and everyone hurries over to the departing colleague's house. By this time, the movers have come and gone, and all that is left are items that the person doesn't want or couldn't pack out. What follows is a mad grab, where everyone behaves like a grizzled prospector staking a claim. I've done pretty well at the two parties I've attended, having hauled in books, clothes, a pair of ladies' golfing shoes, a tennis racket, and a Ganesh embroidered hanging, among other things. Any remaining food and alcohol, typically much more of the latter, is served up to all guests. The departing colleague will also personally and ceremonially bequeath special items, and I'm thrilled with what BK left to me: that magnificent rubber band ball you see at left. Months, perhaps years in the making, in the sanctity of his consulate cubicle, it is a fitting symbol of a Chennai tour. I'll do my best to continue the work; who knows, by the time of my wheels up, it may grow to be as large as a softball. I'm sorry to see BK go, but I'm happy for him in the sense that he's finally completed the mandatory consular tour: now he can get down to brass tacks and do what it is he entered the foreign service to do. And no two ways about it, his next assignment is a plum, at what I would consider to be the dream post...
- posted by Prince Roy @ 1/23/2005 06:55:00 PM| |

 
InSeoul Does It Again... Sated Diners Spicygirl, Prince Roy and Larry One of the most unexpected (and nicest) consequences of having my own website is that I've had the great fortune to personally meet a number of readers who stumbled, one way or another, into my little Realm. The first were Alaric and Brendan, both part of the legendary and mysterious China Blog Mafia. They ended up coming down to visit me in Washington DC, and you can read about that experience here. In India, I've met up with part-time expat Yardboy, and we still get together on occasion. He's got an excellent website of his own, by the way. And I am looking forward to one day making the aquaintance of everyone in my links section, all of whom have standing invitations to visit me here in India or any of my future diplomatic posts. John and Wayne flirted with the idea of coming here to Chennai, but fate or better sense kept them away. The latest example is Larry, pictured above. He is from the Bay Area, and came to Chennai for a week because his IT company is expanding operations in India, and he had to hire several new local personnel. He says he found my site by doing a web search for Korean restaurants in Chennai, which apparently led him to this post. I have no idea why he thought there might be Korean restaurants in Chennai, but there you go. In fact, there are two, but InSeoul is by far the best. It's a must if you ever visit here. So what better place for us to stage our initial meeting than the inspiration that is responsible for him contacting me in the first place? For my part, I was delighted to discover that he is not averse to a carton or two of soju... Larry came at a good time, because we are in the midst of a four-day weekend, so on Friday night I took him along to a colleague's party. It was a Mexican-themed potluck dinner, so he could enjoy the rather surreal experience of Mexican food and margaritas in a place that is about as far away from Mexico as it is possible to get, and still remain on planet Earth. Not to mention that there isn't a Mexican among us. His flight left at around 0300 Sunday morning, so that Saturday night we went to a local Indian restaurant. He had already tried Tamil Nadu cuisine earlier in the week, and he was disappointed because it was not as spicy as he had been led to believe. Andhra Pradesh cuisine is supposed to be among the spiciest of Indian fare, and so one of his Indian co-workers mentioned he might try the Malgudi Restaurant in the four-star Hotel Savera. Larry invited me along, and I jumped at the opportunity, because I had heard the same thing about Andhra Pradesh, and like Larry, I don't find Tamil Nadu food to be all that spicy. Well, we went, and I hate to report that as far as fieriness goes, we were again disappointed. The selections we ordered all tasted fine, and the waiter was exceedingly helpful, because neither of us had a clue about Andhra Pradesh dishes, but for whatever reason nothing we ordered had much kick, even though we were adamant that we wanted spicy food: we made that very clear. I think what is going on here is the same thing that happens at just about every Sichuanese restaurant I've been to in the US: the staff sees foreigners waltz in and no amount of cajoling will convince them that yes, some of us are actually capable of consuming spicy food, so they dumb it down. This used to drive me up the wall back in the day, and I didn't think it would happen here, because Malgudi is a local restaurant patronized primarily by Indians themselves. Even when I was in Chengdu, the restaurants there didn't alter the hot pepper content just because of my foreign face. But apparently they do here. I guess the only answer for it is to bring along a local friend to intercede on our behalf. Next time you visit, Larry, I'll invite an Indian national at our consulate who is from Andhra Pradesh to come along with us. If we can find out where the 'expat' Andhra Pradeshis themselves patronize here in Chennai, I think we'll have it made. If any Indian readers familiar with the Chennai restaurant scene can volunteer a place, please do. I'm trying my best to maintain a positive outlook, folks, but I'm starting to lose hope...it's put up or shut up, cuisine of India.
- posted by Prince Roy @ 1/16/2005 11:10:00 PM| |

 
Delhi has now tasked us with clearing up all of India's unaccounted-for US citizens that may have been in India at the time of the tsunami. So any case that Main State, Delhi, Calcutta or Mumbai may have been investigating is now completely our concern, even if they were never anywhere near our district (where the tsunami struck) to begin with. This means I'm off to the consulate tonight for another all-nighter, after doing 100 visa interviews today. A colleague will be there, too, so hopefully we can make decent progress. I know what we are doing is important, and has to be done, but I can't help but believe much of the urgency is gone, since it is more and more evident that the US suffered no casualties in India. I've heard that there's been a controversy back in the West, concerning graphic depictions in the media there of tsunami fatalities in Asia. Critics argue that if the disaster had occurred in the US or Europe, and the victims were largely white Europeans, the newspapers, magazines and television would not have published or broadcast pictures of the dead adults and children, or the mass burials. I can see their point to a large extent. The US has its share of natural disasters every year: earthquakes, tornados, hurricanes, floods, etc., and I can't ever remember seeing such explicit images in the media after those calamities. Of course, the scale is not comparable, but I don't think it is an issue of scale. To be fair, however, I should point out that the Asian media has engaged in the exact same behaviour. And not just for this catastrophe, either. Indian television and newspapers regularly show gruesome images of fatalities, whether by nature or man. A few months ago there was an elementary school fire in Tamil Nadu in which scores of children perished, and both TV and newspapers did not shy away from showing the tiny, stacked, charred bodies or the suffering of their parents. Yet I still find the Western media's behaviour unseemly, because it is not observing its own standards in this case. Why don't these organizations adhere to the sensibilities they would employ on the other side of the world, in their own societies? Why do they consider themselves not bound by these unwritten rules of conduct in this part of the world? I wonder, though, if the subsequent international response and outpouring of relief would have occurred on such a massive level had the Western media not published/broadcast the images it did. It is one thing to report that 150,000+ men, women and children died, but quite another to show scores of people buried together in a pit. In my opinion, the Western media acted in a highly insensitive manner, but I'm open to hearing other points of view, and I'd be interested in reading what others have to say.
- posted by Prince Roy @ 1/07/2005 10:35:00 PM| |

 
Today, a much needed day off. A friend of ours has a satellite dish and subscribes to the AFN (Armed Forces Network), so this morning at 0630 we went to their place to watch the USC-Oklahoma game. The game was a bust, because it wasn't even close, but it served as an effective tonic, as it focused me on the mundane. I didn't even take umbrage at the usual atrocious half-time show, but I did notice those loud boos. The whims of US pop culture have never been so fickle, because I hadn't heard of a single performer, and I've only been gone for 9 months. My wife went to USC and my colleague is from Oklahoma, so before the game I made a bet with his wife: if Oklahoma won, we Spicygirl would prepare them an authentic Sichuan feast. If USC won, his wife had to cook us an Italian dinner, since she is Italian-American. I figured this was a bet I couldn't lose either way. Stiamo mangiando l'italiano! After the game I took a long nap, and then enjoyed a leisurely lunch at a local French restaurant. In other words, a completely normal day. Tomorrow it's back to the consulate, but I plan to take a one-day hiatus from welfare and whereabout cases. I'd say we've wrapped up at least 85% by now, and while we'll stay on it until the end, it is apparent that there were no US casualties, so now it just becomes a game of phone tag waiting for people to check in. I've also noticed that an awful lot of the people we are trying to account for are not even US citizens, but H1B workers that came back to India for the holidays. In most cases, their US friends and colleagues got worried when they heard about the tsunami, and called or emailed us. H1B is a visa type issued to allow workers with specialized skills to temporarily live and work in the US. In the India context, that means IT people. While we didn't turn any of these cases away, our first and foremost priority is the safety and well-being of US citizens abroad, so those are the ones I focused on initially. I did receive an email correspondence from one H1B worker case of ours who related how, every day during his three-week vacation, he had gone jogging in the mornings on Marina Beach with two of his friends from college. For whatever reason, he slept in on December 26 and didn't join them. His buddies showed up on time as usual for their run, and were swept out to sea. There are many stories like this. An Indian national who works at our consulate also narrowly escaped a similar fate through blind luck. December 26 was the day of his sister's engagement party, and they booked a fancy reception hall near Marina Beach. What saved them was the fact that they made an 1100 booking. They were on their way to the beach for a family stroll, but were stuck in traffic when they heard the waves had come. Some people I know weren't so lucky. Another one of our consulate staff lost his home. My driver's brother-in-law perished, as did the 'aunt' of our housekeeper. I put that in quotation marks, because Indian relations can be quite complicated; I actually don't know the degree of relationship, as 'aunt' can mean a number of things. Everyone here is ready to put this behind us, and I can't wait to be complaining about visa interviews again...
- posted by Prince Roy @ 1/05/2005 11:25:00 PM| |

 
I didn't get home until 2330 tonight. It's been crazy here the last few days. I did an overnight shift Saturday from 2000 and ended up returning home at 1430 the next afternoon, constantly working to locate the whereabouts of US citizens known to be in India at the time of the tsunamis. I thought I got quite a bit done, but it seems like for every case we resolve, two new ones pop up. The number is in the hundreds. I find it incredulous that so many expats and tourists still haven't contacted family and friends to let them know they are ok. While working the phones, I do my best to allay people's fears. Many of those we are trying to locate weren't going anywhere near the tsunami-hit areas. People in the US don't realize that, though. They see the news: tsunami strikes South Asia, over 150,000 feared dead, then they think 'my god, isn't so-and-so in India' and call the State Department in a panic. I tell them that India is a big country and then use the USA as a frame of reference. Say a hurricane hits Miami. A German tourist visiting Las Vegas will be so completely unaffected by this that s/he won't even think parents or friends could possibly be worried. That's what's going on here in many of these cases. Joe-Bob goes on a trip to Bombay, which is well over 700 miles from where the tsunamis were, and it doesn't even occur to him to call home. I also tell the people I call that there is still no indication that any US citizens are among the casualties in India. These things usually help calm their minds. Finally, I let them know that we will keep the case open until they hear that their loved one is ok or we contact that person ourselves. Our consulate is functioning in a support capacity for our other missions in the region, and I have nothing but the utmost respect for my colleagues in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Malaysia. I can only imagine what those guys are going through these days. We're starting to see some of the lingering human effects of the disaster here now. Today an elderly Indian-American couple came in for new passports. They had gone to Sri Lanka for the holidays with several Indian relatives. The gentleman was so shook up by what he experienced that when my colleague asked him how he was doing, this man broke down in tears, and couldn't continue. He sat sobbing, while his wife took care of their business. Thankfully, all of them survived, but just barely. From their hotel near the beach, they literally outran the tsunami. All except this man's wife who couldn't run due to her bad knees. Somehow, she made it to her room and climbed up on a desk. I don't know which floor she was on, but the water made it up to her knees before it subsided. I fear we may also begin to see a more unsavory result of the tragedy, in which some will try to take advantage of this horrible event to engage in the contemptible activity of child-trafficking. I'm worried that we will begin to encounter people showing up with children who they claim are 'orphans' from the tsunami, in the attempt to circumvent adoption laws to get those kids to the US. I do not mean to appear callous, and I absolutely realize the extent of what has taken place. In India alone, hundreds, if not thousands, of children lost their parents last Sunday. But at the same time, trafficking in children is a real issue in India, and we discover several cases a year at our consulate. Maybe I have an unduly pessimistic view of human nature, but I would not put it beyond some people to capitalize on this calamity and undertake this most despicable of pursuits. If I'm wrong about this, no one will be more overjoyed than me, believe me. But the behavior of people during other similar episodes in crises past doesn't exactly fill me with confidence.
- posted by Prince Roy @ 1/04/2005 02:10:00 AM| |

 
Somber and subdued New Year's greetings to all. Greater Chennai, at least, has largely returned to a state of normalcy. There is still relief work going on, but only in a few areas of town, and it is more of the mopping up variety. The real work is in Nagapattinam, which has lost at least 5525 people, accounting for well more than half of Tamil Nadu's 7400 fatalities. 206 are confirmed dead here in Chennai, but that figure will likely increase somewhat. The tides still wash bodies ashore each morning, though the numbers are decreasing to five or less a day. The city government has been slow in delivering aid to local residents, and scores of them staged sit-ins on Santhome Road the past few days. The government is distributing 4000 rupees (US$88) to each family that lost their home. I know this doesn't sound like much, but considering that most of them lived in thatched lean-to dwellings, many of them rented from slumlords, it's better than nothing. I'm going in at 2000 tonight for an all-night shift. We still receive phone calls and emails from people in the US asking about friends and relatives, but hopefully any US citizen here has made contact by now. As far as we are aware, no US citizens lost their lives in the tsunami, but we have to account for every welfare and whereabouts request we get. Friday was supposed to be a holiday for us (New Year's), but since we have so many student applicants needing visa interviews to get to the US in time for the spring semester, we had a special student's day (planned well before the tragedy). I may comment more on the student visa process in a later post, because I think visa officers take a lot of unjustified heat over this issue. I did write about it briefly in an earlier post; if you're interested, you can find it here. It wasn't required that we come in, but several of us volunteered. Actually, they promised us it would be more like a half-day, which is why so many of us did. Some half-day: I arrived at 0815 and didn't leave until after 1730. We scheduled over 500 appointments and right after I had started interviewing I was told to go assist the American Citizen Services section with the welfare and whereabouts files. Normally, in light of the circumstances, I would have been fine with that, but the work I ended up doing most of the day was of a non-urgent variety that could easily have waited until my all-night shift today. Meanwhile, the interviews went on and on. I am one of the faster adjudicators, and I think if I had been on the line we would have finished early in the afternoon. I found this extremely frustrating because another colleague and I had planned to go assist in the removal of rubble down in the worst-hit beach areas. There is still much debris from where people's homes used to be, and I wanted to put my back in the relief effort so to speak. Plus, I think it would be a positive thing for Indians here to see their foreign residents actively assisting in the grunt work. I plan to go see how I can help tomorrow morning after my shift, if I am in any kind of shape to contribute. Finally, I'd like to thank everyone of you who left words of encouragement in the comments or email. I sincerely appreciate it.
- posted by Prince Roy @ 1/01/2005 06:00:00 PM| |