Jetlag at the Noodle Shop

It's 4:45 p.m. I feel like I've been drugged, I'm so tired. If I go back to my hotel room I'll crash for sure and that won't help me reset my internal clock. I'm at a noodle restaurant, hoping that eating will help stop me from sleeping. I came here yesterday, pointed to a picture on a menu of choices that looked remarkable the same, and was served a lovely bowl of noodles, BBQ pork and bean sprouts. Today, I pointed to the next item on the menu and was told that I couldn't have that one (don't know why) but I could have the following one. Fine. They all looked pretty much the same in the pictures, which was funny because they all looked very different in real life. As usual, I received my meal in a matter of minutes, only this time it wasn’t so nice. Noodles, yes, but nestled in amongst the noodles were chunks of boiled chicken that I imagined had been hacked apart by a machete, leaving remnants of bone everywhere and bits of the boiled skin still hanging off the bits carcass. It didn’t look very appetizing, but I gave it a try. It was so full of bone fragments that I couldn’t eat it. The only way was to pop in a piece, chew off the meat, then spit out the bone. I suddenly started to understand the eating habits I’ve seen, and frowned upon, at Chinese restaurants at home. Along with the boiled chicken, with bits of white pimply skin hanging off it, there was boiled lettuce. What ever possesses people to boil lettuce? I'll never understand. I also received a small bowl of something that looked an awful lot like dirty dishwater. I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do with it and the waiter looked a bit surly so I didn't want to ask, and by ask I mean act out a mime of my question with a lot of finger pointing and quizzical facial expressions. I was too tired to go down that road. So, I pushed the dishwater aside and focussed my attention on a larger bowl, working my way around the massacred chicken. At the bottom, when I finally reached it, was some very concentrated soy sauce. Couldn't help thinking that, had the dirty dishwater been added to the whole concoction, it my have made a nice soup!

I noticed that most people ordered a make-your-own soup. They received a very large bowl of what looked like my same dirty dish water. They also got small plates of meat and veggies and other things that I couldn't quite identify from my vantage point. I didn't quite get it. When it arrived, they just dumped everything into the bowl and ate it. Wouldn't it have been quicker and easier to do that in the kitchen and present the finished product at the table? The thirty seconds it took to deliver it couldn’t have made that much of a difference, could it?

Oh boy. I felt drugged when I dragged myself in here but pour some nice warm soup down me and now I'm barely conscious. And it's only just after 5:00! Maybe I need something sweet. There is no shortage of sweet things in Shanghai. My favourite are sesame balls. Just like the ones you get at dim sum, only better! Egg tarts also abound. Yes, eating in Shanghai is going to be a problem. Too much food and far too tasty.