Day 12 - Norway.

A Poem.


Grey

Oh look!
An idyllic glacial lake
In Norway, amidst ice.
Its grey colour is beautiful
In a million different ways:
The brushed steel of a sportscar,
The cool look of dreamy eyes,
The silvery glint of a coin,
A bit of charcoal spread fine o'er paper.
Lake Ustaoset bends in front of our eyes.

Day 11 - Norway. "There isn't much to see in Myrdal. There isn't much to do in Myrdal," a railway official told me. Where is Myrdal? It's at the end of the Flam railway line. It's about 3608 feet above sea level. It's a hamlet of (about) seven houses. It sits on the Bergen-Oslo railway line, one of the most scenic in all of Europe. It's the home of Martin, who runs a pretty little B&B that is just due to open for the short summer season. My friend Daniel and I were changing trains and had some time to explore but were dissuaded from leaving the platform by the railway official. "This," he said pointing to the railway station, "is Myrdal."




How wrong he was. We're glad we stepped across the tracks, down the steps, and onto the footbridge where we met Martin and heard his story. One day, I will come back and visit him and take him up on his suggestion to walk four hours down the hill to the fjords.

Day 10 - China. It's amazing what passes for Chinese food outside of China. Undeniably, there are some outstanding culinary accomplishments by chefs in the diaspora; but too often the food is suited to the particular tastes of the host country. Sometimes, the resulting fusion isn't all that bad. In India, the entire country seems to be fascinated by hakka Chinese which emerged from the combination of chili and traditional Chinese recipes. In Southeast Asia, the blend of spices and influences has altered the old world dishes beyond recognition. But on one day not long ago in New York, we were seated at a Chinese restaurant in midtown Midhattan that did injustice to the country at large. The food was both sweet and tasteless. The noodles: slurpy and rubbery. The brown sauce: a combination of salt, soy, vinegar, salt, MSG, and salt. And the vegetables were limp and overcooked, with the texture of a plastic sandal. Without mentioning the name of the establishment, suffice it to say that Ee Ching's rule holds, "Try to avoid a restaurant with a two-word English name where one word is "dragon", "moon", "jade", "China", "panda", or most egregiously, any combination of two thereof. (This is a clue.) Ironically, she translated the Chinese sign next to the English name, "A multitude of lanterns by the night sky," and admitted, "Hmmph. Quite poetic."