Wait, wait

You've waited this long, just like the Racing Sausages in Milwaukee, so I ask your patience for just a few days before....

1) I promise to post more in a few days. Vital things, like unpacking beer, giving away panda-related gifts and paying bills come before blogging, sadly.

2) While transiting through Singapore on Sunday, I stayed 6 hours in the transit hotel. In a way, it was truly was a transit, between Tokyo (vacation) and Hong Kong (back to the grind). Because while Tokyo smells clean, my first impression of coming back home was stepping out of my elevator and smelling this sickly sweet garlic smell enveloping me, as the neighbors were cooking lunch.
And in between Tokyo and HK was Singapore. And for some reason, the hallway in the transit hotel - which is just a small area of the airport, in the international area, and not isoalted in any way - reeked of curry. Why some portion of the Singapore airport smells like curry, I don't know.

3) But I had to laugh in Singapore taking the moving walkways between wings. They call their walkway the "Travellator," which made me think of one of the all-time great time-wasters at work, Trogdor's Burninator.

No, we will not have another

Washington has exceeded my expectations in all regards. The buildings - be they neighborhood homes or monuments - are amazing, and my architecture snob fuel tank has quickly been restored. The subway is first rate, its stations the coolest on earth, even better than any in Europe. There is greenery everywhere. And for all the problems of the US government, I have to give them credit to the way they run museums here: they're the best on earth, they're everywhere and they're free. This is a city made to visit, especially with great hosts.
Put it this way: Not one, not two, but three lumpy pandas to visit, for free, in their zoo!
So last night I was looking forward to visiting a bar that is legendary in the beer snob community, the Brickseller. It touts itself as having the largest beer menu on earth, about 1,000 or so, and it was only a 15 minute walk from my friends' flat.
Oh, I wish I could recommend it, I really do. It has a couple different rooms, and the downstairs one we picked has no tap beer, only bottles. Considering it was a 15 minute wait to get in downstairs, we didn't want to wait another 20 minutes to get upstairs. To be kind would be to say our waiter was clueless; to be accurate would be to say he acted like he was hired that afternoon. He didn't know his own food menu, our mains obviously were sitting for a while before he grabbed them, and he forgot things left and right.
And the beer. Sooooooo sad. What's the point of having 1,000 beers if your a lot of them aren't in stock? Or if your servers don't know which ones are? When you order, be ready to have a second, third and fourth backup, or even a fifth and sixth if you order obscure ones. And forget having the menu print descriptions or having the server know. And with that many beers, forget getting a proper glass for each beer. All we got were the standard 8-oz. pilsner glasses everybody used in the 70s, no matter what we drank or what the beer deserved.
The final straw was at the end, when we were sharing a final beer. The server looked increduously at me when I asked for a new glass because mine reeked of bleach. Not a subtle smell, but as if it was just dunked in a tank of it to disinfect it 5 minutes ago.
Maybe it helped to be a local. The table next to us (with a different server, FYI) got appropriate bottles for their beers. But I left with the feeling that this place has been coasting on its reputation of having a massive list for at least a decade, if not more. What's the point of having 1,000 beers if you can't describe them to customers and it's always hit-and-miss when you order? Pare down that menu to a third what it is. 0 out 4 stars, as they sad.

Just a smidge, for now

Yes, I haven't been posting. I'm on vacation. Which means I've vacated certain duties. Like blogging. But a few snippets.
1) I'll write about this at a later date, but you can discover a lot about Japan by going to a baseball game. About their love of food. How they only cheer their team and won't boo the opponents, the ultimate in the harmonious society concept. About their fascination/repression with young girls, evidenced with their 17-year-old female beer vendors at the game. Their still entrenched misogyny-lite, evidenced by the home team getting a PA announcer, but the visiting players get a female PA annoncer.
And you also get to see the wonderful weirdness that is Japan, especially when the Yakult Bay Swallows play Old Baseball Man at the top of the seventh inning.



2) Why is Japan so great? They have baseball. Their music festivals, while costly, are set in beautiful ski resorts with minimal advertising and with festivalgoers who all are polite and never liter. Because when a visitor gets lost, a cafe owner will leave his business for a half hour to help you find your address, but only laughs when he finds you got the address wrong.
Because not only do they have the best train system in the world, but the best train station food in the world. I am now adding another worldwide generalization to my beer/wine rule for countries (Except for Germany and the US, countries with great wine make crappy beer and great beer countries make crappy wine): the quality of a country's train system is directly related to their quality of food at train stations. France/Germany: great food available at the station, great trains. India: trains that break all the time, and food that will break you down at any time. And don't ask about the US.

3) A friend said the other week, "You really do love planning the trips more than the trips themselves, don't you?" I have to agree. After two days of brainstorming, I finally was able to reroute my return trip to Asia at nearly no cost so I could spend more time in Japan. I was to fly back to HK direct from Chicago, but I wanted to leave the states early so I could spend a few days in Tokyo and see the stuff I missed the first time. The problem: United had no seats left on their Tokyo-HK flight on any of my travel days. Solution? Fly from Tokyo to Singapore, layover 8 hours, then fly to HK.
Yes, I am nuts. Instead of flying Chicago-HK direct, I fly Chicago-Tokyo-Singapore-HK. But I get to explore Tokyo again!

4) Re: Lollapalooza. Dear Perry Ferrel of Jane's Addiction: Being stoned all the time, or acting like it, can be fun at age 22. It's kinda sad at age 45. That's all.

5) Re: Chicago. I repeat my statements from last visit. I love it, but my friends I know there are slowly drifting away to other cities. Which means my desire to spend time there drops every time.
But Hot Doug's, you'll always have my love.

Pictures:


Why I adore Japan, part 1: Just outside of the Tokyo Dome, where the Giants play, they prove they love bacon as much as me, but with 300% more thickness.


Why I adore Japan, part II: They love pandas, too, but express it even when tagging buildings, such as this one in Shinjuku.


Why I adore Japan, part III: Because their baseball games lack huge guys with bigger mullets, such as this guy at my one Cubs game.