Seems Like More is Never Enough

The Duke of Zhou says that if you dream of thunder and lightning, you will have success in your work. It is a bad day for hunting and fishing, but a good day for reserving tickets and performing sacrificial rites.

We didn't feel like having any adventures yesterday. Instead we mostly stayed home and tried not to get sad. We played rummy 500, listened to music, just hung out together. We made plans so as to have something to look forward to. I helped Colin write down all the Chinese he has learned during his visit. We had lunch at the Yonghe dawang across the street, and then made a last trip to the Carrefour. Last for Colin that is. Got him some snacks for the plane, and some tea to take home.

In the afternoon Colin did some packing. Here are his pocket-things on top of the shirt he planned to wear on the plane.

For dinner we went out and had mala tang, which I knew Colin would like and he did. He discovered a new kind of noodle, which I never chose before but which was delicious. He also ran afoul of some fish cubes that looked exactly like squares of tofu. I ended up eating the fish cubes (they weren't bad at all) and trading him for all my tofu wheels and some of my tofu knots. Mala tang is so fun.

On the way home, I bought this spiral cut pineapple. I'd always had the intuition that we waste a lot of the most delicious part of the pineapple by cutting the eyes out in slabs the way we do. Chinese pineapple venders agree, and get the eyes out in spiral tracks. Colin even understood the bargaining process I went through: "How much is a whole one?" "Ten kuai." "Ten kuai!?" "This one is only six!" "Okay." No doubt the one I got was inferior in some way, but I couldn't tell. We brought it back home and sliced it up, and it was utterly delicious.

Then it was our last night together. We sat side by side and looked at all the pictures we both had taken in the past three weeks, talking about all the things we had done. Then I stayed up late writing a long blog post and watching Colin sleep. It was very hard not to be sad.