Convergence
On Monday night we sat down at an outside patio table at "Red," a popular and upscale fusion restaurant in the Luwan district of Shanghai that happens to belong to one of Tina's friends I had met a few days prior. Judy and I were just coming from dinner at an Indian restaurant in the same district. At this dinner I was introduced to a Turkish graphic designer who had grown up in Australia and had her future correctly told to her years before by someone reading her leftover Turkish coffee grains. Then there was the New York-based auditor who had just arrived in Shanghai for four months. Apparently, his job is to travel from one country to another for a period of four months each time.
"Just enough to really dig in and get to know a place," I said to him.
"Exactly," he responded.
Then there was the petite ABC (American Born Chinese), a fireball of a Northern Californian who had a penchant for hunting white males in Shanghai nightclubs and bars and had lost eleven cell-phones in a little under 2 years here in Shanghai. Our conversations meandered through the spiritually creepy (ouija boards, talking to the dead), the physically impossible (light as a feather), and the genuinely haunting (the Lachaise cemetery in Paris). All of this over Punjabi food (Murgh RaRa) and Japanese and German Beer.
So here we were at "Red," sitting down to another group of people, 1 Brit and 2 Aussies. The Brit was a recent transplant from Hong Kong, where she had spent 10 years working as an architect. She had a fabulous British accent and an even more fabulous gap in her front teeth to go with it. She had recently won a sausage-eating contest. One of the Aussies had been at his seat since 2 pm that afternoon (it was now 10pm), and he was painfully nursing his 12th pint of inevitably Western European brew. Next to him was a 44 year old Australian bar manager who used the term "Sarcky" instead of "sarcastic" and always seemed to be a little sarcky himself.
The 44 year old Aussie raised his mug in a toast. We accordingly raised our wine glasses, which were filled with Italian chianti.
"To convergence," he toasted.
To convergence.
"Just enough to really dig in and get to know a place," I said to him.
"Exactly," he responded.
Then there was the petite ABC (American Born Chinese), a fireball of a Northern Californian who had a penchant for hunting white males in Shanghai nightclubs and bars and had lost eleven cell-phones in a little under 2 years here in Shanghai. Our conversations meandered through the spiritually creepy (ouija boards, talking to the dead), the physically impossible (light as a feather), and the genuinely haunting (the Lachaise cemetery in Paris). All of this over Punjabi food (Murgh RaRa) and Japanese and German Beer.
So here we were at "Red," sitting down to another group of people, 1 Brit and 2 Aussies. The Brit was a recent transplant from Hong Kong, where she had spent 10 years working as an architect. She had a fabulous British accent and an even more fabulous gap in her front teeth to go with it. She had recently won a sausage-eating contest. One of the Aussies had been at his seat since 2 pm that afternoon (it was now 10pm), and he was painfully nursing his 12th pint of inevitably Western European brew. Next to him was a 44 year old Australian bar manager who used the term "Sarcky" instead of "sarcastic" and always seemed to be a little sarcky himself.
The 44 year old Aussie raised his mug in a toast. We accordingly raised our wine glasses, which were filled with Italian chianti.
"To convergence," he toasted.
To convergence.
posted by sushipanda at 3:13 PM
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