Day 1, Yet Again (The US Diaries - 2)

I worte it some days back, on the flight from Tokyo to Los Angeles.... here it is

It’s Day 2 of my first foray out of my homeland… Or is it?? I just crossed the International Date Line, so technically, its Day 1 “Yet Again”. If someone would have told me I would be going to US for an Adobe Conference and would be writing a blog entry about it, and that too on air… I would have thought, “Here is a mad psycho”.

I’m on the way from Tokyo to L.A. My official entry into the US of A. Travel has been good… haven’t slept a wink, roamed around the whole Singapore airport sometime back and now a 10 hour flight from Tokyo, I still am not sleepy. Looks like Jet lag is really gonna hit me hard.

I recognized the peril of being an international traveler. Either be a vegetarian or be ready for anything. For me, it was doubly hard, coz I do not eat sea food (I finally tried my first prawns… wasn’t bad). International flights offer a menu of International/Local in the food. If you do not mention that you are a veggie while booking, halleluiah.

There was some assortment of fishes in the international menu, so I decided to check out the Japanese stuff (I was hungry). Here it goes…

1. An appetizer of a salad that had mushrooms + seaweed and what I think is some oyster (yummy for some, not for me). What was more, it had a dressing of orchid petals (which I must confess was delicious). It had also an undersized tomato and a sweet-potato steamed and cut in the form of a flower

2. The main course had a chicken breast (stewed in a sauce filled with seaweeds again) and some very sticky rice (which had a couple of green peas stuck on the top – guess it makes it close to a pulao)

3. Cold-Green-Noodles and some sauce with something cut-up (I think it was onion lentils, I hope it was not sea weed again). I tried, every sane (according to me) way of eating it, only to realize you had to cut-up the noodles (coz I didn’t know how to use chopsticks) which was absolutely bland and drop them into the sauce and then have it.

There was a burfi-like sweet, topped with a prawn (???) as dessert…. That was the meal. The only smooth sailing was a bread piece with butter and some good white wine.

After the (mis)adventure with Japanese food, I’m finally planning to catch some sleep now. Its morn 05:20 L.A time (but I will still take close to 5 hrs to get there)…