Cola!

I try so hard not to be the Ugly American when I travel, but I can't help desperately needing a big cold Diet Coke at least twice a day. Diet Coke is rare here, in fact when I brought one into the office from the hotel, several people mentioned that they didn't know such a thing existed in Shenzhen. So if I'm desperate I'll order the Real Thing of the Real Thing. Today we went out with a very nice lady from the Shenzhen office who up until recently was working out of Chicago. She took us to a steakhouse (figuring that we were sick of Chinese food, even though since most of our eating takes place at the hotel club bar we still eat quite a bit of western food) . She taught me how to order a coke (WITH ICE!). I was going to be all cool and write the phrase here but I seem to have forgotten it already. Oh well, back to pointing and gesturing. Most of the restaurants have picture menus (in fact our restaurant today had menus rivaling the size of the original Ten Commandments) so pointing is very effective.

The menus are also American-inspired in terms of drinks...maybe too much so. Our drink menu at lunch actually featured the items "Blow Job" and "Orgasm". At $28 RMB (about $4 US), that's quite a bargain!