Do not eat the tiramisu

It's been a quiet but busy few days. A couple of nights ago I went with Micha and Dora to the Forbidden City chinese restaurant. Whenever we go there, it is always hard to get rice for some reason. So we walk in the door, and motion with our hands to form a bowl and ask for a large container of rice. We order, and the food starts to arrive, ask two more times, and lo and behold ... rice. We asked to have peanuts with the sweet and sour chicken. When we go out with Dr. Paul, he has that famous peanut allergy, so when he is not with us, we try to get something with nuts. The first dish to arrive was a bowl of peanuts in sweet and sour sauce. Then I remembered what we asked for ... peanuts "with" the chicken NOT "in" the chicken. We will be more explicit next time :) I went with Micha yesterday to Blue Drops to watch the Ukraine play Greece in a world cup elimination round final. Ukraine lost 1-0. When we got to the place, someone was already watching an Egypt vs. Algeria game and naturally occupying the large screen TV. Pergano, who works there, told us to wait and he would hook up another smaller TV so we could watch the game. Talk about hospitality! He and the owner took about 15 minutes then we gathered around the smaller TV to watch the game. Greece was not so much stronger than Ukraine nor did they play better ... they just managed to score somehow. When they hooked up the little TV, they did not have enough outlets to plug it in so they unplugged the fridge that was cooling some desserts. Someone commented ... skip the tiramisu :) I am sitting at Bilo's today before work, and the garbage guys are emptying containers. Two shoe shine guys are sifting through the garbage, obviously finding an assortment of useable material, and a few ragged plastic shopping bags are being filled with the loot. One of the shoe shine guys (more likely a kid looking about 12 years old) is patiently holding a morsel of toilet paper for his buddies to wipe their hands afterward. A new container, brimming with refuse, is brought down the stairs and the top layer of trash thrown into the bin. The guys then weed their way through that layer then move on to the next foot or so of garbage. They repeat this until the can is empty. When they are all done, they dip their hands into some very very dirty water to clean themselves off; I would not want to know what is living in that water :)