Macau

(The man behind the camera is Serge. The other person in the photo? That would be me with my backpack slung on one shoulder, happy and warm in my Jean Paul sweater, not yet overheated as I would be for the rest of the day until my return home at 5pm).

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I finally went to Macau!
I headed out earlyish this morning with Serge with hopes of finding a Portuguese wine and some taco seasonings. I may or may not have purchased the wine I was hoping for, and there was no sign of taco seasonings anywhere I shopped. However, I was given a free kiddie-sized box of mini-cigars (does that make them cigarettes or not?) for telling a woman that the medicine she was taking (a glucosamine chondroitin complex) would help her bones (I couldn't find the Chinese word in my quick-dictionary for joints). She was disappointed by this news since she had been taking it to make her arms slimmer. She asked me to evaluate a second package of drugs, but I did not recognize the name at all, nor do I remember it now. I also found Butterscotch Schnapps, which I had to buy in memory of one fabulous (and relatively sober) night I had with Kate back at Miami. I haven't opened this bottle yet, but, if it is anything like the last one I tried, then I can claim that this bottle is where good sugar goes to when it dies (i.e., heaven).
My favorite picture from this outing: of a sign that read "Medicines No Fakes" to indicate that it was not just any drug store below the sign, but one of those drug stores that sells real medicine. I do love being in a place where that distinction seems necessary.
Serge and I also took a moment to capture on film some of the cuter streets and examples of Sino-Portuguese architectural achievements.


In the midst of those, Serge managed to photograph himself photographing me in a reflection that neither of us noticed (I think) before taking the pic. Hence the photo at the beginning of this entry.

I went shopping in Gongbei (a section of Zhuhai) after our excursion to Macau. My shopping adventures in Macau and Gongbei yielded new fruits that I still cannot identify. One type looked like they were small, pointy mangoes cover in a red powder; the vendor called then "yan xin guo" -- which sounds like "eye heart fruit". I cannot find anything by that name online. I know I have the right pronunciation, though, because she pointed to her eye, then her heart, and finally the fruit as she repeated the name of the fruit for me a fourth time (after I had called it "gan xin guo", "wan xin guo", and "yang xin guo" in my attempts to repeat after her).
The other fruits look like miniature mangoes of a brilliantly yellow hue. The package labels these as 腰芒 (yaomang -- which shares characters with both cashew and mango), but, again, I have not had much luck finding this on the internet -- at least, not on a site that can explain what they are. My taste test indicates that they probably are a form of pickled baby mangoes, but I don't know... The other fruits -- the red ones -- also taste a bit salty, so I wonder if the "yan" part of their name means salt rather than eye (same pronunciation). I dunno, but I have grading to do, so I do not have time to wonder much.