I’m cleaning out my hard drive today (September 21, 2006), and guess what I find? An old entry, which I don’t think ever got posted (blogger connection problems). So here it is, going back to July 14…

Between cleaning and in John’s case, working, we managed to squeeze in several gorge-fests. We finally went to City Diner. My friend Joon’s been raving about that place for months. Thankfully, I didn’t try it sooner; I’d easily be 20 lbs. heavier. That shit beats good old American diner food in the States. God, the BLT… I’m salivating just thinking about it. Also, we hit Di Shui Dong (滴水洞), a Hunan place. Yeah, all the sudden I’m all into hot and spicy. We’re addicts. Yes, hit that place at least FOUR times in the last two weeks-— braved the bathroom consequences and all. I should insert a funny story here.

On one of those nights, a waitress came up to us near the end of dinner. She asked if we were there earlier that week. Yeah, we’re regulars. Then, she asked if we sat on the other side of the room. I started to realize she wasn’t just commenting on our frequent patronage… Apparently, the other night she got the checks between two tables mixed up, and one party got a steal, paying 89 rmb less than the value of their order. Poor girl realized the mistake only afterwards, so she had to foot the difference.

I insisted that I sat at a table on the other side but not the one she pointed. I also explained our bills NEVER come under 200 rmb. I could see in her eyes that she didn’t believe me. But what else could she do? All she could do was show me the order ticket (it had other items we didn’t order) and take my word for it. But I still felt bad about it. I didn’t want her to feel like I was lying. So what did I do? 发票 to the rescue, man. I’m telling you, my receipts game SAVED me. I dug up my receipts from the last week, found the ones with their company chop/number, and showed it to her: 210 in receipts from the other day. Aw yeah baby! It was a fine redeeming moment. Haha!