Advantage 3

Lunch time. Raining. But I still don't want to stay in. Quick drive, and I find myself at a Japanese spot having a bento box. Ah yes, the luxuries of living in a diverse city. How those people who live where it's the same thing over & over, I cannot understand. How those people live having the same things over & over when there is diversity? That, is just plain closed-minded. Many times the office will order out from a Corner Bakery or a Panera. But what I don't get is when people go out to lunch they STILL go to Corner Bakery and Panera. Gotta take advantage of these things! Like I do. And then show off here. :-D

Advantage 2

Just want to show off again at how lucky I am to have such diversity around me. A full sized pickup decided to run into me, so I was getting the ($1,800) estimate at a body shop. While there I noticed, all around me, in Rockville, MD, I was surrounded by ethnic food: Middle Eastern, Indian, Japanese, Taiwanese, Chinese, Dirty Knees, BBQ, Peruvian, Thai, McD's (Irish :-D ), and so on. I saw the bubble tea sign and went in. And what's this? Fried chicken??? Sign me up!

Sidenote - I was in Manhattan with Porthos whose "thing" is fried chicken. He opened my eyes to fried chicken at Asian places. He was sooooo right. In fact, the best fried chicken I ever had was in Thailand at a Khantoke dinner theatre watching gorgeous wimmins dancing in their fitted silk clothing doing fingernail dancing. (Maybe that's why the food tasted better? :-) )

Anyway, spicy fried chicken nuggets with steamed rice and an egg roll accompanied my chocolate bubble tea at this Taiwanese place is nice. As I told the lady there: "Wo hen xi huan. Hao chi ye hao he!" (I really like the food. Delicious food and drink!) She enjoyed that the "lao wai" (foreigner) could kick a little Mandarin.

Advantage

I talk about how DC doesn't have great sushi, but then I should also realize that it is probably much, much better than what's in most of the country. For example, here is lunch today: chirashi and miso soup. No big deal, simple, and relatively cheap at $15. And, it's right up the street from me. And, it's relatively probably pretty damn good in comparison if I were in pure Americana suburbia or some poe-hunk little town. I should be happy. And you know what? This suddenly tastes better. It is... oishi!