But that's not the real point of this post, as you could probably guess from its title. The symposium spanned two days, and they put us up in a nice hotel in D.C., the Grand Hyatt. I was pleased with that in an of itself, but when I checked in Tuesday, it got even better. Since we were fairly early, the hotel didn't have the entire block of rooms in our group ready, and they offered to upgrade me to the "Congressional Suite" at no extra cost. Below are some photos of said room.
Central sitting area
Entertainment area with flat-screen TV and stereo
Full bar (not stocked)
Powder room? (Little area outside bathroom)
Breakfast nook/work area
Pool table!
And, finally below is a shot of the sign of the crappy hole-in-the-wall Chinese joint we ate lunch at in Chinatown. The food was substandard, but the name was too good to pass up.
5 comments:
The sign says
xin da wang jiu jia
at least as far as I can tell.
That does indeed mean
new big (wang) restaurant. Curiously, that third character, meaning "lustrous" or "prosperous," seems to be read "wang," but the sign clearly says "wong." I don't see that listed as a reading in either Mandarin or Cantonese, so I don't know what's up with the change.
Perhaps they were somewhat aware of the English connotation of the American connotation of the original. That, of course, begs the question as to why they wouldn't just scrap the name all together and go with something altogether more appetizing.
Yeah, as somebody who lives in an Asian country, I am constantly amazed at how incomprehensible people from another culture's thought processes can be.
A pool table???? In a hotel room? Cool! Did you play?
Ya we definitely played several games of pool. All horribly.
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