Still in Colorado.

[camwyn]

Fires being brought under control. Still haven't seen them. Probably just as well. Big fire + Denver = BAAAD mojo.

Going to see if I can find Cherry Creek Mall tonight. Supposedly has The Tattered Cover bookstore, which tourist guide in hotel claims is one of the finest bookstores in entire USA. This is a legitimate reason to go to a mall.

Everyone on this job has a drawl. Even the guy from Long Island, New York has a drawl. I find I cannot avoid using one myself when speaking to these people. V. peculiar.

Information sheet I have here on altitude sickness & acclimatization indicates that one of the common aspects of body getting used to higher altitude is frequent urination. Considering 2 paragraphs ago document said ppl. should drink vast quantities of water, response to this on my part was: DUH. That's not kidneys reacting to blood chemistry changes, buddy.

Amazing number of Vietnamese restaurants/markets in this area. Not as many as Mexican, but close. Would go to one for food except I don't know what to order or what to look for in terms of trust.

No Toon Disney or Animal Planet @ hotel. Discovery Channel ran all military crap last night. Spent evening reading Kenzerco's Hackmaster version of Little Keep on the Borderlands instead. May listen to Learn to Speak Chinese tape course tonight if TV similarly lackluster.

Job going well. Fires controlled in some areas, worse in others. Hoping nobody gets hurt, waiting to be called on to do stuff (and I am, the folks here have touchy computers).

In short: job going OK, enjoying myself, getting used to Denver.

Comments

[lwood.livejournal.com]

When in Vietnamese restaurants, there appear to be two cornerstones to the cuisine, at least as expressed in Vietnamese restaurants that are primarily noodle houses (which is many/most of what I've seen):

Pho: This is a soup based on a clear beef stock. It often has a lot of rice vermicelli in the bottom, as well as meat. I say 'meat' so generically because you can usually pick what's in it, and it may be round-eye friendly (e.g. round steak, or 'round') or, well, not (tripe, tendon). The top of the soup is often heavily sprinkled with cilantro, so if you're one of those who, like lferion, thinks it tastes like soap, be aware.

Often alongside your bowl of pho will be a plate piled high with condiments like bean sprouts, lime halves, and basil. Use all liberally and to taste. You'll also often find a BRIGHT RED bottle of Sriacha hot sauce (the most popular brand has a rooster on the front). No, that's not coloring. It Really Is That Color. And there'll be soy sauce and hoisin sauce, and these are all there for joyful appropriation. I find pho broth to be rich and flavorful, and yes, dammit, I eat it with the tendon and tripe and things I'm too pale for, go me.

Also, there is bun. Bun is cold rice vermicelli with hot grilled meat on top (they will say 'barbecue,' but aside from application of fire it's nothing like any US definition of the word). You won't get the plate of amendments, but you will likely get an eggroll and a dish of 'flavored fish sauce,' which is a lovely savory, vinegar-y thing and mildly spicy. Most notably, it doesn't taste fishy. I typically dip the eggroll pieces into the flavored fish sauce, then dump the rest of the bowl into my noodles, as well as a healthy amendment of hoisin sauce (mmmm).

These are both filling and inexpensive, thus great lunch/dinner ideas for the person on the go and on a budget. Given my druthers at a Vietnamese noodle place, I tend to sit down to a bowl of bun with beef and a Thai iced tea -- possibly their shrimp rolls (cooked medium-sized shrimp on a bed of mostly-lettuce rolled in a very broad rice noodle, served with some brown stuff).

Pronounciation note: You're going to get it wrong. Accept and move on. The restauranteurs will deal (and you're probably making a more honest attempt, given your Sinophilia, than the average native Coloradan). Spoken and written Vietnamese both reflect the influence of years of French occupation -- the spoken language has several French phonemes, and the French are the reason that the Vietnamese language is anywhere near the Roman alphabet. However, Viet is tonal, like Chinese, and attempts to preserve tonality in the written language result in Vietnamese being the most accented language in the Roman character set -- yes, you have acute and grave bits on the vowels, but that's nothing... not even the full eight bits can do Viet justice, it pretty much has to be in Unicode, if memory serves.

(As an example, pho is supposed to have a funny little hook on the upper-right corner of the terminal 'o.' But it's not just unique accents -- there's combinations too!)

-- Lorrie