it was somewhat of a small miracle i ended up going, what with the budget constraints and then a late-arriving and fairly debilitating flu that hit me friday morning. at any rate, come 4 pm, sherry came and picked me up in a cab, we made our way to beijing with only a 2 hour delay on our flight. directly from the airport we went to mao live, one of the live music venues in beijing, where steph's work was throwing this fucking amazing show/party featuring seven awesome local punk bands (more on that below) and z trip out of new york. he spun a fat show. i danced my flu away:
v for vachina
i finally left everyone at about 2:30 am outside of a bar in a hutong district nearby because my extra-strength tylenol wore off and my fever was back with a vengeance. so much fun. i must have scared the shit out of my flu, because the next day i woke up chipper and ready to roll to our FIRST olympic event - athletics qualifying rounds. thanks to sherry and her superior planning skills, we procured these tix the day before for about half what the other scalpers were charging:
women's 400 meter
the torch
herzog & de meuron's bird nest, sherry admiring in foreground
after at least an hour of post-olympic giddy times,
steph in purple, marc in red
we headed to the legation quarter, which is a project that my company did some work for to see maison boulud, daniel boulud's newest restaurant. not only did we get to hang out with chef boulud himself, who toured us around the restaurant,
the red room, ready for al roker!
that's chef daniel boulud to marc's left
thanks to marc's contacts - marc is an amazing chef also - we also got to see the kitchen, chat with the chef de cuisine, brian reimer, and managed to invite ourselves back for drinks that night. stoked! we are all intense foodies, so this was an incredible honor as well as being just an incredible experience. i mean, look at that kitchen! it's spotless. there are glass tiles on the walls for god's sake. the building restorations are really mind blowing, and i work for two exceedingly talented and famous architects, so that's saying something.
and on... we then went to boxing (light and midweights):
prelims
which were cool, but after a while, suffice to say the crowd got bored enough to start singing 'the star spangled banner' during a match when neither opponent was american. our favorite fight was india vs. thai, because we were able to stretch the curry vs. curry joke the entire night.
we went to pick steph up from mao live again, and caught the most fucking amazing beijing band, queen sea big shark. steph has been insisting on their greatness for months now, but only last night did i realize how stupid i was being in not immediately dropping everything i am doing and following them around everywhere. they are an incredible show. i now insist you visit their myspace page and listen to their stuff. 'man on the moon' was what got me, being a girl and it being a ballad and all. in fact, it's constantly looping as i write this.
after that, we made our very late way back to maison boulud, where we caught the chef at the bar drinking a beer, the restaurant completely empty. the extremely kind man that he is to us so very imposing group of people, he had his bartender make us delectable martinis from lychee / raspberry / rose-infused vodka, then disappeared behind closed doors to reappear with plates and plates of food that he had chef brian reimer prepare. i'm talking foie gras, country pate, three types of bread, and a impromptu terrine made from the leftover suckling pig from al roker's birthday celebration held there earlier that evening. i wish i was kidding (no, i don't), but it was that intense of a day. we were beside ourselves with joy. it was about 1:30 am at that point and i hadn't eaten dinner, so i was especially grateful and ecstatic.
my martini, with a formed ice cube encapsulating a rose petal. awwwww
what a weekend.
No comments:
Post a Comment