21.9.11

snapshot of the US

i dont understand why the food in the US has got to be so bad. i went into several supermarkets, and they all featured decent looking fruit and vegetables at highly reasonable prices. maybe the vegetables dont taste as good as they look, but still, with such a selection it should be possible to eat at least healthily. Alas, i didnt have a single decent meal in the country. the restaurants were appalling. the stories are well know, so i guess i am only confirming them, having seen them with my own eyes: every thing is over sized, two of us shared a main in every restaurant, and we sometimes couldnt even finish that. the muffins are bigger than my fist and come in odd flavours with neon toppings. the dish pictured here was listed on the menu as "grilled shrimp" you can actually see the prawns in there if you look carefully, they are in the top corner of the plate, behind the chips.....and they were fried, not grilled. the restaurants were particularly shocking as they seem to be improving all the time in both Europe and Asia. Cities like Moscow and London have improved the quality of their foodservice considerably over the past 20 years, expanding in both choice and levels of quality. so it is surprising to see a country that actually seems to be in decline. places that i remember being decent 10 years ago now seem greasy and grim. i find myself at a hideous Italian restaurant that i had once enjoyed with a couple i have know for decades. they live half the year in DC, half in Paris. they say it is not that the quality is declining due to a lack of standards, but rather it is adjusting to peoples tastes. as they point out, the restaurant is packed.... scary thought..

20.9.11

On US infrastructure

I fly into Dulles International airport. I have been here many times before, but this is the first time in just over a decade.
In the summer, planes always hit turbulence in the last 30 minutes before landing at Dulles. I have been told it I because of the heat and humidity encountered as the plane descends, but I have always been a bit dubious, because it doesn’t happen with such regularity in other hot and humid airports. But the last minute bumps are the least of Dulles’s, or DC’s issues.
Dulles is the main international airport for the capital of the United States. It is one of the countries busiest, and it reflects much of what is wrong with American infrastructure- or the lack thereof. The airport was built in the Kennedy era, and has failed to evolve adequately over time. The facilities are truly pathetic, the duty free’s selection is worse than a 7 Eleven, and the “restaurants” are basically all hideous fast food chains. When you land, the passport control, as in increasingly all US airports, a disaster. The passport booths are understaffed and those who turned up for work are grumpy. After waiting in the passport queue for over an hour, I get hauled over by customs and quizzed about my bag, which they suspect is too small. I point out that I will be there less than a week, and they are still suspicious. I add that 1) I am a small person (unlike everyone else about- but I don’t say that) 2) it is 40 degrees outside and therefore multiple layers are not going to be needed 3) it is not a work trip so I don’t need much anyway. They persist in their integration until I finally open my bag and demonstrate that I actually do have one pair of clean pants and one clean T shirt for every day I will be on US soil, as well as folding travel toothbrushes and hairbrushes and regulation sized travel cosmetics. Finally at that point they give up and let me go, but by this stage I feel about as grumpy as they do, but at least I didn’t have to wait for my luggage, since I travelled with carry on only.
But it doesn’t get easier. Dulles has no public transport running to central DC 40 kilometres east, and no cab will take me to the Virginian city I need to go to (120 kilometres south). I had anticipated this, and therefore took a cab to the centre. Arriving at 8pm, I had missed the last train of the night (!!) to where I was going, and had to spend the night in a hotel near Dupont Circle. The trains might have finished for the evening, but life in Dupont Circle hadn’t. I checked in to the (unimpressive) hotel on Embassy Row and went for a stroll. The place was packed with young people, all of whom seemed noticeably more fit, smily, and well-dressed than the US standard. The packs of 20 somethings crammed into the outdoor cafes and bars had me slightly puzzled, until I remembered it was indeed the dreaded Summer Intern Season. Every year, DC fills with overly earnest people hoping to be the next generation of congressmen. I sat down on the terrace of a café and the conversations around confirmed it was indeed Intern time again as the guy next to my moaned "dude, its like just so hard to break into politics, you know what i mean?" others around him seemed to be frequently quoting either their fathers, or the congressman they were interning for. i wanted to ask a few of them if they would promise me to do something about the airport if they actually got elected. A train connecting it to Union station, efficient immigration procedures, orderly check in and some duty free shops would be nice. alas, however, i was too tired from jet lag to bother.