Lunch effects

Not a whole lot has been going on lately. It is still kind of cold when it's windy, and it's always windy. On Sunday I went to lunch with Laura at a place near where I live and decided to walk home afterwards. Big mistake... I thought my ears were going to fall off they were so cold. A nice hot shower and a two hour nap, and my ears and I felt much better.

On Monday I went to lunch with some co-workers to a place near the office and had dandan mien, which is spicy ground pork in a rice noodle soup with some vegetables and some peanut sauce. It tasted really good, but I got food poisoning from it and was sick all day Tuesday.

As far as I can tell there are no health inspectors that inspect food or restaurants here. It seems they take a laissez faire approach to food quality here... if a restaurant sells bad food then people stop going there and they might go out of business. I guess with such a large population having a few people die from food poisoning every now and then is not that big of a deal. Of course, if they had inspectors I do not think it would do much good since the restaurant owners would just bribe the inspectors to stay open.


Update: Interesting article from ABC News that has a tie in with the recent pet food problems in the US...

Tainted Pet Food Could Be Sold in China

The tainted wheat gluten underscores China's dismal food-safety record. Mass food poisoning cases are common in the country, many blamed on cooks who disregard hygiene rules or mistakenly use industrial chemicals instead of salt and other ingredients.