Chicago HIMSS Conference Day 3, April 6, 2009

A quiet day in terms of the conference.  The keynote speaker was from Kaiser Permanente a HUGE hospital group in California.  I wasn’t impressed because the one thing I’ve learned is that those are not indicative of the reality in the market.  Beyond that, I was mostly disappointed with the sessions.  They were either too generic or covered information that may be new to Healthcare but weren’t new topics for IT in general.  Oh well.  That in itself is a learning component for me in this endeavor.

Back to the hotel.  I hate the hotel more and more every day.  I get in and the desk lamp doesn’t work.  I thought, well, it is just a light bulb.  NOOOOOOO!  It was the socket in the wall!  Nothing plugged in to that socket now works!  WHAT????  Does this hotel just fall apart at the seams?  I went down to the bar and had a Jameson and club soda (they want 10 bucks for a REGULAR Crown Royal and Coke so I had to settle for the 8 dollar drink instead) while I tried to understand why I’d done it this way.  I decided I’d go tonight for Chinese in Chinatown.  Of course, that meant I’d need a cab.  DAMNED Cabs don’t even know where this hotel is and there are two companies that have their garage within a half mile of the address!!!  I called from the bar and then a second time 30 minutes later after none arrived.  The same dispatcher asked this time for the exact street address and I was livid!

Got the cab and for whatever reason, I am just not doing well with cabs in this town.  I have had to give them explicit street addresses almost every trip and most of the locations I’ve asked for in my mind were relative Chicago landmarks.  So, I prepared this time and put the exact address into my phone for Lao Sze Chaun Chinese restaurant.  Fortunately, I’d also gotten landmark information from Brian so that I could tell how close I was roughly once I got to a point where I knew the cab driver would not know.

Chinese food in Chinatown isn’t quite the same as Chinese food I’d get in Raleigh.  I knew that going in, but I never quite manage to not be surprised.  They brought me a starter of chili garlic cabbage.  It was a cold salad so to speak, fire hot in terms of the crushed red pepper and whatever they seasoned the oil with as well.  It was awesome.  For some reason, though, the service showed signs of being shaky.  They brought be a second plate.  In Chinese restaurants, that never happens.  It implies they missed that I’d gotten the first and so they brought me the second thinking it was my first.  Hmmmm

The hot chili platter appetizer arrived.  OK!  It was literally garlic oil, green peppers, diced jalapenos, and roasted red chili peppers.  That was it.  So, I grabbed my chopsticks and started wolfing.  I knew I’d pay for it the next day, and the sweat on my forehead said I might start paying tonight, but I managed to eat a little more than half a plate of sautéed chilies.  On top of that, my entree arrived.  I had ordered the Twice cooked dry chili chicken.  YEAH RIGHT!  It was a plate of chicken and more red chilies! I had thought perhaps some veggies, and there were some tiny bits of green onion and lemongrass in the mix, but it was once again just the CHILI!  I needed another beer, the water refilled and three cups of the green tea they brought to tough my way through the rest of dinner and I felt bad that I’d left about half of the chilies on the plate between the two courses.

More drama with the service.  I’d asked for an order of two spring rolls and they didn’t bring them.  Of course, though, they were on the check.  So, I asked hoping they’d just take them off the check without issue.  Of course not.  They wanted to bring them as I was ready to leave.  I wanted to leave.  So, to make it all go away, I agreed to take the order to go.  To make it up, they brought me an order of 5!  Oh well, just get me out of here.  My whole body seemed to tingle with the peppers. LOL

I did not expect there’d be a chance to get a cab on the ride back.  So, I decided I’d man up and walk.  It was supposed to only be 6 or 7 blocks and based on how the ride went up, I figured I could find my way back.  On the way, I stopped into a Walgreen’s to buy a couple of diet green tea and an ice cream sandwich.  I also found a Chinese bakery and got three cookies; one walnut, one peanut, one almond.  They weren’t very different in consistency, but they looked so good.  I told myself I wouldn’t eat all three tonight anyway.

It turned out I was right.  I did get back to the hotel walking.  It wasn’t bad other than the 34 degrees and the 15 mph winds with a wind chill in the mid 20s.  In APRIL!  Hmmm

Came back to the room and called Colleen.  She seems to be surviving better than I am here.  I miss her terribly.  Off to bed early because I have a meeting at 7 AM at another hotel which means yet another cab adventure tomorrow.  Also means getting up at 5:30 AM for the first time and I am still not sleeping well due to the damned train roaring past the room and the temperature in here having no middle ground.

Cheers!