Even cafeteria Asian food tastes amazing after four months in southeastern Montana, which despite its many many charms is an ethnic food wasteland. I’m in San Jose for work this week, and today was something of an epic. I left Livingston at five this morning, only to run into whiteout conditions on Bozeman Pass. Who needs coffee before an early-morning flight when you can have a big old jolt of adrenaline? (Don’t worry Dad, I’m fine.)

So, by the time I got to Cisco, I was hungry, but I had a lot to do, and about fifty emails to answer, so I just popped down to the cafeteria in my building, where I had the “bento special”. This wasn’t real bento, it wasn’t even particularly great bento … it was just a plate with rice, a couple of potstickers, some fried tofu, and some kimchee … but after months in Montana, where even this very ordinary, not very good Asian food would be considered hugely exotic, well, let’s just say I was a happy girl and got through the afternoon just fine. If I have to leave Montana for a week, just when we’ve finally gotten snow, I guess staying in a hotel surrounded by two enormous malls full of Chinese, Japanese, Malaysian, Vietnamese and Thai restaurants sort of makes up for it.