Prangster in Chicago

Mum and Dad are back!

Wow, I sound like such a kid, but it's good to have them back. Normally we don't bother with airport pick-ups in our family, but because this time Mum and Dad were landing only an hour apart -- Mum from Sydney, Dad from LA -- I thought it would be nice to have a family reunion at the airport. Actually that's a lie, Mum told me to go. Keep her company at the airport until Dad arrived. So I went. Because it sounded like an order.

The best thing about having Mum back is that Dad and I get to eat real food again. Our fridge has fresh food in it and dishes actually get used. Tonight, for example, there was so much cooking noise coming from the kitchen that we had to crank up the volume on the TV. The sounds were almost alien to our ears. Splattering and chopping and stuff. And also the apartment smelled really nice from all the cooking juices or whatever. Normally, the apartment only smells because something has gone moldy or it's time to take out the trash.

These photos are of us at the airport on Saturday night. You can see Mum holding tight to her babies -- i.e. her golf clubs, and check out the mobile phone pouch she wears around her neck! She wears that, yet somehow still manages to misplace her phone. Oh, Mums.

Yummiest

Some things that have happened at work recently:

- I have developed an unnecessary interest in advertising. I've bookmarked over 10 ad-related blogs. I asked Miami Ad School 's European branch in Hamburg to send me a brochure. It arrived in the mail a couple weeks ago with all contents sealed inside a pink zip-lock bag. I took the brochure to the office to show everyone how great Miami Ad School is...Okay, dammit! I admit it. I'm interested in their copywriting program!

- Yesterday at a client meeting, we were being demo'ed this DVD playback software. The DVD they played was "If These Walls Could Talk 2", which tells the story of lesbians in America during different social times. Of course in the middle of the demo, lesbian love scenes came on while ten people were crowded around the laptop...

- DDGers have been losing their umbrellas. Or more accurately, we have had them stolen! A by-product of all this ridiculous rain.

- And, some eyebrow-raising English names I've come across through work: Purple (girl), Vivid (girl), Bang (guy), Sunrise (guy) and Pro (guy).

Photo breakdown: Nothing beats a small norm (no cheese) from Oporto! It's the food I miss the most from Sydney. That, and a nice steak dinner at home. And a big fat doner kebab. And fresh yoghurt from Harris Farm with fruit on top for breakfast. And Tasmanian brie or camembert cheese on water crackers. And all the fresh salad ingredients. And fatty handcut chips from Red Oak Cafe. Oh, now I'm hungry.

The death of piano

Last week my uncle declared that my 13-year-old cousin Gina had given up the piano. The first thought that went through my head: Excuse me, what? Isn't learning piano intrinsic to the existence of every Asian child?! Oh, to estimate the percentage of my youth that was wasted sitting on that freaking stool...

But then I remembered that this is Taiwan, and Gina probably doesn't have time for piano lessons or piano practice. And I don't think she's watching 'Samurai Pizza Cats' and 'Coming to America' like the way I chose to spend my earlier years. In fact, I doubt she has any free time at all. Until she is 18, almost every waking hour of Gina's life will be spent in these three places: 1) School. For learning. 2) Home. For studying. 3) Cram classes. For learning things yet to be taught at school.

Gina told me every kid goes to cram school. And since everyone's ahead of the regular curriculum, her evil teachers test things that haven't even been taught in cram class yet.  So some kids end up taking an extra cram class just to stay ahead of cram class. Or at least that's what she said when I spoke to her a year ago. I haven't seen the poor kid in a while. She's a slave to her own education. It makes me sad to think my younger cousins don't have any time to really enjoy their childhoods. Or TV for that matter.

About this photo: If Sydney's air quality was a mode of transportation, it would be a Lexus. And this photo of a decrepit scooter parked outside Eslite Bookstore this weekend would be Taipei's air quality. Honestly, the past few days it's been like living in the dust bag of a vacuum cleaner. Dear lungs, I apologise.

Janice is 24

Happy birthday Jan! Exactly a month until we meet up in Tokyo! Can't wait, it's going to be so much fun. Too many good times to hypothesize right now. I hope you had a good cake party! If Helen and I were in Sydney, you know the three of us would be heading over to Maxine's (Max Brenner's) for a "too luxury" chocolate overdose later tonight. But since we're not (sob, sob) Hel and I are going to eat fish and chips for lunch in your honour. Cheeky too. Everyone. The whole goddamn town will.

Anyway, here are some photos to celebrate Jan's birthday. The first is of us around this time last year at the Sydney Writers' Festival. The second is Janice at Maxine's in St Ives, drinking from one of their very ergonomic cups.

Totally formosa

It's a lovely, sunny, blue-skied Taipei day today. 26 degrees with a light breeze -- perfect t-shirt weather. I can even see all the way out to the mountains from my window. I'm glad I woke up before noon to enjoy it. (Well, just -- I woke up at 11:40.)

Dad and I had lunch with my aunt, uncle and also my grandparents, who are celebrating their 57th wedding anniversary today! It's kind of awesome to think that my grandparents left China almost 60 years ago, just the two of them, and today we're a three-generational family of twelve.

Over lunch, we were talking about how I've grown two centimetres since living in Taipei (really, I have) and my grandpa said, "Growing taller in your mid-twenties is nothing. I've grown two centimetres too. And I'm 82 years old!" Yep, my grandpa says he's grown two centimetres. At the age of 82. An age when most people should be shrinking. He was measured by a healthcare professional when he went to Sydney for Chinese New Year. They measured three times, just to make sure. "Or maybe they got it wrong, I don't know. But look at my eyebrows. My eyebrows are growing black too, see?" he continued. Indeed, my grandpa has some new eyebrow hairs, and they are black. What the hell?

I called Mum in Sydney as soon as I got home. She's been having a bad time with rip-off, dickhead carpet people. Assholes trying to take advantage. Honestly, when did Sydney people become such freaking lowlifes? They used an obviously used piece of carpet which didn't match with the other areas and refused to change it. Then one of the guys yelled at her to pay when she said she wanted it done properly. Only when our neighbours threatened to call up the consumer watchdog bureau or something did the manager call Mum up and ask, "What do you want me to do about it?" and Mum just replied, "Do what you think is right." Then he came over to fix it.

Grrr. That shit is so annoying. Especially when Mum's so nice to people who do stuff around the house. She told me she made coffee for the carpet guys on the day they came to work. Poor Mum. She couldn't even sleep for two nights because she was so mad just thinking about it. Oh well, she's coming back on Saturday. I'll take her to Mos Burger. That should lift her spirits.

Photo breakdown: Random strangers (NOT my grandparents -- they're much cuter) feeding the crazy big fish in the pond garden of the National Palace Museum. I don't know, maybe some time last year.

I freaking hate Vera Wang

Oh that's great. I already felt like I was unproductive at work today and now I feel a whole lot worse. I just read in Fortune Magazine's "Secrets of Greatness: How I Work" special report that one French dude is CEO of two companies. Actually, it's more like three. He's head of Renault in France, Nissan in Japan, and Nissan North America in well, North America. So he travels in a triangle  -- France, Japan, States -- three or four times a month and has a bi-lingual assistant in each location. I'm pretty sure this guy is single-handedly balancing out the supposed laziness of the French workforce, though to be fair, I think the French, and probably European people in general, are better at handling (or disguising) stress than Americans, Australians and Taiwanese people. As far as I can tell, anyway. Or perhaps they're just more resistent to stress. Oh I have no idea. All I know is I was quite unproductive today.

What I hate about the article though, is they put Vera Wang in it. She is such a spoilt cat. I just want to kick her across the room and into a swamp! I read a long profile article on her in New York Mag months ago and she came off as the biggest Asian-American dickhead in history. Worse of all, in the Fortune article she talks about how she works in bed, so the photo is of her sitting up with all this 5 million thread count bedding around her, and her stupid face trying to look productive. I just want to smack it!

But I digress. The article is very interesting. It talks about how these CEOs and VPs manage their time and work,  and on a deeper level, is pretty much an embedded advertisement for BlackBerry.

Oh man, I don't know what the fuck is going on, but I'm getting all these mosquitoe bites right now. The cold, rainy weather is making those sneaky sons of bitches all stealth. I'm going to have to kill them. Please excuse me.

Goodbye, split ends

It's almost 11:30pm and I am so tired right now, much like the double-chinned dog we saw slobbing around outside Ao Ba Restaurant this afternoon. Yeah, we went to Ao Ba again for lunch because Dad and I aren't fans of variety. Or walking long distances for food. Actually Helen (aka. Country Mouse) had a job interview in Taipei in the morning -- yes, a Saturday morning -- so she joined us for lunch. Dad over-ordered, and subsequently, we all over-ate. This pretty much laid down the groundwork for my present state of fatigue. I will use this to defend my crap writing style right now.

Later in the afternoon, we went to get haircuts at Vis-a-Vis, the salon I visit once every two months to sort out my gross split ends. Lien went too and she got her hair curled. It looks really girly and nice. Helen was basically a pain in the pants for her stylist. She had some kind of weird attachment to her long hair and was trying to direct the stylist like she was Ang Lee (just in the Taiwan-born director sense, not in the Academy Award-winning sense). In the end, the haircut turned out great and very employable-looking, but I felt bad cause the stylist had horrible technique and even missed a strand of hair at the back. What an idiot.

I love getting my hair cut there. What a relaxing way to spend an afternoon. They do massages with the shampoo and condition, and my stylist is this cool dude called McQueen who has a total Edward Scissorhands thing happening. Um, today I got a kind of heavier-fringed look. McQueen got all excited when I told him maybe I'd try it cause I'm normally such a boring-haired person. It looks okay I guess. Lien says I look Japanese. And Helen says it's weird to see me with a style. I am already kind of bored with it, though that's probably just the sleepiness talking. I bet Dad will say it looks strange. I am tired right now.

Photo breakdown: Scooters parked along the street in Taipei...HA! I took this in Milan, man. Back in June 2005 on the day I went to see the Last Supper. One day I'll post a real photo of scooters in Taipei and you'll see it's a scene that resembles a virus of some sort. I am tired right now. Bye.

My friend Paul

This is a slice of pear pastry from Paul's Patisserie, a bakery chain in France. When I lived on campus in a suburb outside of Paris in 2003, sometimes I'd buy myself a pastry when I went to the local mall to do my grocery shopping. Okay fine. Most times I went grocery shopping, I bought one. And I'd watch contentedly as Paul's people packed it up in this cute little cardboard box so it wouldn't get squashed by my generic supermarket supplies. Each pastry would only cost two euros and it would have its own little box. I loved that. Then I would walk back to my dorm room, make a cup of tea, eat my pastry and share memories from the pre-Internet era with my imaginary grandchildren.

My favourite Paul's sandwich is the "Henry 4th" ("Henri Quatre") but that sandwich is just about impossible to order. Trust me, it's hard to say. You need a double-jointed tongue to pull that son-of-a-bitch phrase off. If you don't believe me, rent Before Sunset and watch the scene when Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy get on the bateau mouche and Ethan Hawke tries to buy a ticket to "Quai Henri Quatre". It's so pathetic I almost weeped the first time I saw it.

Flashback food

Oh, this is totally yum. It's the "potato hamburger" from the second-floor café in the Virgin Megastore on Champs Elysées. Yeah man, what a total tourist hangout. Who the hell catches the train into Paris and eats at the Virgin Megastore? I am so stupid. Yet why is this photo making my mouth feel funny? Oh, that's just excess drool formation. To be expected, really. Just look at it! This plate looks so outrageously yum! A few select elements coming together that result in over-the-top deliciousness. There's smoked salmon with the vinegarette salad, the yoghurt-like creamy blob on top, and oh baby, the crispy potato "buns". Even the tomato looks modified to its optimum taste levels. Plus how cute do the chives look? This really is one of my favourite plates of food. I wish I could eat it every week and two times on my birthday.

All Dad's fault

What the crap, I woke up at 3:15pm today! And I thought something had gone wrong with my clock cause the sneaky big hand was hidden behind the little hand, and yeah... How could my dad let me sleep until this ridiculous hour? How could he just watch TV outside (let alone watch baseball) and just wait for me to wake up? How the hell could he wait until 3:15pm? "I fell asleep watching the baseball," he explained. That makes sense, I suppose. Baseball is pretty boring.

Dad and I, we usually go somewhere for lunch on Sundays. Last week we went to Din Tai Fong out of default because we couldn't decide on anywhere else. Actually, the conversation went more along the lines of this:

Me:  "How about Mos Burger?"
Dad:  (Scoffs) "Please! I'm not eating Mos Burger again."
Me:  "How about Ao Ba?" (Ao Ba is a nice Taiwanese place around the corner.)
Dad:  "No."
(Thinking time)
Dad:  "How about Yahoo Shabu Shabu?" (Yahoo Shabu Shabu is even closer than Ao Ba.)
Me:  "No. What did I say last time about Yahoo Shabu Shabu? I said the people who go there have mental problems."
Dad:  "What about beef noodles at Ten Ren?" (Ten Ren tea house is also around the corner, but in the other direction.)
Me:  "Yeah, okay. Let's go to Ten Ren."
Dad:  "No, I've changed my mind. I want to go to Din Tai Fong."
Me:  "But we'll have to wait in line with the Japanese tourists."
Dad:  "Fine, we won't go."
Me:  "If you want to go to Din Tai Fong, let's go to Din Tai Fong."
Dad:  "But we'll have to wait."
Me:  "Yeah. Let's go already. I'm hungry."
Dad:  "I'm even hungrier. I had to wait for you to wake up."
Me:  "So why didn't you just wake me up?!"
Dad:  "I was watching television."

So we caught a taxi to Din Tai Fong and Dad and I had to wait outside for maybe 40 minutes with the Japanese tourists. After we got inside, we finished eating in less than 15 minutes, and caught a taxi home. It was a good meal.

Today, at 3:30pm, Dad and I were deciding what to do about our hungers. "I'm so hungry. All I've had since noon is three passionfruits. Let's go to Din Tai Fong, there shouldn't be any people there at this time," Dad said.

I thought about it for a second.

"No."