Vegetarian Delight!
What a lovely Thanksgiving! My first stop was Teddy’s sister’s place in SF, my first ever American Thanksgiving dinner, and what a great first it was! We were poster-perfect for the globalized world. It was Greek cuisine (tons and tons and tons of awesome food!), with some French visitors, hosted by an American family…and I single-handedly represented the Asian community. (Incidently, your do-you-know factoid of the day: It’s "Buy Nothing Day" today (Nov 29th), hype for anti-globalists. I’ve not read enough information about that whole argument yet to make a judgement about it, but I kinda am tempted to roll my eyes at gratuitous campaigns like this) Great conversation (assisted by white wine) built up appetite for the TURDUCKEN highlight that Teddy had flown up (by courier. The poultry was dead already). My my my…it was a vegetarian’s milieu…a Turducken is basically a chicken in a duck in a turkey…sinfully deeelish…there was just too much food to mention them all…most of which I don’t even know the names of. After dinner, we sat around, watched tv for a bit, talked, and I just had the loveliest time. Teddy (dude, you know you are reading this;p), a BIG-ASS thank you! Sitting around in that family atmosphere surrounded by food food and more food, I just missed Chinese New Year soooo much. I’ve missed the last 2 CNYs back in Singapore…that whole month long build up to CNY, where your mummy starts stocking up on Chinese candies and cakes, the stores start blasting those cheeesy Chinese New Year jingles ("gong xi gong xi gong xi ni-ya!"), the neighbourhoods get painted red with decorations…then you get the Chinese reunion dinner, traditionally held at my aunt’s place, with their grrrreat home-cooked food, then the next day when you go visiting family members you see once a year ("Wow! Your children, so big now! Wah, you lost/gain weight hor? Aiyoh! Got boyfriend already?") and collecting those red packets with $$$ in them (but it’s the blessings that come with it that count…really), and then my traditional meeting up with my best friend’s family at night, and the next couple of days where we have friends and family visit us, where my parents either cook lunch or order pizza hut (!) to feed our guests…and you collect more red packets…I like the Chinese’s consolidating way of celebrating: we stretch it across three consecutive days, so it’s thanksgiving, christmas and new year’s all at one go. Aw! I miss that. But anyway, back to Thanksgiving last night. After Teddy’s sister’s (Wendy) place, I headed down to my brother’s girlfriend’s friend’s place in the Haight (what’s with all the degrees of seperation?). It was like another world, more casual, recent-college grads just chillin’ with each other, no fuss with decors and the like, but every bit as lovely and homely…and I had more more more turkey…yummy. White meat. Drool. I had some kind of protein craving yesterday. Guess I’ve not eaten meat or a proper home cooked meal for a long time…but I just devoured the meat. Sat around, ate, watched Friends and Will & Grace on tv. Met my dear brother, who I am always eager to meet, who had instructions from Mummy, who is paranoid, to check on my toe (which is still blue and gross but has stopped hurting like a mo’-fucka’)… Post dual-dinners, I met up with Jeff (who stupidly overslept and thus had popcorn for this Thanksgiving dinner!) for a movie at Japantown…8 Mile, which was surprisingly good. It was one of those movies where the director was everything, because there was alot that could have gone wrong with it, but didn’t. The pace of the movie was great. I never once checked my watch impatiently (like I did in ‘Die Another Day’…groan). I really enjoyed the movie. Which made me go home and download the soundtrack, so I have thumping hip-hop/rap instead of thumping techno blasting from my speakers for once. Ironically, I got home and received an email from Douglas (who is in his hometown in Newton, Texas, which is SO funny to me cos there’s a place in Singapore called Newton, famous for its bustling food centre, which I’m sure is completely and utterly different from the Texan Newton) wishing me Happy Thanksgiving even though "I know that holiday doesn’t mean shit to you". Given the lovely Thanksgiving I had, just the simple sharing time with old and new friends and my brother, and having them share time with me, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Like you, Douglas, "I think it’s a wonderful thing" too.
