It’s truly a miracle

“Everything is sweet,” it said.

And then I was immediately excited and enthralled. I was fascinated. I had to have the miracle berry. I don’t miss such opportunities.

So then I thought about buying it online or by ebay. I will have it.

Even a friend was going to put it on her 101 things in 1001 days.

But wait, this can change my perception of taste. It’s a chemical. It lasts only 30 minutes. You can eat cheese and lemon and think it’s a dessert. For several moments, everything is different.

The funny thing is that I have always been against the idea of chemicals altering my experience. And yet I am a hypocrite. I use painkillers when I am horribly throbbing in pain. I take antihistamines. I take all these other drugs. I take antibiotics. In some sense, they are altering the experience. Not always for better health, but as prevention.

Is it a recreational drug? Should be termed as such?

Regardless, maybe this will help me eat the green leafy vitamin-laden, fiber-filled vegetables that I leave cold on my plate.

You smell

You can send anonymous messages! To people…because it’s often embarrassing to tell someone…than being the one receiving the message…right?

nicecritic.com

Yesterday, I was so enthralled with the concept and started to think about how I would use it. I also thought it was hilarious. Then I thought about sharing the link with a chatter mailing list at work. It demonstrates hilarity and web-iness. Good water cooler conversation.

Then I thought again. Wait a minute. I don’t want someone telling me that I smell. Or that I don’t bathe enough. Or that I forget to close my mouth when I chew. To some extent, I really don’t want to know.

Besides, it’s passive aggressive. You can’t change who people are. Well, what if someone really smells?

But you see, they do it for their country

“See look,” I began. “They had to wear adult diapers and they switched out a girl just because she wasn’t cute enough.”

And despite being of Chinese descent, I couldn’t stand that not everyone was Westernized. “The director too!” I said. How could they steal the very thing that humans are. We aren’t slaves of course! We have the right to have a free will and be treated fairly.

But even my dad who at the age of 3 left China to Hong Kong…whose grandparents once landowners were forced to do hard labor in the fields, “You see, they are communists. There’s good and bad. The Chinese work hard and because they do, they are happy about it. Because it’s for the country, not for themselves.”

I shut up, because in some way, I wouldn’t be able to understand the way the Chinese worked. I don’t understand the dedication of an entire life to something—to be taken away from people. I have an education because it was required and am living a life of excess.

I remind him of a bad memory, but now the memory is erased

“There are things about people you find initially endearing but you find annoying much later,” he said.

I related. I described a former good friend who I once loved his quirkiness, but somehow treaded into the wrong territory. He breathed too loudly. I couldn’t stand the fact that he slept in the same clothes he wore during the day. I knew it was just my mind trying to react and rationalize.

He then told me that a girl who had terrorized his life had a mole on her lip. Just like me. They were now sworn enemies and couldn’t be in the same room. I held my breath.

“I am glad I didn’t walk away because you have a mole on your lip too,” he said and touched my mole with a finger.

Visiting Great America

“Do you want to go to Great America?” my mom excitedly asked me on the phone several weeks ago.

I had woken up. A Saturday, I think it was.

“There’s a deal. It’s on the 17th. 2 tickets for $53. And you get hot dog, chips and ice cream! In the Chinese newspaper. There’s also a Children’s talen show!”

Of course, she had meant that it was for me and whoever I wanted to go with. Not for her of course.

The week before, I walked all the way to Chinatown during my lunch break. Decided not to express myself in broken Chinese and bought tickets. The lady at the Sing Tao counter spoke in hesitant broken English and handed me the tickets.

And then we checked something off our list of things we need to do last Sunday—visit Great America or Marine World or Cedar Point. On our list still, there are things like picnic at Sutro Baths and build a snowman just right—bottom as big as possible, top slightly smaller.

Spongebob says hello!

As expected going with Chris also means that my experience wouldn’t be just like going with anyone else.

Highlights of the Sunday

  • Always sitting in the front row of nearly every ride
  • Riding a few kiddie rides where we were supposed to be accompanied by a kid—but of course you can’t tell the age of Asians
  • eating multiple hot dogs and ice cream
  • Meeting Spongebob, Patrick, Dora and Diego
  • Dora coming over and flirting with Chris
  • Flying like the Eagles
  • Watching a children’s talent show entirely conducted in Mandarin and Cantonese, all of which we have barely any fluency in
  • Nodding like we understand Chinese when families approached our table to ask if the seats were taken
  • Taking VTA from mountain view to great america rather than paying the parking fee
  • “Cutting in line” in the rapid river rapids
  • Realizing that wearing a dress isn’t a good idea at amusement parks even if the dress is designed for athletics
  • Winning a stuffed animal at the cup toss
  • Surprised that the guy could guess taiche’s age within a month at the guess age/birthday month/weight, but the guy still let us get a prize
  • Squeezing water out from clothes when standing in line after going on a water ride
  • Chris letting me drive…perhaps the only time?
  • I had a good day
  • Going to popscene

    Twenty months ago, I said (in near frustration), “Let’s go to popscene this Thursday.”

    He picked me up from my apartment. We danced. Eye to eye. Face to face.

    I remember so vividly when he bought me a drink and said “no, you can’t bring it to the dance floor.” It was my first time seeing him being serious and putting his foot down.

    Afterwards, the air was magical (although it was probably just an average cold San Francisco winter night). It was slightly drizzling and we rushed across the softly lit street to his car. Our ears ringing from leaving the club.

    Today, I wondered what would be worse to..leave or to be forgotten. I think it’s the latter.

    I am going to a dance partay again today at Popscene with a friend. A female friend, since he is working late today.

    Inside there was movement

    On the way to work, I always walk past the former US Federal Mint Building. Especially now that Mint Plaza is there.

    But the building is boarded empty. Nothing inside. It was one of the last buildings standing after the fire spread after the 1906 earthquake. And how everyone had to stand on its rooftops staring down at the destroyed city, guarding a third of the nation’s money inside.

    A few days ago, I saw light inside. A few windows were uncovered. Figures moving through lit hallways inside the stony walls.

    A chandelier in the main entrance was lit. Five globes suspended in air. There was electricity. I searched online for a story, but there was none. I had been walking past the building for 17 months and never saw life inside. Why now?

    There’s really cool music in the Mint Plaza at noon on Fridays!

    It looks like I am staying

    “I always thought I would be moving,” I said to a friend. “To Boston. To NYC. To Europe. But somehow I ended up back in the Bay Area. Not by choice, but because the best opportunities were here.”

    He seemed surprised, “But you love San Francisco!”

    I cocked my head. Somewhat. Somewhat not. It’s always the feeling that I am missing out, having only lived once outside California for less than 2 years in a place called Pittsburgh, PA.

    And I told them the two reasons I would leave.

    1. a disaster of epic proportions that made living in the Bay Area unbearable
    such as: hurricane, earthquake (likely), the American government (maybe?)…

    I am not a homebody. A friend once observed that I really had no home. In some way, I still live almost like a transient barely having much furniture that will last and only having several valuables—a rug, my Japanese shoiji screens and ottoman—of value (to me).

    2. Trauma.

    Emotional trauma that is. In Sleepless in Seattle, he had to leave Chicago because he couldn’t bear to be in the same city as Wrigley Field and other memories. I couldn’t live in the Bay Area to the fullest without encountering memories that could cause happy memories, but that of loss. The risk I took is to give it all way, knowing that I may not get any back.

    “Let’s talk about the present, because that’s what matters now,” I said to my friend, changing the subject.

    I carried a pink crayon

    I had first gotten the pink crayon from a princess party. It was part of the goodie bag. Once I had gotten home, Chris blew it up for me. Then it sat at the edge of my room until Saturday when I decided to bring it to the party.

    Walking to a party, I was carrying a huge inflatable life-size pink crayon. Dressed in goddess wear adorned with a crown of real leaves, vine and flowers…I got shouts from passing pedestrians and cars.

    “Nice crayon!” someone shouted from the window a new Lexus. That car parked a few moments later. The people got out but didn’t even look at me as they passed me to walk into a bar.

    I kept walking.

    At the party, we carried the pink crayon from room to room. Sometimes I would playfully jab it at someone, particularly the birthday boy who had once tried to stab me with it when he came into my room.

    It deflated over time. Somewhere in the pink crayon, there was a leak. Random people-possibly stoned-took turns blowing it back up.

    I played twisting the baton with it. Then a rod fight. Then I let lie on the couch.

    Some people did some inappropriate things with it.

    Later I said, it is my parting gift and left the crayon that had once been part of a princess party for a 6 year old in a house full of liquor, twentysomethings, music and other unmentionables.

    His name is Red

    He likes call himself Red, like Morgan Freeman’s character in The Shawshank Redemption. He knows how to get stuff. For free. For cheap. You need something, he can get it for you. Even if it’s sold out. Anything.

    At first, I was intrigued. I first asked, “I need speakers. I don’t have any.”

    He called me up and said to meet him in Berkeley. It was almost like a secret underground exchange as he popped his trunk and gave me…speakers. It was what I asked for, but I thought it was going to be sleek, modern, state-of-the-art speakers.

    Regardless though, I would like to be Red. Sometimes to a few friends, I am the one who knows the restaurants, the bars. I know where people should visit on their first time to San Francisco, Pittsburgh…etc. I just know, but I don’t often offer my wares.

    He often gets a lot of junk from friends—a computer that crashed, broken digital cameras…and speakers. Seeing the value in them, he can fix them up quite easily and find a use.

    He has told me to help him widen his market. I am now a games dealer where I should walk around with a trench coat and whisper hey look sir at what I have here, opening my jacket slightly. I know you would love to have Madden, wouldn’t you? It’s sold out in stores. I like being the one who can deliver, but I don’t know how to wheel and deal. I can’t keep it up, smiling when a deal goes sour. I compromise and back out too quickly.

    I still have the computer speakers though. Lately, I am listening to the Loco Roco soundtrack. I love the happiness it brings me of simple blobs floating through the air.