POE-POE

So like most asian kids I played the piano as a kid.  I actually did enjoy it at one point but, between the lame song choices that my piano teacher made and getting hit on the knuckles (really hard mind you!) for playing the wrong note, I quickly lost interest.  As a piano teacher the songs you choose for your students play a huge role in whether or not you will capture your students interest in the long run.  I remember when I got to play fun songs, that I actually recognized, I enjoyed playing and didn't mind practicing.  But those choices were few and far between.

The lady that taught me piano was some sort of family friend or relative or something so she was really doing my mom and grandma a favor by giving me lessons.  I'm not sure how much we paid her but it couldn't have been much as we didn't have much to give.  In fact it was my grandma who encouraged the lady to rap my knuckles whenever I hit a sour note, "the harder the better" she encouraged!!

So needless to say I had no say in the subject matters we studied for piano; I studied theory but didn't have formal testing, we had recitals but they were informal and held in peoples homes.  Although, that didn't make it any less terrifying in my little 5 year old mind.  They were JUST as terrifying as a formal affair possibly worse as the entire gathering was very catty and cliquish.  A bunch of middle aged wealthy women parading their daughters in a stupid home grown recital.  I hated recitals!

But my mom and Grandma wanted the best for me and wanted to give me the best opportunities available by any mean necessary.  For this reason they also, through my piano teacher's little sister, enrolled me into chinese school.  Apparently they just knew that China would be a huge economic force to be reckoned with in the future and knowing to read and write chinese on top of being able to converse in chinese would be a huge asset to have and so my brother and i were both enrolled in my piano teacher's kids sister's chinese school. 

Fun times.  My brother and I being the dumb kids that we were didn't utilize our time there at all!  I'm a born follower... so I naturally went where I was led.  My brother didn't apply himself neither would I. My brother didn't pay attention neither would I.  My brother didn't listen to the teacher neither would I.  So we weren't very good students, the teachers only put up with us since we knew the principal and she was an old family friend. I guess the shoe feel when we met this kid name d Poe poe...or was it Po po? Who knows? But with a name like that he was just asking to be picked on...and pick on him we did!  I think we even made him cry or something. I'm a little fuzzy on the details. Too young.  Needless to day we were not welcomed back to that school after that incident.  Go figure. So yeah apparently I've been kicked out of Chinese school.

Sad a delinquent before I even had memories.  It's funny what the mind remembers. Perhaps my brother can fill in the gaps where I can't recall.

Naturally mom was pissed, grandma was pissed and both were far from happy and declared that we would rue the day we didn't properly learn chinese.

Fast forward 20+years and I kinda do wish I paid a bit more attention and took a little more care to learn the language. It sure would help me in my latest obsession...CHINESE DRAMAS!!!

More Shenanigans - Blow Torch

I guess one of the symptoms of growing old is the tendency to reminisce, especially about ones own childhood.  Perhaps, its because we secretly wish we can turn back the hands of time.  Not necessarily because of any age old regrets of paths not taken, road not trodden upon but because life was just simpler in our salad days.  It's a shame that we never treasured those moments while we were living in those moments - we were in too much of a hurry to grow up!

It's funny how little kids tend to think they're so smart and yet grownup always seem to know what we were doing.  Apparently, at one point in our house there actually was a "no tv in the afternoons during the school year" rule.  I'm a little fuzzy on the actual rule and it's enforcement.  I do recall however, one instance where that rule was actually enforced. 

My brother and I were left home alone while my mom and grandma most likely went grocery shopping.  I can't be sure as my memories are a little patchy, I just know they weren't home.  So my brother and I took the opportunity to watch tv to our hearts content.  I can't even remember what was so good that we just had to watch.  Probably cartoons or some such non-sense of my brother's choice.  Back then we didn't have chinese supermarkets on every street corner so grocery shopping most likely entailed a trip to MPK or China Town.  We rarely shopped at the local Vons because those places were too expensive.  So shopping trips took upwards to a few hours.  

Being the nervous kid that I was around mid afternoon I would already be on the lookout for my mom's red car to pull around the corner of our little cul-de-sac always thinking that I heard a rumble.  Naturally, I would be the first to spot my mom and I'd let my brother know that "they're home!"  He'd snap off the TV and we'd run to our respective rooms and pull out our books as if we'd been studying/reading all afternoon.  Of course when they all got home we'd rush over to the garage and welcome them home as if nothing out of the ordinary happend.  Once the groceries were brought in and everything put away my grandmother would always just know that we'd been watching TV!  It wasn't until I grew up did I realize TVs got hot when on so all grandma did was feel the back of the TV to know whether or not it had been in use. Apparently my brother and I weren't as resourceful and bright as my mom an her siblings.  They used to cool the TV off with a fan before their parents got home - much smarter!  But somehow my grandma still knew what they were up to - creepy!

Eventually, we gave up watching TV and came up with more creative means to occupy our time.  One such afternoon my brother had a brilliant idea that we should make our own homemade blow torch!  My mom, a poor unfortunate victim of 80s fashion,  had tons of hair holding products one of which being the cheap Aquanet hairspray that came in aerosol canisters.  Back then every household with a women must have owned at least one can of that stuff.  This was a time before aerosol was deemed "bad" for the environment.

Anyhow, one can of Aquanet, one book of matches, and a bucket of water for safety later a blow torch was born.  It seems ridiculous now that we even thought of getting a bucket of water handy to be safe - but we did and of course we responsibly dropped all the used lit matches into the bucket of water so that there was no way the match would spontaneously re-ignite itself.  Because of course that was the most dangerous part of our little activity!  We even kept all the windows and doors tightly shut so that our neighbors would not smell what we were up to because of course if they neighbors found out they would tell our mom because that was the only way she would find out about our little scheme.  Needless to say when my mom and grandma got home they were furious.  I suppose in retrospect it's really amazing we managed NOT to burn the house down around us.  Good thing the insurance company never found out huh?

Honestly between the two of us - it was a pretty cool sight!

Memories...

...they're a funny thing.

This past weekend, in celebration of my grandma's 93rd birthday, my husband and I flew to Detroit to spend time with family!  My mom, my aunt and their cousins and the cousin's mom (or my grandmother's sister-in-law if your losing track of all these relations) all thought it would be a great idea for my grandma to visit with her sister one last time before everyone gets too old to be able to travel that distance.  My grandma's turning 93 years young and her sister is 86, so sadly this is probably the last time those sister will see each other.  They did speak of perhaps taking a train to/from Detroit and LA but only God knows if that will happen.  Likely not, but you never can tell.  Life's funny sometimes.  We all wanted to surprise my grandmother with the fact that I was going too so Victor an I caught an earlier flight and met up with them later when they arrived.

So the family from LA included my Grandmother (my mom's mom), my mom, my mom's sister (my aunt), my mom's cousins (Stanley, Theresa, Thomas - these were my grandmother's brother's kids) and their mom (or my grandmother's sister-in-law as mentioned previously).  So that makes 9 people from LA in total, including myself and victor).  The family in Detroit with whom we were visiting with consisted of my grandmother's youngest sister (my xiao yipo), her three kids (rong rong ayi  - eldest daughter, rong hua jiujiu - son, rong mao jiu jiu - son, and rong mao jiu jiu's wife).  so that makes 5 people from Detroit in total.  We all had a roaring good time!  Yes in DETROIT I know!  In all fairness they didn't live IN Detroit but a suburb 40 minutes away in Novi/Farmington Hills.  It was actually a really nice neighborhood.  Very quaint and cute!

Like all family gatherings our activities revolved around eating!  The Detroit side of the family were great hosts and we all enjoyed some pretty tasty meals! My favorite was dinner the first night there at Hong Hua (Saturday 6/15/13), it was your typical canto style banquet foods but, I sure do LOVE lobster!  A close second was Dinner Sunday (6/16/13) which was Korean BBQ.  Oh my!!  I love meat and the short ribs were so tender an juicy but NOT fatty!  Slurp!  Lunch on Sunday & Monday were at the same place but we had dim sum sunday and "special" lunch Monday.  I say "special" because this wasn't your typical MPK special lunch...we were visiting from LA so of course fancier fare was ordered.

Over the meals tons of old family stories were shared, re-shared and shared again!  All the cousins grew up together when they were little in Taiwan so there was so much history and laughter among themselves.  They even shared stories from when I was little so I was able to join in all the fun!!  It was great!  An overall fun-tastic time for everyone!  And right off the bat on Saturday night my mom was finally able to ask a burning question of one of her cousins that my brother and I have been wondering about for AGES!

You see when my brother and I were little we visited my Grandma's brother (jiugong) in New Jersey and spent some time with Uncles Stanley & Thomas, Aunt Theresa and Aunt Wendy (she's a cousin that did not join in all the family festivities in Detroit - also the person whom I'm named after apparently).  During that infamous visit uncle Stanley forbade all us kids to speak english - wanting us to speak Mandarin so we don't forget our mother tongue. "Shui zai jiang yang hua?" (who's speaking a foreign language" and "Bu Yao jiang yang hua" (don't speak a foreign language) were Uncle Stanley's common catch phrases!!  To the point that it became an old family joke between my brother and myself to this day!  Uncle Stanley's nickname (and yes my brother's famous for comming up with nicknames!!  everyone in our household has got one..) was even "Bu Yao Jiang Yang Hua" because he said it so often!!  So my mom asked Uncle Stanley what the heck happened?  How come his own son (Michael) doesn't even speak Chinese when he's "Bu Yao Jiang Yang Hua?"  So apparently the guy doesn't even remember any of this ever happening!

What a sad anti-climactic end to something that we've all been laughing at for the past 25 years!!  In the mind of the perpetrator this was a distant forgotten memory!!  The upside?  At least we were laughing and not feuding for the last 25 years!!  Lesson learned - harboring ill-will toward someone is a futile thing.  The only one that suffers is yourself.  Imagine if the situation was slightly altered and instead of a funny incident that we were laughing over, it was a maddening thing that we were irked over.  The guy doesn't even remember and we've been irked and annoyed for the last 25 years.  How awful would that be??  So remember the good and let the bad slide!  I can't say whether you'll live longer...but you will live happier!

So needless to say my grandma was very surprised I was there in Detroit...

Home Alone

So Victor just got back from a 10 day long business trip to China; he had to check out the facilities that his company was using to manufacture their products.  So he was in Shanghai from last Saturday through Thursday night and Friday morning he caught the first flight out of Shanghai to Beijing to visit and check up on a new facility his company is considering using as a contract manufacturer.  At the end of Friday he was able to look our old Pastor and his family and go hang out with them for the rest of the weekend.  When we Skyped Friday night the kids were hopping around in the background happy and super excited!  It's was so good to see little miss Sarah starting to become just as big of a chatterbox as her big sister!  Saturday morning Victor hung out with our old pastor and they walked around and saw all the touristy sites of Beijing; they saw the forbidden city, saw and endless number of street food vendors and they ate a variety of roasted scorpions.  You know the usual.

While Victor was gone, before his flight even took off Friday morning, I remade our bed so that I would be able to enjoy our entire Cal-King bed all by myself!  I re-arranged the pillows so that I was able to sleep smack dab in the middle of the bed!  I dropped him off at the airport at 4am and since we're so close to the airport I was able to come home and sleep for another 2 hours so before I had to get ready for work myself.  I must say it was quite luxurious!

The last time Victor was gone it was quite a traumatizing experience.  Our cat genie broke, both our cats vomited at least once during his absence and carrot cake peed on my throw blanket that was on my sofa!   Quite a close call the pee didn't end up on the sofa!  Close call.  And of course, lastly, there was a death in the family.  So it was not very fun last time.  This time I was determined to make the most of it and enjoy myself.

It's weird, in all my days I've never spent so much time alone than AFTER I got married.  I would never had thought that was going to be the case.  In college while living in the dorms I had 2 roommates my first year and 1 roommate my 2nd year.  By my 3rd and 4th years we were required to move out of the dorms into the off campus apartments and there I lived with at least 4 other girls at all times, even during the summer months.  We split a 2 bedroom two bathroom apartment.  One of the bedrooms was bigger so three girls fit in there.  In the summer the girls who were not taking summer school had found sublettors to take their spot.  After college I continued to live in the apartments out on the west side but because rent was so expensive and my job paid so little I continued to live with 3 other girls, besides having never really lived alone before it was nice to have the constant company.  Moving back home was never and option because quite frankly I think the commute would have killed me.  What normally is a 40 minute drive is a 1.5-2 hour drive during rush hour traffic.

So friday night, the friday that victor left, I treated myself my favorite activity.  I got a two item combo and rented a movie from the local redbox.  I don't really know why I like Panda Express so much but I do especially the chow mein.  That definitely set the tone for the rest of the week and I could tell it was going to be a great week!  The weekend flew by and by Sunday night as I was getting ready to go to bed a horrible thought occurred to me.

Recently a lady at our church woke up one morning and discovered that she had inexplicably gone completely blind!  To my horror I thought to myself what if that happened to me?  I wouldn't even be able to call anyone since I've only got a cellphone and both my cellphone and victor's cellphone were touch screens.  I wouldn't even be able operate the phone.  I know there's a voiced activated feature on my phone but I don't know how that works.  And even if we did have a house phone that I could dial by touch, I don't have anyone's phone numbers memorized because they're all saved in the address book on my cellphone.  Oh what pickle we put ourselves in thanks to technology.  You can't live without it this day and age but you can't really live with it either, you become dependent.

So Monday morning I promptly discussed the situation with my co-workers and we worked out a game plan  in the event that I mysteriously don't turn up to work while I was home alone.  You can't be too; careful look at all the crazy things that Macaulay Culkin faced!

With a game plan in place NEXT time Victor goes to China on business it will be even FUN-NER!

Scratch that next time he goes to China I'm going too!!

Shenanigans - Muscle Juice

The other day I was driving around town in traffic and a thought dawned on me.  I'm officially in my 30's.  I'm a bona fide adult.  No longer can I hide behind "young adulthood" as I did in my 20s.  When I turned 30 it didn't really count because I just got there so it's okay to still think of myself as 20ish still.  But once I clearly crossed over into 30 something territory there's no turning back--It's official.  In fact I vaguely recall and old tv show called thirtysomething and if memory serves me correctly everyone on that show looked so old!  Its hard to grasp the fact that I've arrived, I'm here, I'm those old thritysomethings.  How strange, I still feel like a kid most of the time.

When I reflect back on my life I can clearly see the places where I've grown and changed.  My point of view and thoughts no longer (most of the time at least--although my husband would beg to differ) revolve around myself.  But oftentimes I forget that I'm actually an adult.  It feels so foreign to me and I wonder if I'll feel the same when I'm 40, 50 or even 60.  I suppose once I have kids then I'll have a constant in my face reminder that I'm not a kid anymore?

It seems like it was only yesterday that my brother and I were still at home as kids without a care in the world.  Our family never really went on vacations--no money.  We would occasionally travel to Taiwan with my grandma to visit with my mom's sister and my brother and we'd get to play with our cousins.  But traveling overseas was expensive back then so those trips were few and far between.  Long distance phone calling back then was also expensive and the connection was terrible.  This was before the age of the internet when programs like skype was only something you'd see on startrek.  So my brother and I did what any other normal kid would have done to keep in touch with their cousins.  We made tape recordings!!  We would have full on conversations with them, read them stories and just tell them about the goings on at our house all on tape and send that to them.  They would in turn send us a tape back--kind of like audio pen-pals of sorts.  Naturally this only made sense because my brother and I didn't read or write any chinese and my cousins, they didn't read or write english.

So during the summer months my brother and I passed the time by keeping ourselved productively occupied.  We stayed up late, watched way too much television, and played video games till we, or perhaps just me, wanted to puke.  We'd watch SNL, or if that wasn't on then we'd watch Wrestling (back when it was still under the WWF banner).  Later one new late night tv shows popped up such as In Living Color, Mad TV giving us a wider selection of shows to watch or sometimes we'd watch a combination of two shows flipping back and forth between channels at the commercial break.  When my brother got older we'd watch late night talk shows; his favorite was David Letterman.  When those choice tv programs were over we'd watch late night infomercials (remember Ron Popeil??).  We didn't have cable and this was before food network anyways so our favorite infomercials was the food related inventions (think the showtime rotisserie grill - you "set it and forget it").

My brother picked all the programmings that we'd watch but I was to little to understand or care.  I was just excited to NOT be sleeping.  Although sometimes I'd be too tired and give in and go to bed but when our show came on my brother would run to my room, shake me awake and we'd go watch tv together.   Naturally one cannot simply just watch these late night  television programs by itself - no that would be weird.  We'd spend tons of prep time before hand gathering snacks, getting beverages, and heating up other frozen treats to nosh on while we watched TV.

Sometime during all these late night escapades muscle juice was born.  What's muscle juice you ask?  Muscle Juice is basically the entire contents of both our refrigerator AND cupboards dumped into a single cup.  Anything goes and no two concoction of muscle juice was ever the same.  From the fridge we'd usually have ketchup, mustard, relish, salad dressing, milk, orange juice or apple juice or both, satay sauce (asian bbq sauce), peanut butter or sesame paste or both, jams (whatever flavor we had on hand), and I can't recall if the mix involved an egg or not.  From the cupboards the normal contenders were salt, pepper (both black pepper and white pepper), soy sauce, vinegar, vegetable oil, chocolate milk power (or chocolate milk syrup from the fridge) and occasionally the dry power mix from an packet of instant noodles.  These lists are by no means exhaustive and sometimes we'd have more ingredients other times less.  It all depended on what was available to us in the fridge and cupboard at the time and how creative we were feeling.  At one point I feel like we squeezed in the black stuff from the inside of a squid although I now can't recall clearly.  We'd mix the contents of the cup together with a single solitary chopstick and we would then pinch our nose and each take a swig of our creation and proclaim loudly that we've been rejuvenated, reinvigorated and 23472342870 times stronger than before we began.  Popeye had his spinach but we, we had our muscle juice.

Good times!!

Of course no human being can finish off and entire glass of muscle juice.  We'd be too strong and litteraly destroy our entire house so to keep this stuff from falling into the wrong hands we threw it up and over the wall in our backyard.  No one was ever the wiser.

Sometimes I wonder if my mom knew what we did....

Discontentment

I've always struggled with discontentment.  I don't know whether or not anyone else struggles with it, although I suspect many do, but I can only say with certainty that it is something I wrestle with constantly.

I didn't have an unhappy childhood and I don't feel as if I've ever been deprived or ever had want for anything.  In fact I had an AWESOME childhood!  Sometimes I would look back at old family photos and wish I were that carefree kid again but alas, therein lies discontentment and it rears its ugly head.

Frankly whoever coined the phrase, "the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence" knew his (or her!-this is after all and equal opportunity blog!) stuff and captured discontented sentiment exactly.  Looking back over my childhood I can now see smatterings of discontentment speckled throughout my youth.  I mentioned previously that I had an awesome childhood.  Let me now elaborate on that bit of awesomeness! But first a bit of history...

My mom was never a good student and she hated school and did terribly.  Schooling for her was drastically different than here in the good ole US of A.  My mom was born and raised in Taiwan and if you don't know anything about the educational system there just know that your future is/was quite determined by a series of entrance exams.  You had to be tested into your elementary school, you had to be tested into middle school, you had to be tested into high school and each and every single point along the way mattered.  If you screwed up your elementary school test then it was impossible to get into the best middle schools and if you weren't in the best middle schools then you can kiss your chances of getting into a good high school and if you weren't attending the best high schools then college is definitely out of the question for you.  Needless to say my mom never enjoyed that kind of pressure and wanted much differently for her kids.  (Side note: Kudos to you for starting a scary new life in a scary new country mommy!  There was a detour in Brazil where my brother was born but that will be a whole other post on a whole other day).  Now the educational system in the US compared to the rigor of ASIA is, in all honesty, a bit of a JOKE in comparison.  Kids could stand to be challenged just a teeny bit more but again that shall be a whole other post on a whole other day.

So back to my own awesome childhood.  I was allowed to watch as much television as my little heart desired!  And to a 5 year me old that's heaven on earth!  Also, chores?  What are those?  In our house we didn't have any because we were students and our job was to "study".  During the summer months my brother and I got into a whole bunch of crazy shenanigans which will definitely be immortalized for the world at large to read about in future posts.  We stayed up late into the wee hours of the mornings up to no good and sometimes didn't end up sleeping until my mom was driving away to work.  It was bliss I tell you!  I didn't have a care in the world but even then wasn't content.  I still wanted to hurry up and be a grown up.  Being 5 years old was not good enough.  I wanted to be older because being older was way better than being a kid.

Discontentment, it's quite a sneaky thing that one.  You can be happy as a clam but still discontent.  It can dress up and masquerade itself as "ambition" or "aspirations"or even "hopes & dreams" which are great and honorable things.  But if you're not fully satisfied in the station in life which God our creator has placed you in then discontentment rears its ugly head once again.  One can dream and one can aspire to greatness but the line is crossed when you think that your life will be better or more complete if and only if those dreams, those aspirations, those goals have come to fruition.  God in His infinite wisdom has placed you where you are currently at in life because that's the best place for you, right here, right now.

When I was in school (K-12 school) I always thought I would be set if I could just get into a good college - I got into UCLA, but I wasn't all set.  When I was graduating from college I thought I would be set if I could just get a job - I got a job, but I wasn't all set.  When I was working for a few years I thought I would be set if only I could meet a good Godly man - I met a great Godly man, but I wasn't all set. When I was dating this Godly man for a few months (we've known each other longer than not known each other prior to dating!) I thought I would be set if only he would hurry up and propose - he proposed, but I wasn't all set.  When we were married for a year I thought we're ready! I would be all set if we could just get pregnant, I'm literally backwards-situs inversus totalis w/ dextrocardia-and was worried I would never be able to conceive, - we conceived but I wasn't all set.

I have my hopes and dreams.  But at least for now I'm not under the delusion that if and only if they come to pass will my life be full and complete.  Because I'm constantly in awe at how completely God has provided for my life, even in ways that I've never even pondered.  I'm sure I will still struggle with discontentment...but I know the battle can be won...because it's a battle I don't have to wage alone.

Test Post

I think it's high time I jump on the blogging bandwagon.  It's come to me as a whim much like many things I decide to do...we'll see if it lasts and how long it will last.

Hopefully, it will last but only time will tell.

Anyways...testing 1, 2, 3...