I let Steven know how convenient it really is to visit me AND have sushi, so we have been to that sushi place near my house twice now. (Thanks Catherine.) On the way there, we somehow ended up talking about “gwai lo” (slang for white guy in Cantonese)

Steven: Oh! I used “gwai lo” to my [gwai lo] friend Bryant. He used to learn kung fu or karate, and he told me there was a move he used and he called it “gwai lo yum cha.” Someone told him it means “white guy hidden fist.”

Me: Yum cha? Drink tea?

Steven: No, he said it meant “hidden fist.”

Me: *mentally goes through all the tonal variations* That’s not what it really means. Yum cha is to drink tea, or go for dim sum.

Steven: I have to call him up and tell him, “Bryant, your move isn’t really all that special.”  Why are Chinese people so mean?  When they don’t understand English, we tell them what it really means.  Why can’t they do the same for us?

Me: *thinks*  It’s more fun that way.

A few weeks ago, I went shopping at Daiso, the asian $2 store. I bought two packages of gloves because I needed disposable gloves. However, the real selling point of these items was the Engrish on the packaging. Yes, I put up ONE package on facebook, but not BOTH of them. So here they are in all their glory.

The top of the picture has too much reflection so I’ll type it.

• It exactly fits the hand very thinly made of plastic.
• It can use by the bare-handed sense, and is the best for the site where a lot of detailed work exists.
• It is possible to use it without uselessness because of the type of a convenient, right and left using combinedly.

The day of Nathan’s grad lunch, we went to a shabu shabu place where my cousin works. The bamboo shoots were good, but they need more MEAT. After this, Steven and i went to Wreck Beach. Down the stairs, up the stairs. There must be 400 steps. That was a good work out for both of us. Here’s the beach.

Nope, they’re not naked….

My family went to Ikea one day to get Nathan a bed. He detached the legs of his old bed and currently the bed is on the floor. Anyway, Ikea also tries to sell customers Sweden (however closely it resembles Sweden I don’t know) and so we bought lingonberry sauce. Lingonberry sauce tastes like cranberry sauce except not as tart.

My mom’s coworker gave us some fresh thyme, which is what that green stuff is. It smells awesome.

My pancakes have undergone structural changes…

So has the stuff put on top of it.

Tonight Steven and I went to Lighthouse Park. We went down the mountain and up the mountain. Not as vigorous as the stairs on Wreck Beach. The place was so green though.

He’s finally hooked on Jack Johnson, but not hooked in time to realize that he’s coming to Vancouver in August. Oooops, on my part as well. He said the song “Banana Pancakes” sounds like something I would say to him, except in a man’s voice.

Ok it’s late, good night.

Steven and family/friends are out right now taking their German friends to Red Robin’s. I’m staying home because Red Robin’s gives me a stomach ache. We’ve been to Red Robin’s twice since we started going out, and I got a stomach ache both times. Pretty unpleasant. I’m not sure what the problem is. Once someone told me about green “fluff” (foam off dish cleaners) in her burger from Red Robin’s. Mmm. Yummy.

If people are coming from abroad, I think they should eat sushi. If someone normally lives inland and comes to Vancouver, they should eat sushi. It makes perfect sense, unless they’re from Japan. Vancouver = ethnic food. So how about it. Of course, Steven’s mom shudders and makes funny faces at the thought of eating raw fish. And octopus. And prawns (I think). But not chicken feet (o.0). I can kind of understand though. I was brought up on sushi and pig kidneys, but not insects. Insect cuisine is making the news, and I doubt it will ever catch on with me. At 60 I will still shudder and make funny faces.

So here at home I made a *beef* fajita with seasoning and lots of vegetables, and it was GOOOOOOOOOOOOD. Plus no stomach ache.

I’m ready for a vacation. I only worked at this place for a month, and the lack of sleep from sleeping at 11:20 - 7 is getting to me (isn’t that enough????). I’ve noticed a few things about this work place. I work in an office setting. In this population, the number of super obese people appears higher than what I observed at the chocolate factory….Go figure! Perhaps it’s the cafeteria food? Fries. Fried chicken strips. Ranch dressing. Sitting in my chair for 7 hours, I get a wave of panic. Like I should drop and do 20.

But I can’t escape all this food. We had a grad dinner for me, last week for my BComm cousin and this week for Nathan. Since Nathan got me flowers, I have to get him a present. But the only thing he can think of wanting is a car. Steven told me to get him shampoo, soap, and a toothbrush. He also said of Nathan’s flowers, “I wonder how many yards he went through to get those.”

All the flowers are dead now. I took soooo many pictures of them because I saw the receipts. Didn’t know they were so expensive.

<Took 3 hour break to practise the piano and finish application for loan and send out resume and go up and down the stairs> … SOMEONE PLEASE GIVE ME A JOB!!!

It’s raining. It should continue raining for the remainder of the week. It’s June. I have on 3 layers of clothes. In June. Things I want to do this summer:

1. kayaking
2. more bike riding
3. go to night market
4. go to the PNE
5. print out 100+ pictures
6. see fireworks
7. buy DSLR

…

Me: These pictures [from graduation day] aren’t usable. My forehead is blown out.

Mom: Can you fix it?

Me: No. You could if you had the school’s camera.

Dad: Why?

Me: That camera takes pictures in RAW. You can fix it in RAW.

Mother: Fine. I’ll sponsor you $100.

[Later]

Mom: Take a picture of this flower.

Me: I did. This camera doesn’t record purple. It turns it into blue.

Mom: Why?

Me: It just doesn’t. You don’t have this problem with the school’s camera though.

Mother: I’ll sponsor you $200.

We are getting somewhere!! …!!

Oh oh!! And under the title “PROGRESS: continuing off the gelatin conversation”

Steven: You know what I never got into? Ribs. Maybe it’s because my mom doesn’t make them much. My uncle does, and they’re SO GOOD.

Me: You know what ribs are?

Steven: What?

Me: Cow bones!

Steven: What else is made out of cow bones?

Me: Gelatin

Steven: Oh yeah.

Me: That doesn’t gross you out anymore?

Steven: No, I’m getting used to the idea.

Graduation Day

I took half a day off work so time was supposed to go faster, but it didn’t. It had already been a long 3.5 days (ha) typing. At 12, I rushed down to the front entrance to wait for Steven to pick me up, but he was late because he was busy getting me a large bouquet of flowers. We went to pho for lunch and then headed off for UBC, where there was free parking at the Chan Center for that day. I went to pick up my gown 90 minutes before the ceremony.  Later I found out it was pointless to get there so early because I spent an hour doing NOTHING there.  The other half hour I spent trying to pin the blue thing on the gown.  Said one guy in front of the mirror, “My degree is in physics, not tailoring!”  Then one of the ceremony people came in to give instructions and said that the ceremony would be longer than usual because each Ph. D. would have their work summarized while they’re up on stage.  And then he said that everyone might as well enjoy sitting in the Chan because it’s the most expensive seat ever.

UBC did something right.  They kept the ceremony short, practical, and sweet.  They only had two people speak; one was talking about freedom in education, and another was a biophysics student who was funny.  She said, “if you want to scare someone away, all you have to tell them is that you study biophysics.  It works every time.”  And “why do we bother paying thousands of dollars to learn this material that you can find on google or wikipedia?  You can say that all UBC taught us is how to filter out google search results.”  She had a better point with this, but I forgot what it was.  They presented a teaching award to the inorganic chem prof who beat his chest while walking around during my 2nd year inorganic final, and then the graduates started going across the stage.  There weren’t too many Ph. D.s or M. Sc.s.  Most aren’t crazy enough to persue this, surprise surprise.  There were only about 60 chemistry grads, and I am so happy that I have a category in the book they handed out all to myself: Major in Chemistry, Minor in Visual Art.  One person had a more outrageous one: Honours Major in Physics and Mathematics, Minor in Computer Science.  Wonder just how long that one took.  That book was kind of amusing.  As I was flipping through it to see who I know graduated from VISA, I saw someone on that list who already had a degree in Arts and English.  3 useless degrees!  Why!

After the ceremony, I took pictures with my parents and Steven.  When I was instructing Steven on how to frame the picture with my parents standing in as models, I took a picture of my parents that my dad liked so much, he requested his own 4×6 because he decided that photo made himself look dashingly good.  Later, Nathan and my aunts came to take pictures, and Nathan was late because he got me a large bouquet of flowers.  We took some more pictures and went to iCafe for dinner.  Steven was telling Nathan to get a motorcycle in front of my parents.  Nathan might actually take up his suggestion on finding a job in White Rock and then telling my dad to drive him (excuse to get a car).  I got home at 8.  It was a long day, but I was happier to go through the whole ceremony than I thought, since it was so short, and the seats were comfortable, and the stage looked kind of classy…

“Gelatin,” Steven began, looking at my Dieter’s Cookbook, “is that in jello?”

“Yup”

“What is that anyway?”

“You really want to know?”  Before he could object, I immediately said, “cow bones!”

“Blech!  I’m  trying to forget you said that.”

“Do you eat fish bones in canned salmon?”

“I don’t eat canned salmon.”

“But lots of other white people do.”

“I’m not one of those people.  All I care is that jello tastes great.  I know what they use in sausages isn’t pretty; I just try not to think about that.”

“Ok fine.  Gelatin is just made out of water and starch.”

“That’s better.”

“But somehow it contains a lot of calcium”

Then he started the car to end the conversation.

FIRST, MORE PICTURES… 

Ah yes, all those English exercise books in the previous entry are what built up the grammar police side of me.  I’m like a raving lunatic to this day whenever I see basic errors in things that are not supposed to contain basic errors.  Thing is, the now common occurence of bad writing wasn’t always so prevalent.  I’m catching more errors at 23 than at 13, and it’s not because I couldn’t differentiate between “your” and “you’re” back then.

I showed it to my immigrant dad and even he started laughing at it.

Nathan decided he was going to put his Chinese skills to good use, and wrote this:

Found a squirrel in a park.

The green leafy stuff in the background is kale.  Here’s the recipe I used.  I’m not really sure if this is what it should turn out since there’s no accompanying picture on the internet.  Is the soup supposed to completely boil off or what?  Oh well, tastes good enough.  The large bunch of kale was intended for use in this smoothie.  I gave Steven one of those so I managed to fortify him with vitamins A, C, B6, potassium, HDL, and fibre.

Quesadillas cost $12 at White Spot.  This was easy and cheap!   Use cheese, salsa, chicken, avocado, stuff all of it in a tortilla and put it on a pan and cook both sides.  Well you know, do whatever it takes to not have the tortilla stuck on the pan.

SECOND,  A BOOK I READ IN 2 DAYS

One morning early April I was languidly browsing msn.com when the Texas polygamous compound raid caught my eye.  Really, if the women had not been wearing those long, boring…I mean *modest* dresses, I wouldn’t had noticed.  They had an interview with Carolyn Jessop, a woman who escaped the lifestyle and also wrote a book called Escape.  Fundamentalist Mormon polygamous culture fascinates me because I don’t understand how people will just blindly obey their “prophet” when he’s telling them to do destructive things, such as driving their teenaged sons out in a highway and leaving them there for good because they watched a movie (which is considered wicked).  I also don’t like the fact that here in BC, I’m financially supporting those in the cult who claim welfare as single mothers with 10 children because the polygamous father can’t (or won’t? or just want the welfare anyway?) provide for all 60 children.  This is one of the very few societal…political opinions I have.

Anyway, the interview airs, and I go request her book from the public library. I know other people have the same interest as me because the number of requests quickly grew from 6 to 18.  And the reason why I even mentioned this whole topic is that I read the story about Ruth’s nose, and then I laughed.  Ok, so one has to have compassion for poor Ruth, her nose, and her state of mind, but I mean…you read it.

I almost put away my winter clothes. Good thing I was too lazy. I already made the switch from the big and bulky light blue jacket to the moose hair black jacket and I had just put all my keys and stuff into the lighter red jacket. My mother told me to wear sunglasses while walking to my old high school on Thursday. And then on Friday night it began to snow. The clumps of snow of average diameter 1.5 cm fell from the sky with the cherry blossoms at 5 centimeters per second.* It stuck to the hood of the car like moss on stone, and then the ground froze up. Every year people talk about how odd the weather is like this in spring/early summer. It’s not odd anymore!

Last week at the after school tutorial, the forever pouting grade 8 and her friend asked me for my expertise on starring contests.

FPG8: I have a question. If you only blink one eye, is it cheating? She thinks it’s cheating but I don’t.

Friend: Yes you’re letting moisture back into your eye so it’s cheating.

Evidently I didn’t take starring contest 101.

On Friday, my mom and I went to the Thai House because she has been deprived of curry for far too long. Alas I can’t eat curry and she can’t eat a whole order of it, so she had to settle for coconut pineapple rice. The waitress didn’t like the fact that we were only ordering one item, so she made us order soup, which said was only a *little* spicy. HA. Even my mother couldn’t stand it. I’m not sure why, but non-spicy Thai House food makes me feel kind of gross. Like their noodles/rice has absorbed too much moisture or something. The waiting area outside their bathrooms is interesting. I’ve never before noticed that the pictures up on the wall depicted people watching a couple have sex in two different positions.

In the beginning of the rain-turned-snow storm, Steven and I were at Isami. Thunder sounded and the building’s electrical noises were heard. The guy on the other side of the divider said he thought for a moment that it was the apocalypse. Having narrowly escaped the end of the world, I decided Steven really needed to learn some Cantonese before it was too late. So I taught him 4 words: “oh,” “hai,” “gwai,” and “lo.” These were probably pronounced better than anything else I ever had him repeat after me. “Ng goy” and “doh jeh” didn’t go so well. Also, he has been converted to pho. I explained that “pho” is not pronounced “pho” and is erronously a blanket term for all Vietnamese food. Yay go me.

On April 8th my internet was down. To book my grad tickets I went to my dad’s computer, kicking off my mom. She asked me, “Why are you here? Does your computer have bacteria?”

A VIRUS.

Today was the real last day of anything school related, despite the fact that I’ve been doing absolutely nothing all month. I had a meeting with the photo professor.

Me: I got kicked out of Crystal Mall.

Prof: For taking pictures?

Me: Yeah.

Prof: That’s a badge of honor.

What’s so scandalous about this term’s project? Nothing…I contemplated showing the internet, but didn’t because 460×305 pixel pictures just weren’t the way to go for this one. Too much detail is lost unless you get to see those 15.5 x 11.625 inch things. Right, so the beginning of summer is not really . .. that (see: heavy snow fall in April). For the past six “summers,” the beginning is always marked with uncertainty, so instead of having any fun, I just do nothing at all, mostly. Fortunately, I managed to find SOME thing to do in May, which eases the anxiety somewhat.

Regarding photography, I’m so *depressed* there’s no Nikon D80 to play around with anymore. The point and shoot will have to do again. WHEN CAN WE GO TO VD???

Here’s some more stuff I found from the house cleaning session a couple weeks ago.

These are the workbooks my parents made me do when I was younger. Not included: Algebra CD ROMs. That’s right, I learned algebra with the computer. After I did these, my dad erased all my answers so Nathan could do them. Nathan proved to be a lot more resistant to homework than me. Those coloured math/spelling/writing/study skills/reading books on top? My parents found them for $0.99 somewhere in the States and bought them in bulk. WHY DO THINGS IN THE STATES HAVE TO BE SO CHEAP!!! My dad is still in the mindset of reusing. I put all the workbooks in a clear plastic bag and wrote “THE PURPOSE OF LIFE IS SUFFERING” (a mantra I carried around at that age). I told him all of it was for recycling collection tomorrow.

Dad: You can give them to someone else.

Me: What, are you going to erase everything again?

Things I haven’t thrown into recycling yet are magazines that I found in the kitchen closet. Unfortunately, they’re all boring magazines. The most interesting looking one was the August 1988 edition of Omni, and it was only interesting because of its sentimental value.

GHOSTBUSTERS, woo!!!

Car ads.

The Hitachi brick phone.

Three Canadian geese in a place with lots of Canadian geese crap.  They were all carefully walking away after eyeing me suspiciously.

My cherry tree is dead.  It used to have blossoms like these.

View of downtown at night.   How was I supposed to know the reflection was going to be so bright and it’s better to have the horizon higher up the picture?

Ditto.  And too many boats.  Are the subtle shades of black apparent on your screen?

Composite shot.  In 2 minutes, the moon moved that much across the sky.  The first shot was too dark, and the second shot was bright enough, but a car drove in front of the camera and left a headlight trail near the bottom of the tree.

I should begin by explaining that I am addicted to dooce.com. Every weekday around 10 a.m. or before leaving for school, I check the site because it’s right up there on the address bar along with frequently visited sites like aeriose.com (UPDATE, WOMAN, UPDATE!), theweathernetwork.ca, msn.ca, msn.com, and the like. Yesterday? Or the day before? there is a post containing a link to “before and after death” photographs of terminally ill people. I must have cycled through all the pictures 3 times, reading the captions on the right. These images did not disgust me at all. When I was 11 I watched my grandmother succumb to lung cancer at the hospital. One day she was sitting up and talking, and a few days later all she could do was moan in pain so that someone could flag down a nurse to give her a morphine shot. On the day that she died, she slept most of the time while my uncle checked her pulse, which was hard to detect. Some time around 4:45, her pulse was no more, and a doctor confirmed that she was dead. This story sounds like the kind of thing the photographer encountered during his project. Not quite beautiful, not quite haunting, but just the way things are.

Without the before and after pictures, the passage between life and death seemed gradual to me. She had been sleeping so I didn’t quite get eyes closed with pulse vs. eyes closed without pulse. Maybe I don’t remember correctly?? Scandalous.

I imagine Nela died pretty much the same way. As to her comment, I would imagine she’d have peace with death, knowing what she knew about living on borrowed time.

My health is holding much to the Dr.’s surprise. I know that prayer was my cure. Even though this cancer is to return at some time I know I’m to use the time the Lord has allowed me wisely—my 2 children are very happy for now [and] their little ones will remember their grandmother hopefully.

They do. They must be in their teens now, whoever they are. Now that I can sort of read her chicken scratch without any help, I realized what kind of woman she really was. Although not too old at diagnosis by today’s life expectancy standards, she never victimized herself or asked, “why me?” She just continued on life as usual, traveling lots and visiting people with her care-giver.

Completed 3^rd round of chemo pills. Will find effective or not following trip to Quesnel to visit grandsons.

You ask if I had an interesting summer, well I think I did. In early July, I flew to Ontario with Betty, my care giver to attend her youngest sister’s wedding. … Shortly I’m to go to Revelstoke for family camping. … Aug 16 I’m to fly to my daughter’s in Ft Nelson ?? my mom in law. She receives extra care now a medication mask for her lungs.

In a way her life was a lot more interesting than a lot of healthy people I know. And now I know what’s up with the lack of self-victimization and pitying. She saw the good in things instead of grumbling about the unexpected/unfair.

The 2 hour trip to Hanover(?) took 5 hrs—we kept getting lost—I loved it—as we drove around the city I was able to see their lovely brick houses with flower beds out front.

My birthday is April 10^th. Last year Betty my care giver wanted to give me a very special party and invited literally everyone. I spoilt it for them by having a grand seizure on them.

The left hand is still not co-operating. The Dr. told me to use weights so I borrowed my daughter-in-law’s dumbells—When I concentrate I’m alright but a piece of paper just slips out from between the fingers so quickly. That incident happening several times a day is teaching me patience and an understanding of others with similar disabilities especially M.S. patients that attend my special classes for the brain injured.

…which explains the donation to BCACL. My point to all this is…

For years people have been telling me, “it’s 10% what happens to you, 90% how you respond to it.” OK! I GET IT NOW!

Before I get to the part about the basement, I’ll talk about food first. Specifically this smoothie recipe that my health-conscious cousin gave me. When I was at her place on the Winter Solstice, she gave me a smoothie that was almost a lunch substitute because it was so filling. She doesn’t drink milk, not even soy milk (allergic), and never eats refined sugar. What would she possibly have put into the smoothie then?

• 2 cup frozen berries
• 1 cup fresh berries
• 1 tsp peanut butter
• 1/2 avocado
• spinach or kale (not much)
• organic apple juice to cover

It’s surprisingly good…turns out the avocado acted as the dairy substitute.

Beginning Friday, I started cleaning out my junk from the basement. I had piles and piles of papers and stuff that I didn’t want to throw away a decade ago. My mom always told me to keep my homework so I could “review” it. Never did, of course. I decided to keep a few pages for handwriting samples though. I found some Hello Kitty collages, other unfinished craft projects, and HUGE amount of lanyard. With all this “art supplies” I decided to fish it out of the trash for card making purposes…which is to say you might get cards from me that incorporate parts that would have been used for bicycle streamers that were once all the rage in the 90s. Looking through all this stuff makes me glad that I’m an adult. I believe I kept a lot of junk because I believed that if I threw it out or used it all up, I would never be able to do/make certain things anymore. Now I know a lot (if not all) of this stuff is SOLD CHEAPLY IN STORES. Why didn’t anyone tell me that earlier?

Looking at all this arts and crafts supplies, I also remember my OCD perfectionist tendencies and lack of organizing skills and final motor skills to satisfy them. I expected my hands to be able to work like a machine, to be able to draw perfect curves, make perfect cuts, and glue seamlessly. It was a source of major frustration since the time I attempted to cut out 9 butterlies with Crayola scissors when I was 4(?). Later studies showed that those Crayola scissors are unable to cut through 9 pieces of paper at once. My goal in life at that point was to make Beautiful Things, which is not unlike the kind of person I am today.  Instead of trying to replicate machinery, I just use them.

My mom kept a box full of correspondence and cards in a box.  I thought I would reorganize them…and take out all the stamps.  My mom’s friends were actually very creative.  I found three pages written in Chinese calligraphy.  One of those pages was written to me.  On the top it said “TO CLERA,” and then she wrote me up to down and rtl, numbers in Chinese.  Haha.  Someone else (don’t know who) wrote my mom a poem using her name.

Talk about talented.  Catherine asked me if the poem was any good, and all I can tell you about it is this…

Me: If your Honger friends come over, they’ll be wondering why you have a poem about your mom up on the wall

Nathan: Mamee didn’t write it.

Me: I said “ABOUT your mom”

Dad: She can’t even write that good [sic].

So I guess it was good.

My aunt downstairs wrote to my mother in Chinglish.  Examples:

“Chinese Chinese Chinese Clara Chinese Chinese Chinese…”

“Chinese Chinese Chinese Chinese enjoy?”

“Anyway!  Chinese Chinese etc. …”

She wasn’t the only one either.  People used “D” to imitate the spoken form of “de” [Mandarin, like “wan wan DE yue liang”].  So it would be like

“Chinese Chinese Vancouver D Chinese Chinese..”

Now here are some post cards of Hong Kong, somewhere in China, Florida, some German speaking country dating from the late 80s to early 90s

Some of the stationary her friends used had nice unusual Engrish phrases, but they’re not so bad.

These friends of hers must have been really close because postage costed as much as a cheeseburger from McDonald’s.  Which one would you rather have?  Haha.  Also love what they stamped on top of the stamp…

I found some mail for me in a separate pile.  These are things long gone, time far passed…

Telly the golden retriever died suddenly one day.  I think it was cancer.  Telly was replaced by another golden retriever named Jet.

The second anniversary of Aunt Nela’s death is tomorrow.  I think it was a brain related disease.  She is not replaced by anyone. I found her obituary on the internet.  Apparently she had a large extended family, as well as a large estate that was sold for a good amount last year.  Someone took the time to renovate the basement before selling it.  Photos of the 6 bedroom, 5 bathroom house are on the internet and now I know what kind of space she moved around in.  No wonder she kept misplacing my letters.  Before she died she donated to the British Columbia Association for Community Living.  The internet doesn’t say much more about her.