Quickie

A short little video of the Big Yam's Cantonese in action.  He says the numbers 8 and 9 and his intonation is actually pretty good!  He doesn't actually know what they mean - it's rote memorization.

Fin.

X-Men: I *heart* Michael Fassbender

As my sister so dutifully noted, I neglected to review X-Men: First Class yesterday. We watched it on Saturday at the local Geneseo theatre. My capsule review: I love Michael Fassbender. And that's enough for me. Look, we're in summer movie mode, the time for heavy thinking is not upon us. Now is the time to watch things explode and see awesome CGI and weep a million tears for one Severus Snape. I had minor quibbles with the film (namely, that some of the mutants had weak-a** powers, like Zoe Kravitz's "Angel" whose mutant power was to be a sexy flying stripper that spits venom), but as an origin story reboot, it was entertaining. McAvoy and Fassbender make for a convincing Xavier and Magneto respectively, although I find Fassbender so compelling I would watch him gazing stonily at a wall for the better part of 2 hours. And he's a blondie! So uncharacteristic. Now, if only he could find himself cast in the Hunger Games movie, my life would be complete.

This is what's amazing about having crew in Hong Kong. Big D's sister, Auntie Mimi got the Big Yam a carved jade (or something) stamp with his Chinese name on it!!! Best. Present. Ever. Behold:

So freakin' bada**! Other good things about Hong Kong crew (and the fact that my mum and Big D just came back from there): hilarious FOB gear. Pictured below, a series of smock/bibs with hilarious "English" like "camot" for "carrot" (courtesy of Favorite Food, top left) and "You Haile Make Me Happy!!!" (bottom left). Not pictured: "I *heart* Sweet Cakes" (with pictures of various sweet cakes) and this other one that has a bunch of burgers and hot dogs smilingly looking out at you. Best! The other best thing is that the Dotytron fully supports dressing the Big Yam like a giant FOB. Whatta guy!

Our goal is to craft the Boobla in the image of our favorite street kid (not a homeless kid, a kid on our street), George. Who is the happiest littlest ESL gaffer you've ever met. He's got a shock of that super-straight, Sonic the Hedgehog jet black hair and is tended to by his grandma and is always just bopping around like he doesn't have a care in the world, wearing monochromatic sweat suits festooned with cutsey animals with astigmatism. We don't get to see him very much, but when we do, the Dotytron and I are always super-happy. It's the sign of a lucky day.

Soooo...plans are afoot for the second annual Street Party and I'm determined not to miss it this year, come hell or high water. Here's the rub: it is tentatively scheduled for the same day as our Supper Club friend's kid's 1 year birthday. Is it bad that I want to skip it and send a nice present and card in our stead? I don't wanna miss the Street Party two years in a row!!! Not when there's an opportunity to show my pot luck supremacy and for the Dotytron to set up a djing rig and rent music gear! There's going to be bbqing and salads and desserts and sprinklers and arts and crafts and other fun times things that I want to be around for. Please tell me I can skip the 1 year old birthday party!!!!!! Pleeeeease???

I personally find it a little buck to go over the top for a 1 year old. They don't remember shiaat! This is probably exacerbated by the fact that we don't have the space to host people for a big to-do and planning an excursion-type birthday party is the pits. Realistically, for the Big Yam, we'll probably just book the private room at Asian Legend and just have immediate family and his guardians...I'm not looking for presents for the little guy, so I'm fine with doing a low key something this year. Although, we did notice while visiting with my sister and the relative toy-riches enjoyed by Little Big Cuz that the Big Yam is being deprived in the playthings department. Like, he doesn't even have a ball. I'm going to fix that shortly.

Last night's dinner, was whole wheat macaroni with peas, lemon, mint, and crème fraiche, alongside a salad of roasted Ontario asparagus atop mixed greens with a roasted garlic-mustard vinaigrette:

Tonight I'm skipping class in favour of spending my time more productively (setting up my bike trailer! Oh...and doing legitimate school work from home. Oh...and watching Game of Thrones) and we're eating a vegetable coconut curry with steamed brown rice (pics to follow).

Fin.

This is a throwdown...

Look at this little toughie, in his camo hoodie:

The effects of the toughie are mitigated in the following photo, when he's a chastened lion with teary eyes:

That article I was commenting about has certainly blown up on the interwebs! The debate and discourse around it has been very polarizing, and extremely interesting (possibly more interesting than the article itself). My sister has just read the book from which the article was excerpted (apparently without the author's input, see here). That article there goes more in depth with Chua and discusses how the excerpt in the WSJ glosses over her own journey in realizing that the "Tiger" methods she employed might have been to her detriment - and it is in trying to force them on her willful, stubborn and feisty second daughter (first daughter was dutiful and compliant) that she comes to realize this.

The San Francisco Gate article also discusses how it's important not to essentialize "Chinese" vis-a-vis "Western" which I think is a point that's so obvious, there's no point even mentioning it. I also think a lot of the furor over the WSJ article (especially the hysteria over how Chua's methods constitute "child abuse") are based on a willful misreading - I thought that her self-deprecating, rueful tone came through loud and clear. There wasn't a single point when I read it as proscriptive.

Ultimately, I find the whole discourse around the article to be the most fascinating and revealing thing. People feel so judged in reference to their own parenting styles - it reveals the not-so latent anxieties about parenting and parenting as manifestation of self that bubble beneath the surface. Parenting as competitive sport?

All that being said, my sister has been reading the full memoir and came down on the side that (as is always the case) the entire story is way more nuanced than that itty bitty excerpt indicates and that Chua comes across as way more cray-cray AND way less cray-cray than the discourse would have you believe. I think I'm going to suggest it as my next book club title. Our current theme for the next meeting is marriage - why not follow that up with parenting?

I would also like to clarify that my parent's parenting style isn't really "Tiger" in the strictest sense. My mum and Big D kind of created their own idiosyncratic, inconsistently applied, and ad-hoc version of parenting-by-proxy. They both worked very hard and there were definitely times when I felt neglected and overlooked. I don't think they really knew how to parent me - but as in all things and with all cases, you try your best with what you know. Luckily I'm the most self-reliant person, like, ever, so I flourished in that environment, but there were moments of my childhood that were miserable and filled with boredom as a direct result of their hodgepodge of irrational rules and class issues. I also count on my siblings. S-dawg, my sister and I (C-hova was a late addition to the party and the rules were considerably different by the time he came along) were three kids who were largely left to raise ourselves and make up our own rules in the absence of emotional guidance from the elders in our life. I think the reason we turned out the way we did (and by that I mean, exceptionally well) is because we had and still have each other, and a whole wack of crazy stories about our off-the-wall upbringing.

In the end, until I write my own memoirs, it is too hard to distill and condense my own reflections on my upbringing and attribute the complexities of my eventual self to one style of parenting or another. I think the degree of wackadoo-ness in your childhood reminisces is ultimately the symbol of how far from "Western" that you strayed, but that's always in relation to an idyllic, imagined, floating-signifier "Western" that is more always going to be more construction than fact.

Last night we had S-dawg and his gf over for dinner. I made a very controversial S-dawg meal, in that it was vegetarian and not from Milestone's or Moxie's. We had those black bean & spelt burgers with rosemary sweet potato and regular potato oven fries with chili mayo:

Ladies and gentlemen, throw out all your other brownie recipes, because if you're a fan of disgustingly rich, dense, dark, and fudgy brownies, then the baked brownie is for you. The recipe is all over the internets, but I'll post it below. So for dessert I made brownie sundaes with warmed up baked brownie, a scoop of vanilla ice cream, salted caramel sauce, and whipped cream:

Now we're headed up to Markham to drop off the Boobla with my parents while we have AYCE Korean BBQ & Japanese sushi at Chako with R & R and Bwong.

fin.

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The Baked Brownie

Makes a 9x13" pan, from there, it's up to you how crazy you go with it in terms of serving size

1 1/4 c. all purpose flour

1 t. salt

2 T. dark cocoa powder

11 oz. bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped

1 c. (2 sticks) unsalted butter, cut into pieces

1 t. instant espresso powder

1 1/2 c. sugar

1/2 c. brown sugar

5 large eggs

2 t. vanilla extract

- preheat oven to 350 F. Butter the sides and bottom (I use cooking spray) of a 9x13 glass

- in a bowl, whisk the flour, salt, and cocoa powder together

- melt the chocolate, butter, and instant espresso powder in a bowl together (your choice, I do it in the microwave, you can do it in a double boiler if you want to make more work for yourself) until the chocolate and butter are melted and smooth. Stir in the sugars, whisk until everything is combined.

- add the eggs to the chocolate mixture and whisk until combined. Then add the vanilla and stir. Do not overbeat the batter!

- Add the flour mixture, and stir until almost all the flour is incorporated (some streaking is okay).

- Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake in the middle of the oven (rotating halfway through) for about 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out with moist crumbs attached (note: in my oven it took closer to 45 minutes). Check them frequently! Over-baking is a brownie's worst enemy.

- Cool, cut and serve.

- On the off chance that there's anything left, they will keep in a tightly covered container...but it's really in your best interests to eat them as soon as you can.

loves me a good deal

score! so you know how i was talking about how redonkulously expensive those glass doorknobs were at the door store? i told my colleague and she sent me a link to a bucket of glass knobs that just got deposited at the habitat for humanity restore in north york. people and businesses make donations of new and gently used stuff to the restores, which they sell at discounted prices. they had a heap of knobs for $25/set!!!

so i sent the dotytron and he snagged 5 for us...for the same price (actually, much less) than we would have paid for ONE at the door store! wooee! now we just have to buy the rosettes and latches - i found a guy on ebay selling retrofit sets including rosettes and latches in a variety of finishes for $25 USD/set...but we're still going to see if home depot or lowe's has any first. SO ACES! so we're going to get the entire thing done for less than $60/door which i can totally live with. $180 door when you have cheap doors is just silly. i think they're going to look pretty amazing when we have them set up.

the colour of our dining room is starting to drive me kind of crazy...i really want to repaint it, but i'll probably be sensible and wait until we have our kitchen done (a year or two? depending on when i win the lottery?):

this is the kind of colour i'm going for. i think that kind of rich, jewel tone will look lovely against the deep purple in the living room and provide a gorgeous backdrop to bring out the tones in the sideboard and will make the white accents in the room (the chairs, the centrepiece) really pop.

okay...so here's the annoying thing about the dudes on my dodgeball team (the dudes and ladies) which you might be able to chalk up to the fact that they're young, but mostly due to the fact that they're dummies. so i put together this dancehall, hip-hoppy mix of tunes with some ragga jungle thrown in to get the team (read: me and doty) pumped. there's been some controversy because s-dawg has been playing his mix which includes your standard kind of stadium fist-pumpers along with the theme from "rocky" (the orchestral theme), which when it came on, totally through two members of the team (they're young girls) for a loop and they were all like, *curled lip* "WHAT IS THIS?!" and being all snarky and one of them turned it off, even though the dotytron and s-dawg were getting all hype because they've actually SEEN "rocky" (i haven't, but i don't get ruffled by the tunes that people play during dball, generally. like, most of the time my team when they play on sundays plays really stupid metal and i just shrug it off.)

ANYWAY, sister nancy's "bam bam" comes on:



and AGAIN the two girls are curling their lips (p.s. one of them DOESN'T EVEN PLAY DBALL AND IS THE GIRLFRIEND OF ONE OF THE PLAYERS AND IS LIKE AN ELEVENTEEN YEAR OLD WHO WORKS RETAIL - NOT THAT THERE'S ANYTHING INTRINSICALLY WRONG WITH THAT) and asking incredulously, "what IS this?!?" like they've NEVER HEARD DANCEHALL or reggae or music made by black people before.

and i'm like, b***h, SHUT IT. it's infuriating. like, i don't expect everyone to know EVERYTHING, ça c'est impossible. i get it. but you don't have to be all like, "what is this freak music for jerks" about it, when really IT JUST SHOWS THAT YOU are a small-minded, sheltered weirdo from HICKSVILLE, WHITEYTOWN! (your standard caveats about context, blah blah blah) like, there's an opinion about music after having listened to it and giving it a chance and then there's just showing your ignorance and being a jerk about it.

like, how come i can take the time to know what fleet foxes and ok go and tragically hip and ALL THAT OTHER CRAP I THINK IS THE WORSTEST sounds like, so that i can say, "you know what? it's not my thing" but you can ONLY know the tragically hip and think all songs written by non white hairy dudes that aren't derivative to the max is "weird"? COME ON. and as usual, HAVE YOU MET YOU?

and then the dotytron told me that when then this tune came on:



and one of the tithead girls comes running up and is like, "i know this! it's sean paul!" and was all crestfallen when she realized it wasn't dance mix 2005. not that there's anything wrong with sean de paul. but they're BABIES. who DON'T KNOW ANYTHING. and most egregiously, DON'T KNOW THAT THEY DON'T KNOW ANYTHING AND MASK THEIR PROFOUND AND TOTAL IGNORANCE WITH DISGUST.

gah. it just makes you feel old. but i mean, i don't think there should be an age limit on being as well-rounded as you can be. there's no time when it's okay not to be curious about stuff.

yesterday's meals were all about the poultry and fries. my colleage T took me to lunch at this place on yonge called the coach house which is the kind of old fashioned diner-type places with vinyl seats, an ancient cash register up at the front, and formica tables and where they serve the classics like hot turkey sandwiches on white bread with boiled veggies and fries with real chunks of turkey and fake gravy. it was awesome. we went halfsies on the club and hot turkey and ate fries and i was stuffed. then after dodgeball we met up with old kitchen friends of mine M and F who are married and ate duff's wings and fries for dinner. i worked with M at bymark but he got out of the business and now does landscaping and F is the sous chef at george and is trying to get out of the business or at least reduce the hours/time spent in the kitchen. it's a hard mentality to break. only working 10 hours days instead of 12+ and leaving at a reasonable time and not feeling guilty when you say goodbye to the other line cooks that you know still have 6 hours of service and clean up ahead of them.

tonight we're heading up to markham to visit with my sis and the kids, sans outlaw bro. sis is in town to go with s-dawg and myself to my uncle's funeral tomorrow. it's my deadbeat dad's bro. we've only met him a handful of times so i'm feeling a little removed - but it's always sad when people go before their time.

for dinner the dotytron and i are going to phoenix, which is famous for their hainan chicken rice and hk style food (well, this type of restaurant tends to do like, hong kong takes on singaporean and malaysian style food - and hong kong style western food. malaysian curries, ox tongue spaghetti and whatnot.) i'll take a photo of our meal and post it. hainan chicken rice is rice that's been poached in a chicken stock that gets re-used over and over to produce an ultra-flavourful, concentrated stock. the accompanying rice is cooked in a fatty, rich chicken stock resulting in fragrant, perfumed rice with a distinct unctuousness and separate, fluffy grains. it's traditionally served with a piquant ginger-scallion relish for dipping. it's so addictive. totally comfort food all slippery and slightly neutral and gentle on your stomach. the best is now restaurants make the hainan chicken BONELESS. sweet mother of all that is good that was a major step forward in hainan chicken rice preparation.

fin.

if the dotytron and i were amigurumi characters that played ukuleles

...our version of the ventures' "walk don't run" would be like this:



this is u900. i believe they are a band. they have a myspace page and a few precious videos on youtube of them being adorable and japanese. adorably japanese? is there any other kind? well...i guess there's sex surrogate doll-loving japanese. or grown-men-dressed-like-giant-babies japanese.

it's my grandpa's birthday next weekend. because chinese new year is this weekend and there'll be a mass run of every slant-eyed, yellow skin, laundromat owner/railroad builder within a 100km radius of a ho-lee chow on any respectable chinese restaurant of repute and there aren't enough tables on a saturday to accommodate the family and 100+ of my grandpa's closest friends which means that he had to move his birthday dinner to sunday, a night that's not nearly as amenable to my sister, chova, or basically anyone that's NOT a retiree, we're doing a small family birthday dinner for him on the saturday. just family. which is kind of preferable because family tends to get lost in the shuffle of the dog-and-pony-and-sea-cucumber show that is the usual banquet/mah jong fests.

so, the last time we were all together, we cooked up the idea of the family paying for grandpa's birthday meal and US deciding on the menu. we've been calling it "dream menu" night and we're SUPER stoked. everyone gets to pick ONE dish. now, if you know anything about chinese banquet dining - there's a certain rhythm, order, and tradition to things. certain dishes have a semiotic/symbolic significance and there's a certain order and flow to the way the meal unfolds. "dream menu" is blowing all of that outta the water. lol! it's kind of the best. so far the pickings are thus:

little ze: peking duck
chova: shark's fin soup (chova has been eating shark's fin soup since he was a baby)
miss ramona: these fried crab claw things that feature a little nub of crab claw encased in a shrimp filling and then deep fried. her original pick was the WRAPPERS from pot stickers (but they don't serve that at pak fook - the family's go-to restaurant).
the dotytron: curried stuffed crab shells with breadcrumb topping
my sister: 3 egg steamed dish
rico: curried crab
s-dawg: sweet'n'sour pork
me: fried pork riblets with spicy salt

you'll see that we're leaning heavy on the seafood and pork right now. we have NO starches and NO vegetables at the moment and none of the traditional "wow" items to commemorate birthdays. i'm SO PUMPED for "dream menu"!!!

speaking of chinese new year, this year is the year of the tiger. if i was going to have a kid, it'd be pretty awesome if we could have a tiger baby. next year is the year of the rabbit - not as cool, methinks.

this year also marks the first year where, as a married lady, i start being the giver, rather than recipient of lai see, also known to you round-eyes as "lucky money" - the stuff in the red envelopes. G at work was lovely enough to hook me up with some red envelopes and i dragged dr. rei with me to the bank to get some crisp, new bills to stuff them with. i'm supposed to give to the "kids" (read: unmarried people) in my generation and younger, so basically my brothers, and my niece and nephew.

we're doing a chinese new year dinner up in markham on friday night with my family at big mouth kee (aka big d's favorite restaurant in the whole freakin' world). i like being chinese. the dotytron also likes being chinese, which is nice.

fin.