baba ganoush and melon pie

I had a recurring date with Emo-tastic A today. Since I’ve gotten back, we’ve been getting together fairly often to have smoothies, play Wii and watch awesome movies (ie. the Lives of Others). And today, Shopping-loving M was in the neighbourhood (actually in the neighbourhood, and not the strange stalking excuse) so she dropped by as well. It worked out well because since last Friday, my parents have been suspicious of A and me being together alone… which is probably a left-over instinct from my days with Big D and completely unfounded. But nevertheless, having another female presence makes things easier.

After the requisite Wii games (Mario Party 8!) and movie (The Emperor’s New Groove!), A went back home, leaving M and I to our own devices. Naturally, we wanted to cook. Baba ganoush. And a Melon Mousseline. The baba ganoush was something I’ve seen on TLC’s Take Home Chef (Aussie cook == hot sex) and felt right as I had an eggplant in the house. The Melon Mousseline… well, because I have about 4 watermelons in the basement.

End results: delicious baba ganoush (as with many dishes, it just needed a bit more salt), 4 hours of chatting with M about life, love and relationships (it was pretty much like an Oprah show with a bit of Gossip Girl), and a Mousseline that wasn’t quite mouse.

I’ve discovered that I’m not such a great cook. But hey, I just need some practice right? When I get my own place… which is just next academic year really, when I’ll live in an LLC suite, I’m seriously thinking of hosting a day-long party, every month, just to get friends to come over to talk, to cook, and of course, to eat. ALL DAY LONG. (You’re jealous already, aren’t you?)

they gets no respect

Here’s an old SAT analogy:

Business majors are to Economics majors what Engineers are to Physicists.

blast from the past 2.0

In an incomprehensible and bold move, I dashed into my mother’s closet and took back my box of Big D things. It was stupid, perhaps, especially if she notices. But it was… necessary? It was strange to have two years of my love life sitting at the bottom of her closet, underneath her pantyhose and leather handbags.

I think it will be necessary, also, for me to actually get rid of all these stuff sometime in the future. Like, throw it away, or bury it… (burning it would be too angry…!) Do I need to get rid of what remains of us in order to move on? (or rather, did he get rid of his box of my things?)

As I was organizing the contents of the box, I couldn’t help but remember specific things we did. I still had such a photographic memory of what he gave me over the two years: a business card holder when I got my first summer desk job, a tile from Mexico with our number on it, a t-shirt that read “I <3 my physics geek”. We kept a notebook throughout much of our relationship, kind of like a diary to one another, because we didn’t see each other as nearly often as we wanted to. He wrote things like “I hope you don’t cheat on me in Taiwan…” and “I can’t until we live together; learning from a hot girl is a lot better than learning from a sheet of paper.”

I couldn’t help but ask stupid, instinctive questions to myself like, “How could something like that turn into something that it is now?” Big D and I haven’t written to each other in weeks, haven’t spoken in months, much less seen each other. I know that he has lost the desire to stay in touch, much less spend some time to travel to see me.

It always takes two people to start a relationship, but only one to end it.

lost in translation

Those of us who understand English and French, or Chinese and French, should appreciate the following traduction.

While this is clearly a pack of peanuts (as stated in both Chinese and English), the French translation somehow pegs it as bag of salted cheese. Neither of the two ingredients (cheese or salt) is present in the ingredients list. Furthermore, the French gramma here is just abysmal, as “fromage” is a masculine word and therefore the accent should have been on the first “e” in “salé”.

Wow. Just… wow.

on love, music, and the love of music

It appears that I will be missing two (2!) great concerts as I leave the West for the East. Death Cab for Cutie is in Montreal on June 6th, a mere 3 days after I leave, and Reel Big Fish is showing up for the Warped Tour sometime this July. As I’m typing that last line, I feel somewhat like a phony, because I’m really not that hardcore of a music fan. Come to think of it, I think I would almost rather stay home alone (or with someone close) and listen to their CDs on 300$ headphones.

I’ve only really been to two concerts all my life. Both of them were for Reel Big Fish and both of them were with Big D. The first was in April of 2006. We had been together for about 10 months then, and my friends surprised us with two tickets for our birthdays (which happen to be in the same month). It was also the first night we spent together… and oddly enough, it wasn’t as awkward as typical relationship scenario would usually dictate it to be. The second concert was in Paris, where we spent many a-night together. (It was also the first time a lesbian hit on me, but that’s another story).

He’s gone to two more Reel Big Fish concerts. Once right after he cheated on me, during the summer of 2007. Once just recently (as he told me via e-mail) at a small place in Ithaca. I sometimes wonder if he misses going to concerts with me. I also sometimes wonder if… I will be able to enjoy a Reel Big Fish concert as much as I have without him skanking by my side. It’s a strange thing, to relate concerts to him, because I’m hesitante to start going to them alone, or with someone new.

I was planning on visiting the underground ska scene in New York, but safety concerts (um… roofies?!) and lack of time deterred me from visiting venues. But Beijing is looking promising, because we’ll be a bunch of Westernized kids looking for things to do every night. There is this club, D22, looks promising, who knows? Because… oh, those summer nights!

standing date

Montreal reeks of Big D and me. We spent many a good times here, and it’s impossible to go through a day in the city without thinking “I remember when D and I did [this] here.” I think one of the things I miss most is just… doing things. Little things, routine things, everything together. We were a weird couple like that: joined at the hip and never sick of each other. It was really interesting because I could always count on him to be free to go do something strange or outrageous with me. Or just something low-key like cook breakfast together and enjoy a good meal.

I was supposed to have a brunch get-together with S, C, and Emo-tastic A today. I hadn’t seen S and C since winter break, and I really wanted to catch up on things and ask them about their impending South Asia backpacking trip. So, like the eager-beaver nerd that I am, I went to pick up groceries and drew up a brunch “menu” for us to enjoy. Well, turns out that they all have shifts in the early afternoon and none of them realized that I was pretty far (public transit-wise) from their work places. (Although I did specifically ask if C would have prefered a brunch at a restaurant closer to her workplace). In any case, it got me kind of down. And kind of wishing Big D was still here. He’d come, and we would have a blast making kiwi-blueberry-mango, yogurt-less smoothies.

knowledge == sexy

I was out in Chinatown today, hanging with S, D, and Emo-tastic A while enjoying some very good L2 bubble tea. Suddenly, we started talking about… sex? porn? Nip/Tuck? And S chimed in a with “Hey, didn’t you once tell me that you thought people with knowledge were sexy?”

It was interesting because I hadn’t seen S in nearly 2 or 3 years. He is 2 years younger than me, someone who I’d met through band, back in the day. We have a comfortable sister/brother relationship and I totally love hanging out with him. It’s interesting because maybe I haven’t changed very much after all. It’s true that I find knowledge very sexy, and that kind of comment isn’t really far from the recent discovery that raw talent is equally sexy.

blast from the past

Almost one year ago, my parents and I had a huge trans-continental fight where I basically had to promise not to see Big D ever again (which worked out well, since we had broken up anyhow). My mom had gone into my closet and found my box of Big-D things (letters, gifts, stupid trinkets I’ve saved from our dates), which prompted her to call my dad and me in Singapore and the rest is history. When I came back, I assumed that she had the box of items in her possession…. but she told me that she had thrown it all out. I was pretty much devastated…

So today, I was helping my mother find something in her closet and I stumbled on the box of Big D things! I mean, even she probably forgot that she had kept it in her closet all this time and lied to me. I totally freaked out. It was kinda weird… now I feel strange knowing that 2 years of my love life is sitting in her closet. I don’t particularly want to go get it back because 1) she’ll start wailing on me again about dating a white guy and 2) because I have no particular inclination to relive that period of my life through mementos.

raw talent

My friends on the Table Tennis team stole this for me:

… because I thought he was incredibly cute and was obsessing for a while. Later, upon closer inspection and after experiencing my friends’ disbelief & mockery, I’ve come to realize that isn’t that physically attractive. But rather… that it was his awesome, AWESOME table tennis skills that got me.

This is comforting in some ways, and really not that novel in others. Socially, women have always been attracted to men with talent,  or power (or both), while men seemed to go for the pure physical attributes of the other sex. It’s good to know that I’m perhaps not attracted only to people themselves (ie. Big D), but rather to the skills or talent that make them who they are (ie. physics, pilot, swimming)… It’s comforting to know that it’s looking more like I am only in love with the idea of him… and ideas are can be more easily replaced than people.

On the other hand, as a girl of modest looks and awesome talents (and modest, too!), I seem to be at a sexual disadvantage. No wonder I’m mostly single.

there’s no place like home

Thursday, at noon, marked the end of my Freshman career. Pretty epic, huh? It really just happened so quickly that I’m not sure I did anything substantial, much less everything I wanted to do. I spent the next couple of days fitting my room - or rather, a year of my life - into boxes. My entire Freshman year: fears, joys, tears, struggles and laughter, all fit into the back of one Acura SUV.

There is always a strange transition period for me every time I return home. Living in residence and having half of my stuff in Montreal plays with my sense of independence somewhat; it’s like a limbo between the kid I used to be and the adult I’ve become. I gather that my feelings of anxiety and … stagnancy are somewhat different from the average American students. It’s curious how the ‘College Culture’ of Canada and USA differ so much. Most of my friends are still living at home, going to McGill, in a city in which they have pretty much stayed since they were born. Whenever I step back into la belle province, it feels like I travel back in time…. my house is the same, my friends are the same… have I really changed at all?

The transition, however, is always less anxious or bumpy than I anticipate. It just feels so natural to be in this city that I know so well; a city that has been so good to me since my arrival nearly 13 years ago.