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Tuesday, February 12th On this date last year... "I scare myself sometimes!" After I wrote Saturday's entry, I got it in my head to just DO IT. Paint the smaller room and move in. Clean out my junk, keep only the things I need, make myself mobile. And so... I did!
Saturday night I went to the furniture street hoping to find either a bookshelf for the living room or a closet for the smaller room. Though in vain, it was nice to get out and walk around in the drizzle. Somehow I convinced Shinn to help me with the above, and so Sunday, we spent the day out and about... on his BIRTHDAY! To make a long story short, we painted the room bright YELLOW. I gotta admit, the whole day was a lot of fun, lol! It was nice to hang out with Shinn, a totally laid back kind of guy. =) Shinn is visiting from the bay area, an old colleague of Rene's whom I randomly met last year when I went to visit Rene at his office in downtown San Francisco. When I got back to Taipei, Acer Ginny says to me, "Why do you have a picture of Shinn in your photos?" Turns out that the two of them went to SCHOOL together in Seattle! SHEESH. How much smaller of a world can this be?! Rene and I went to school together over a decade ago at about the farthest point away from Seattle as one can be in the United States of America. Unfortunately, I did not get a picture of Shinn... awww. However, I did get some shots of the all-you-can-eat Thai food that we had for lunch. The food there was REALLY good. The only thing was, as you can see, we had a problem -- make that, we took issue -- with the full-body octopus.
"Chinese New Year traditions..." Per usual... On Monday, all of the relatives that were in town (we were missing a few folks, awww...) got together at Wypoh's house. By 2 p.m., there were 14 people jam-packed into her apartment. Like previous years, most of us made a run for Sogo's Department Store knowing that we were going to be stuck indoors for the rest of the evening (lol). And after that, the rest of the afternoon was preparing for -- you guessed it -- dinner. Cooking for that many people is something of a production. Okay. So I don't cook. BUT! Somehow over the years, I became the designated FAMILY DISHWASHER. And man. We had a lot of dishes. I was washing dishes throughout the time that the food was being cooked... while the slackers started eating (lol)... before the meal was over... and even afterwards while the slackers moved over to the living room to watch t.v. Who me? Passive aggressive? NO! And even before I finished washing the dishes from dinner, Wypoh was standing right behind me, preparing the ingredients for the next stage of our family's CNY tradition -- making dumplings for next morning's breakfast.
One cannot explain in words how very painful it is to have to wake up at 6:30 a.m. on the first day of Chinese New Years to eat a whole bowl full of dumplings -- but this has been done for decades on my mom's side of the family. And, per usual, tradition dictates that we sit at the table by family seniority, so getting everyone seated also took a bit of effort. Those Shangdongnese people. I tell you. After washing all the dishes from breakfast, I made a family announcement that went as follows, "People. I refuse to wash any more dishes. Therefore, no one is allowed to eat lunch today, sorry."
Click on the photo for more pictures... After breakfast this morning, we piled into 3 cars and went to pay our annual visit to the Chung family, now living in Bali. My aunts were telling me that we USED to have to visit them by 5:30 a.m., and I was like, YER CRAZY. We all got what we wanted (hong baos, lol...) and took off just before lunch. My P/L statement for this CNY (NT$):
Money in $2,634 Sigh... Afterwards, Parker and Alex (my cousins) drove me back to Taipei and came up to the apartment to help me move some furniture around. Serendipidity? Well of course, though they have their suspicions, lol. Spent the rest of the day couped up in the apartment, cleaning.
My hands hurt. :<
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