3/15
Day 11, the ides of March. Tonight is the Tong spring banquet. I don't think I have lei duty this year ... maybe they conned someone else into doing it or just cheaped out. Finally, I just get to attend and eat. Today I ate .. uh ... powdered donuts. Adn a vegetarian pizza that I made myself. Well, I chopped the vegetables, anyway.
I got this forward from one of the teachers at work, entitled "As I've Matured." As in, "As I've matured I've learned that it takes years to build up trust, and it only takes suspicion, not proof, to destroy it. As I've matured, I've learned that you can keep vomiting long after you think you've finished."
It's great.
p.m. -- Eugene's Brother's third Tong Banquet. It was kind of ghetto this year, maybe we're still recovering financially from last year's centennial SB at Hawaiian Village. But I would never miss a Tong SB, not even if we held it at Golden Duck or Zippy's or something. This year we were at New Empress (which used to be China Plaza, and before that it was (Old) Empress.) We used to always have these at Wo Fat or Old Empress. I think the last one we had at Old Empress was 96 or 97. I remember being there with my boyfriend at the time, he had a great time checking out all the Narcissus girls and telling me that one day I should run for something like that. Then it was nothing for awhile, and then it was China Plaza. The food was really good when it was China Plaza. A bunch of places have closed down (Sea Fortune, Yong Sing), leaving New Empress with a nice sort-of monopoly on society (Tong) banquets. Too bad the food sucks.
At dinner I ate a lot of broccoli and a lot of choy sum, missed out on a lot of yummies, like shrimp, and beef from the taro basket, and jellyfish from the cold platter. I'm starting to miss chicken but that's about it. I'm doing OK.
I didn't have to lei anyone, I don't think they even bought leis this year. They used to get this huge box of orchid leis from Violets and recognize all the officers, directors, past presidents, and guests, which added up to dozens and dozens of people. This other girl and I would have to run around the restaurant flinging leis on them like a ring toss game and going back for more. Of course even without the leis last night there was a hefty 45-minute delay in the beginning, something about the sound system not working? In the end all the entertainment sounded like it was coming out of a My First Sony anyway, so I don't know why they bothered. I love the Tong, even if it is so Chinese that we only pay for a nontacky party once every hundred years.
3/16
Day 12. that's it? It's only been 12 days? Anyway, I ate fish today. Salmon. Twice. We went to New Eagle for breakfast after church, and I had the Japanese breakfast (shioyaki with miso soup.) I guess I could have had pancakes, but I prefer salty things for breakfast if I have the option of eating something other than oatmeal. Then, for dinner at my aunty's senior living dining room, I had salmon again. (It was that or prime rib, because it's Sunday.) I'm kind of grossed out at the thought of any more fish for awhile, though both salmons were tasty. Back to the vegetables.
I like that retirement place. If I needed a job or had time to volunteer, I might apply there. My mom thinks I have a slight problem with old people and death and related topics but I think she mistakes purposeful distance for fear. Sometimes I keep my distance from people or things because I like to observe them without beign a part of what's going on. I love having dinner in that dining room because I can listen to so many conversations going on around me. Old people have a lot of interesting things to say. Most of the fiction I've written (yep, I'm counting the unfinished stuff too) has an elderly central character.
I think I attended my first funeral when I was three or four -- my grandfather's. My parents know a lot of old people; I go to funerals maybe not all the time as I was about to say, but enough to not be weirded out by death or open caskets or burials. They never said we were going somewhere I might get scared or be uncomfortable. They never danced around the fact that the guy up there wasn't sleeping, he was dead. They never excluded me from the viewing. With my family most funerals are reunions where you eat jelly donuts and chat with people you haven't seen in a long time. The problem I have with death is the problem most people have with it: it's inescapable. Not unusual. I do have to admit I handled my grandmother's funeral all wrong. I made it through the eulogy, I made it through the sermon. Then my cousin, the family's one accomplished musician, played this really simple, beautiful song on the piano that she had written herself for Popo, and all of a sudden I was crying (everyone was) -- but I managed to stop. It was kind of like slamming on the brakes when you're coasting downhill -- dangerous and bad for the car. But I did it, and after that I felt stopped-up and broken for awhile, and so angry that I had wasted that time in the church, when everyone had come together to feel, and I thought handling it meant not feeling.
Yeah.
That's my two cents on death and dying for tonight. There's plenty more where it came from, but I have to go back to the WebBoard. I'm working on responses to postings and I'm trying to type "musubi" but everytime I try it (including that last time right there) I type mususbi or musibi or musibui. (I'm responding to a posting on math lessons with Sandi Takayama's "Musubi Man.") Argh. Argh.