Winter Red - Wishlist

Winter Red by jmers featuring a beret hat

Hansel from Basel Woolrich Tights
$42 - hanselfrombasel.com
Hansel from Basel tights »

Hansel from Basel Snow Snow Tights
$42 - hanselfrombasel.com
Hansel from Basel tights »

Bow Beret
$16 - topshop.com
Beret hat »

Swingline 747 Collectors Edition Stapler, Red
$20 - officemax.com

Rockin Rocket, Rockin Rocket Orly Nail Polish
$7.50 - orlydiva.com

Winter Wonderland, Winter Wonderland Orly Nail Polish
$7.50 - orlydiva.com

Candy Cane Lane, Candy Cane Lane Orly Nail Polish
$7.50 - orlydiva.com

Tray 6 Crimson Umbrella
tray6.com

BeFlurt l Dior "Addict" Ultra-Gloss Reflect: Draped Burgundy 957
beflurt.com

Pucca Alarm Clock
scoop.diamondgalleries.com

Best Summer Films

Cinematical is listing its favorite "summer" films whilst promoting THE WACKNESS (which I saw and really liked -- it was very nostalgic).

The one movie that wasn't listed that I have a strong memory of liking and also set during a hot summer was THE MAN IN THE MOON which was a movie that Reese Witherspoon was in as a child.

I don't entirely remember the summary, but I remember having lots of empathy for Reese's character.

Saying Goodbye

At the precocious age of four, I loved watermelon. I loved watermelon so much I didn't even spit out the seeds and I swallowed them whole. One day, Uncle Steve took me aside and told me those seeds would one day grow into plants and one day vines and fruit will be popping out of every whole in my body. He patted my stomach and put his ear to it and said it was starting to sound like a watermelon was already growing. Wide-eyed and gulping, I took his adult words to be truth and every day I checked my ears and my mouth for any signs of a watermelon plant. I pounded on my stomach and listened for the sounds I knew my mom would listen for when she chose the watermelons at our local grocery store. In my fantasies, watermelons grew off large gnarly trees and as the fear took hold of me days later, I went crying to my mother lamenting that I did not want to grow up to be a watermelon tree. When my mom started laughing I knew I had been tricked and I ignored my delighted and mischievous Uncle Steve for days.

I took my revenge when I discovered his name was "Rong Shen" which to my young ears sounded a lot like "Rou Song", the dried salty pork that my grandmother packed for me for my school lunches. I would dance around and call him dried salty pork until he'd come pick me up and spin me around til I was dizzy and showed me who was really boss.

And that was just the sort of man my uncle was. He loved teasing children and taking advantage of the gullible and he was really, really good at it.

He opened a sandwich shop in downtown Sacramento and I worked there during my holidays and summer breaks. He'd admonish me for putting too much in the sandwiches. He'd let me steal frozen Otis Amos cookies from the freezer and kept it a secret from my mom.

All my life he would bring my aunt and my cousins over to make dumplings, eat hotpot for special occasions or just for fun. He was the relative we called when there was something wrong with our car. He liked to watch Chinese serials and rent blockbuster hits with lots of action. For Christmas one year, we all got together after hot pot and watched STEALTH and he was possibly the only one who thought it was good.

He got hooked on the SOPRANOS and was a little disappointed to hear that I didn't keep up. He'd call me up and make fun of my Chinese and ask me how my car was doing. Ever since he discovered Skype, he'd ring me since he didn't have a cellphone or a long distance plan to call me here in Los Angeles.

On Easter Sunday, March 23 my Uncle Steve passed away at 6pm leaving behind wife, Grace, and their two sons, Michael and Daniel.

APA Sundance Portraits

This post will betray which over encompassing racial group I belong to, but I thought it was a cool exercise by Angry Asian Man to publish photos of Asian Americans who are featured at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival as actors or writer/directors, that I had to share. You can view the post here: FRIDAY PHOTOS: SUNDANCE PORTRAITS.

A friend of mine was telling me about her recent holiday going ons and I think she and her friends had a grand and brilliant idea: rent a ritzy house for the holiday season and stage an elaborate Vanity Fair-esque photo shoot. I know my friends think I'm a bit off my rocker, but I think it would be really fun to get my friends here in Los Angeles to do something similar and then do portraits of each other and do little write ups on what we're all up to. Most of us work in the arts or dabble. Some of us blog or have our own websites. I think it's time that we have enough confidence in ourselves to welcome being written about, to being posted about, to have our faces out there. We're beautiful people with beautiful stories and gifts. We shouldn't be shy about sharing them.

Though maybe I should start by posting my profile in the "About Me" section of this blog...

Soon Tofu

I had soon tofu for the first time my final year of college at some place in a strip mall off of Convoy. Then I never had it again for the next five years. I'm not sure how I lived without it.

BCD Tofu House has been a staple of mine. It's been the Asian comfort food when the daunting drive to the San Gabriel Valley seemed economically unfeasible (where the gas for the trip would cost more for a 3 course meal).

It's nice to finally get a little background on this tasty chain:

Koreatown's Queen of Tofu Stew

The Coffehouse Complex

A little over a half a year ago my friend told me this beautiful story about how a couple she was acquainted with met and fell in love at a coffeehouse. She was the barista and he was the frequent customer. On a critical date of possible love lost (forever), she went to the coffeehouse on her day off to find him which also happened to be his last visit to the coffeehouse before he moved away. She told him she was single. He asked her out. And the rest is lovey dovey history.

My coffeehouse experiences are never quite as romantic or fantastic. They're usually quite mundane: I buy a cup of coffee. I sip it while I read, I pause to people watch and then I get up and go before my meter runs out. This past weekend things were a little out of the ordinary, or at the very least, very peculiar.

I was halfway through my large English breakfast tea when a forty-something petite woman takes the seat next to me. She loudly and intrusively pointed to my former neighbor’s dishes, dirty and piled high, and ask them if they were my own. She made it seem that I should share in the responsibility in finding a waiter to clear that space for her. I could already tell I was an unlucky bystander to what I'd quickly find to be her train wreck of a life.

Apparently, I was a manifestation of a recent wish of hers to meet someone in the "business" so she could get traction on a script she was writing. She told me that this weekend she intended to come and told herself that she would definitely manifest a meeting. Carefully gauging how much tea I had left and calculating in my head how much time was left in my meter, I glanced around the crowded cafe for an escape route. Too much tea left, too mnay quarters invested in the meter, and an overcrowded café mad escaping seem quite impossible and penny foolish.

Then it got personal. Suddenly I was engaged in a conversation about how women with children thought single women were selfish when really (really) they were the selfish ones getting boob jobs or taking fancy trips before even putting their own children through college. Then we got really personal when I was sharing this pint size woman's pain of being in love with a man who was still in love with his ex. By the way, that day happened to be his birthday that day and he (rather rudely in this poor girl's opinion) left her to manifest a meeting with me at a cafe instead of taking her to Vegas with him.

I breathed a sigh of relief as I gulped the last of my tea and as politely as I could took my leave.

And as boring as my previous cafe outings were, I realize I can live with not meeting my prince charming if I could just drink my coffee (or tea) in peace.