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This trip contained several firsts for me: getting to meet ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
yeloson and badgerbag, doing karaoke, and accurately translating an unsubtitled Chinese drama. The last will be covered in a later post.
Oyce has an even more detailed report up on Armageddon and karaoke.
Oyce persuaded me to do karaoke withyhlee, yuneicorn, and ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-syndicated.gif)
rilina. I drank several shots of plum wine to get up the nerve into the mood. Shortly afterward I was rapping Eminem’s “Without Me,” apparently memorably enough that when the same song played days later in the car, both Oyce and Yoon exclaimed, “It’s your song!”
It was great fun and I’d do it again, as long as it’s also in a private room and not a public bar. I now know that Andrew Lloyd Webber and Queen are good for karaoke, and that “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” and “Desperado” are much harder to sing than one might think. So is the tongue-twisting song from Utena. In fact that one is nearly impossible unless you’re Yoon.
On Sunday I metyeloson and badgerbag! (Separately.)
yeloson showed me some of his martial art, Penjak Silat. It’s very beautiful and intriguing. I was especially interested in the knife fighting techniques, which are different from anything I’ve ever seen before.
We then went to a Hong Kong style café, which had things on the menu I’d never seen before, like “sea coconut” (not sure what that it – possibly related to the “vegetable of the ocean” I failed to identify in Japan,) toast with condensed milk and peanut butter (very Hong Kong, said Oyce), and a mysterious dessert item whose name I didn’t note down. I asked the waiter, and he said it was frog eggs! “Good for the complexion,” he added. (Hopefully not prompted by observation of my complexion.)
“I guess it’s hypocritical of me to be grossed out by the frog eggs, considering that I eat fish eggs,” I said.
“They’re just like tapioca,” suggested Oyce.
“I’ve never liked tapioca,” I said. “It reminds me too much of frog eggs.”
We had rice with preserved meats and bok choy, unagi with melted cheese (!) over rice, a chicken and cheese dish, and a beef and egg dish. And for dessert, egg cakes (not as good as in Taiwan), mango pudding, and black rice with mango and coconut cream. If I lived in the neighborhood, I would be at that café all the time.
We then metbadgerbag and her family. I was thrilled to discover that she has read many of the very obscure books that I thought no one else ever has, like Sydney van Scyoc, many old girls-at-boarding-school books, and the lovely just-barely-fantasy House of Thirty Cats, by Mary Stolz. ETA: Mary Calhoun, not Mary Stolz.
We attempted to explain the plot of Vonda McIntyre’s Superluminal to Oyce, which badgerbag possesses in a very colorful 70s hardcover edition. “People with regular hearts can’t be spaceship pilots because it kills them, so they have to have their hearts removed and replaced with artificial ones. The heroine falls in love with this guy who wasn’t qualified to be a pilot, but it turns out that his regular heart is incompatible with her artificial one, so his heart nearly stops every time they have sex. Not in a metaphoric, good way. So it’s very tragic. Oh, and there’s killer whales.” Then, as if there wasn't enough crack already, we sicced Gundam Wing on her.
There we saw a mother raccoon and several adorable baby raccoons, which live under their deck. It was dusk, a magical moment. In hushed voices, we tried to figure out how many babies there were.
“There were three,” saidbadgerbag. “But sometimes they die.”
“Way to break the mood!” someone said.
“It’s true,” saidbadgerbag, and proceeded to break it further. “Last year one of them died and stunk so much we couldn’t live in the house for three weeks. I was like, ‘Rot faster!’”
yeloson and badgerbag, doing karaoke, and accurately translating an unsubtitled Chinese drama. The last will be covered in a later post.Oyce has an even more detailed report up on Armageddon and karaoke.
Oyce persuaded me to do karaoke with
yhlee, yuneicorn, and rilina. I drank several shots of plum wine to get It was great fun and I’d do it again, as long as it’s also in a private room and not a public bar. I now know that Andrew Lloyd Webber and Queen are good for karaoke, and that “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” and “Desperado” are much harder to sing than one might think. So is the tongue-twisting song from Utena. In fact that one is nearly impossible unless you’re Yoon.
On Sunday I met
yeloson and badgerbag! (Separately.)yeloson showed me some of his martial art, Penjak Silat. It’s very beautiful and intriguing. I was especially interested in the knife fighting techniques, which are different from anything I’ve ever seen before. We then went to a Hong Kong style café, which had things on the menu I’d never seen before, like “sea coconut” (not sure what that it – possibly related to the “vegetable of the ocean” I failed to identify in Japan,) toast with condensed milk and peanut butter (very Hong Kong, said Oyce), and a mysterious dessert item whose name I didn’t note down. I asked the waiter, and he said it was frog eggs! “Good for the complexion,” he added. (Hopefully not prompted by observation of my complexion.)
“I guess it’s hypocritical of me to be grossed out by the frog eggs, considering that I eat fish eggs,” I said.
“They’re just like tapioca,” suggested Oyce.
“I’ve never liked tapioca,” I said. “It reminds me too much of frog eggs.”
We had rice with preserved meats and bok choy, unagi with melted cheese (!) over rice, a chicken and cheese dish, and a beef and egg dish. And for dessert, egg cakes (not as good as in Taiwan), mango pudding, and black rice with mango and coconut cream. If I lived in the neighborhood, I would be at that café all the time.
We then met
badgerbag and her family. I was thrilled to discover that she has read many of the very obscure books that I thought no one else ever has, like Sydney van Scyoc, many old girls-at-boarding-school books, and the lovely just-barely-fantasy House of Thirty Cats, by Mary Stolz. ETA: Mary Calhoun, not Mary Stolz.We attempted to explain the plot of Vonda McIntyre’s Superluminal to Oyce, which badgerbag possesses in a very colorful 70s hardcover edition. “People with regular hearts can’t be spaceship pilots because it kills them, so they have to have their hearts removed and replaced with artificial ones. The heroine falls in love with this guy who wasn’t qualified to be a pilot, but it turns out that his regular heart is incompatible with her artificial one, so his heart nearly stops every time they have sex. Not in a metaphoric, good way. So it’s very tragic. Oh, and there’s killer whales.” Then, as if there wasn't enough crack already, we sicced Gundam Wing on her.
There we saw a mother raccoon and several adorable baby raccoons, which live under their deck. It was dusk, a magical moment. In hushed voices, we tried to figure out how many babies there were.
“There were three,” said
badgerbag. “But sometimes they die.”“Way to break the mood!” someone said.
“It’s true,” said
badgerbag, and proceeded to break it further. “Last year one of them died and stunk so much we couldn’t live in the house for three weeks. I was like, ‘Rot faster!’”Tags:
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(But the thing they put in at the 37 Degree Hong Kong "healthy dessert" cafe here and call "tadpoles" aren't tadpoles. Thank goodness. :P)
I actually never get tapioca at bubble tea places; I ask for pudding, which is chunks of flan, basically. haha.
And karaoke box is the only way to do it. :) Someday, I'll have friends in the Bay Area who want to go with me, but all my friends are fraidycats, so I've only done karaoke once (in Taiwan). :(
Sounds like a great trip!
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:RedlotusHasma.jpg
which in fact is made from the dried fallopian tubes of frogs and was totally new to me till today ... and then there's basil seeds and a variety of things made out of sago and gelatin. :P)
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Wait, I've read that! Only I could have sworn it was a short story from a collection I got from the library when I was a kid.
I don't remember the killer whales, but some images from it really stayed with me. I still sometimes think of the scene where the heroine, after getting her new mechanic heart implanted, is so thrilled to be a pilot now that she wears a shirt with a deep neck line that displays the scar on her breastbone. And then she meets the other pilots for the first time, and gradually realizes that all of them are wearing shirts designed to show off their scars.
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There's only one? :) Which one? (there are some I can manage, and some just not.)
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Sing this six times fast!
Shimoku Kumoshi
Moshiku Shikumo
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Re: Sing this six times fast!
The idea of doing karaoke somewhere that isn't a private room still frightens me. And I am very jealous of that cafe.
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Sydney van Scyoc!
Starmother, by contrast, was kind of freaky.
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Re: Sydney van Scyoc!
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Me too.
And many Mary Stolz, tho not House of Thirty Cats. I must look it up (it doesn't appear to be in my local library.)
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I love honey sea coconut. ;_; It's never occurred to me before to wonder what it is. I guess I, er, assumed it was some sort of coconut of the sea. But the texture is lovely!
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What is the texture of sea coconut? I'm going to wish I ordered it, aren't I?
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The texture of sea coconut is sort of like jelly, but chewier. They serve it to you in a light watery syrup and it is super refreshing and tasty.
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Here's a link to the US head of the lineage, if you wanted to do more research:
http://www.cimande.com/
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And raccoons are only cute when they live elsewhere. I had one inside of the walls of my garage for a while. Even less fun than that sounds.
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Ha! I actually called my mom and read that to her. Ex-farm girl that she is, she found it just as funny as I did.
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I got to cuddle baby raccoons last month! They are so cute and opposable-thumbed! I will taunt you with pictures if I haven't already.
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