Death & Curry

Tragically, my camera, the workhorsy Canon PowerShot A620, died a slow, quiet death this past week with no one in attendance. This demise couldn't come at a worse time, as I've been happily fêting all over town and unabled to half-assedly memorialize the deliciousness here. Ah well...

I'm still on a curry bender. Friday I met up with some friends at Bangalore, a British curry pub (if there's a better amalgam of 3 words in the English language, I can't think of any) in Palermo Hollywood, where we sampled the vegetarian thalis platter containing vegetable korma, pumpkin curry, butter mutter paneer, and warm pillowy naan.

Then Saturday, I went with a group of gals to Sudestada for their now-27-peso lunch set, still a steal considering the inflation, where--quelle surprise--I had the Thai vegetable curry.

Then this morning I awoke with Indonesian food on the brain for a mysterious reason, so I ambled on over to the kitchen to concoct a variation of beef rendang. It didn't come out too shabby, considering, and even better, the boy loved it. (A big thanks to my mom who left behind some lemon grass paste from her visit.)

So let's see...that's curry of the Indian, Thai, and Indonesian persuasion--all in one week! What's left?

The boy claims his favorite curry hands down is Japanese--ick--so my next project will be to simply open up a package of House brand sauce (they carry it here in Barrio Chino) and ceremoniously dump it into a bowl. Frankly I think he just misses our weekly trek to the Curry House in West LA, because no sane person can possibly prefer Japanese-style curry over all the others, claro?

EZE Was Anything But!

Last night was one of those zany-in-a-bad-way experiences from airport hell, a cautionary tale for children to tell their parents, less such parents forget the all-important key to the magic kingdom.

It started so well. At 5 PM, spawn and I took a remise to EZE for his solo flight to the US. We made it in under an hour, a work of miracles considering it was afterwork Friday and a holiday weekend. We've become such adroit international travelers, he and I--each racking up more than 12K miles every year--that we practically sleepwalked through the officialism: paid the unaccompanied minor's fee of U$S75 at the AA counter, got his boarding pass, paid the airport tax of U$S18, bought some dollars at the exchange window. As smooth as a baby goose's behind.

Then came the moment of farewell: Spawn and I exchanged a tearful-only-on-my-part goodbye, 'til we meet again in exactly a week. Being a most excellent mom, I harangued him nonstop:* Call or text once you get through security and immigration, call or text before boarding, make sure you get boarded first with elderly people, text when you get to Chicago, text when you board Chicago for LA. Simple, right?

I waited a few minutes after he disappeared from view, then wandered outside the airport building for what seemed like miles to buy my ticket for the Manual Tienda Leon bus heading downtown. I was positively excited by the deed, since it would have marked my first colectivo experience in Argentina. I wanted a leisure bus ride back into town, collecting my thoughts on another semester's end.

So I got my ticket (32 pesos) at the kiosco and began waiting for the 7:30 bus, the saleslady losing patience with me as I bugged her yet again, yo espero aqui? (There was no bus stop sign or line or designation, except in her mind.) She rolled her eyes, si, si! Ten minutes passed, and I was as dubious as ever, until around the corner a giant bus started to turn toward me... but wait...here's a call from spawn! He sounded exasperated, "Mom, the immigration guy says I can't go because I'm missing some sorta letter!"

Me: "Wha--? What letter? Show them your unaccompanied minor card!"

Him: "I did! They said I don't have my parents' permission to travel alone!"

Me, the realization of what I'd forgotten settling in: "Oh shit! Meet me where we parted."

I hauled ass back to the airport and saw spawn tearfully coming out of security. He said we needed to go downstairs and talk to the Migraciones people. We had a mere 30 minutes before boarding.

I took one micro-look at the Migraciones lady and knew doomsville. And by golly, if my Spanish vocabulary of 19 words utterly failed me on such an occasion. She had even less English. We were practically miming, with spawn too upset to be helpful in any sense of the word. (Ninety minutes of daily Spanish at school for naught.) Finally, one rueful traveler opined, "You really should go back to the AA office and see if they can sort it out for you" (or lady, you've hogged the window long enough, it's my goddamn turn). And so we hauled more major ass across the diameter of the airport.

The lad at the AA counter started with, "You shouldn't need the letter because you're American citizens.** You're on vacation, right?"

Me: "Not exactly, we're living here."

Lad: "Ahh...that's the problem. You need the letter."

Me, playing dumb: "What letter is this? His father is in the states and he's going there to be with him, so of course he has his permission to travel!"

Lad's manager, newly emerged from the aircon room in the back: "You need the letter. I was in this situation years ago, and my father had to go to the consulate in the United States to get his permission notarized. I'm sorry, [and...here come the dreaded words] there's nothing we can do." Arrrgh, arrrgh, fuck me!

Here's the thing: I am practically OCD when it comes to this kinda crap. I had my custody papers translated by a certified translator, notarized, Apostilled, and coddled by Silvia, the frighteningly robotic gatekeeper at the Argentine Consulate in Los Angeles. Ditto for every other scraps validating my right to live, and spawn's. (Actually, getting a work visa for Argentina required everything short of being blessed by the Pope, though I had my rez for Italy ready should that've been necessary.) For the past year and a half, I dutifully carried around this dossier of very.important.papers (including the Consent for International Travel of Minor) whenever we traveled, but not once were we ever asked for them. So, on spawn's very first solo exit from Argentina, it slipped my (already vacationing) mind that he'd need them. Looking back, it seems so frankly idiotic this oversight, I feel I need to be taken out back and shot.

The silver lining: I was able to recoup the bus ticket, the unaccompanied minor's fee, the airport tax, though it cost me an extra U$S254 to switch spawn's tickets to my same flight. (There goes the iPod nano I was going to get myself. It is to weep...)

Actually, the real silver lining is that this morning I was able to procure seats for spawn on my coche cama trip to Iguazu tomorrow. I'm totally excited;*** he's somewhat excited. I sincerely hope we travel happily ever after.

The End

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Footnotes:

* Spawn's traveled as an unaccompanied minor plentiful times with better than no hassles, he was treated like royalty. Thus, this fiasco was orthogonally related to his solo traveling.

** Lad's incorrect: You need the other parent's permission regardless of whether you're residing or vacationing in Argentina.

*** Though I still feel like a fucktard for last night's debacle.

My Folks Are Here!

me and pops today on the tren de la costa.

w00t!

You know you've been waiting for this list so here it is: What I'm thankful for on Thanksgiving 2007.

- less than a year until we elect a new president in the US--w00t!
- my son's relatively good adjustment to living in a new country, year 2
- my beautiful, healthy extended family, visiting and non
- that I can still fit a size L in the Forever 21 clothing line
- health and optimism
- my gorgeous home and the nearby cafe
- my students, who remind me minutely how much pleasure there is in learning and growing
- my friends, who persist despite me being me
- the upcoming cruise to Cabo San Lucas
- Nannette's Feast (coming soon to a theatre near you...)
- Argentina, for reaffirming that no matter where you are, people just want the same things in life

Now I might as well have another slice of sweet potato pie and OD on the touchy feely. And for Sarah, my fave Cambodian Martha Stewart, I post our dinner pictures thusly.

Pictured: ginger batata with burnt marshmallow topping, backyard dining, temperature pin that came with the bird (pops up when the turkey's cooked), roasted turkey (basted in white chablis and though originally frozen was the moistest evah) pictured with egg noodles, mashed papas with oodles of manteca, scratch stuffing with Argentine chorizo and fresh provencal herbs, sweet potato pie

That Warm Fuzzy Feeling

My super-cool brother and his gorgeous wife are here visiting, and I've been walking around grinning like a maniac. I know God invented family for those of us allergic to Prozac.

Pond Life

I believe this to be true, that I was a whiny kind of kid. I remember sitting in a drab train station when I was 4 or so, feeling as though I would suffocate from chest-heavy gloom, the weightiness of which I wasn’t able to communicate beyond soft syllables. I was cradling an oversized mug full of lumpy ricemeal next to my face, hoping the scent of milk sugar would take me elsewhere. Except there was no elsewhere. We were in a neglected train station on the outskirts of Siem Riep, having just got words that the Khmer Rouge were near. When my cereal ran low, I lifted my head and wailed for more. I’m sure I wanted to cower in a corner or shake my mother for answers, but it came out ungracious. I was a whiny kind of kid, completely lacking the poise to deal with catastrophic changes. I was an embarrassment to my mother.

We had just evacuated our home in Siem Riep, a coastal town most famously noted for Angkor Wat. My father wasn’t around, so my mother somehow hauled 4 kids, a nanny, and a servant to the nearest train station to wait for … what? The details are vague. I remember the muggy heat though. I had just spent an entire summer tearing up lily pads. When our house was built, my father had dug out a pond beyond our kitchen door and garnished it with plump lily pads and orange fish. He’d taken great pride in the house, having designed the master plan himself. There was that circular stairway leading up two floors, a tiled recreation room where he played exotic American music, and of course, mosquito net decorating every inch of the bedrooms. No doubt when the Khmer Rouge burst into the backyard, they spotted a pond littered with shreds of lily pad.

Tonight I Miss My Mom

My mom married my dad when she was just 17 years old. It was an arranged marriage, though she’d already met him once. He was smitten with her, the story goes, when he first heard her singing in a throaty operatic voice on some local radio program. This was Phnom Pehn in the early 1960s. I can only imagine what he must have felt when he actually set eyes on her. My mom, you see, was a raving beauty. Long black hair, coarsely thick; fierce almond eyes, dark as coal; and cheekbones so cut you could set saucers on them. And gauging from the random photos of her in chic 60s fashion, she also possessed a perfect hourglass figure, something she refused to pass on to any of her daughters. Her claim to fame though were her lips, the lower one a perfect triangular jut, an exact replica of her real mom’s.

I say real because as a very young child, my mom was given away to be raised by her adoptive mother, who was actually the sister-in-law to her real dad. My real grandmother had birthed four daughters, each one probably a mounting disappointment in a culture that favored boys. For reasons unknown to anyone, my real grandmother plucked my mom, the third born, out of the entire girly bunch to be tossed aside. It was decades later before I realized how much this event shaped her, for although she was raised entirely by her adoptive mother, my mom lived just kilometers from her real family and saw on an almost-daily basis her sisters going about their business within their intact family, without her.

My adoptive grandma was Chinese and possessed a legendary personality of steel, perhaps the predecessor to the dragon lady stereotype. My mom has never said much about her upbringing, but I gather that she loved and respected her second mother with both a sense of foreboding and awe. Mah, as we children called her, had been married to a successful Chinese businessman. He died when my mom was quite young, leaving her under the sole care of Mah and her entourage of servants.

Mah was the classic storybook charismatic bully. She demanded love, loyalty, and attention, all high prices, but in exchange, you get a glimpse of her enigmatic smile and more importantly, her approval, which made you clamor for even more of it. I remember one time when I was 5, being asked by Mah to dance to her favorite Chinese operas. It was a hot sticky night. We were both bored. I loved my Mah and couldn't say no if I tried, so for what seemed like hours on end, I hammed it up for her in her suite, the one with the chilly black-and-white parquet floor and floral drapings. Delirious with sweat, I moved and swayed to flashes of my beloved Mah reclining in bed, smiling as she waved a silk fan in front of her face.

[More to come. Here’s a picture of my mom and me taken last July. She’s 64 now. I love my mom.]

Spawn's List

Documented for posterity.

Top 5 Movies:

1. The Iron Giant
2. Kung Fu Hustle
3. Donnie Darko
4. This Is Spinal Tap
5. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
(bonus) 6. Iron Monkey

Top 5 Books:

1. Coraline, by Neil Gaiman
2. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, by what's her name
3. Varjak Paw, SF Said
4. Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut
5. Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger

Top 5 Songs on Current Playlist:

1. Jerk It Out, by the Caesars
2. Tarantula, by Smashing Pumpkins
3. Parallel Universe, by Red Hot Chili Peppers
4. Dashboard, by Modest Mouse
5. Feel Good Inc., by the Gorillaz


Top 5 Manga Series:

1. Bleach
2. Full Metal Alchemist
3. Eyeshield 21
4. Hunter X Hunter
5. Death Note


Top 5 TV Shows:

1. The Office
2. Samurai Jack
3. Scrubs
4. King of the Hill
5. Malcolm in the Middle


Top 5 Classes:

1. Algebra
2. Creative Writing
3. Spanish
4. Biology
(Cheat alert) 5. Volleyball (and he says it should be #1)

Music to My Ears

Just got this email from my awesome new sister-in-law, who'll be visiting us over Thanksgiving break. Is she a sweetheart or what?! And yay, to real T-day feasting! Last year we hit up Kansas for their version, which wasn't bad considering, but still, it ain't no Nannette cooking! Tryptophan heaven, yo vengo...

Well I was just thinking about Thanksgiving dinner and I have a few questions. First, will we be able to get a nice fresh turkey? Second, do they have Stouffers stuffing? Third, do you have a pan to bake a turkey in? Just wondering. I would love to stay home that day and the night before and make some of my favorite foods. Pumpkin pie with whipped cream, egg noodle with turkey gravy stuffing, mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce, all that good stuff. Do you think I will have a problem finding some of the things I would need? If so, I will bring what I can on the plane.

Congratulations on the New Bundles of Joy!

My younger sister's apple tree has just given birth to baby apples! Squee. Or rather, they birthed a while back but she's just discovered them. (For the record, my younger sister is much cuter than Gwynneth Paltrow.)

Slacker Genes

Came across a personal narrative that spawn recently turned in for his advanced creative writing class, obligatorily titled, "Who Am I?" Asked to sum up his philosophy for these baker's dozen years on earth, he offered up this pithy view:

“It’s not work if nobody makes you do it. Then it counts as fun.” That’s a line from Calvin and Hobbes. And even though it’s from a newspaper comic, I think it’s the perfect way for me to live.

Shit! Why isn't he rebelling like all good, healthy children are supposed to, and be the overachieving, Republican-leaning, grade-inflation-seeking, Asian-kid-seeming, competitive asshole that I never was?!

Birthday

Not sure how it happened (well, yes, I know how it happened), but today I'm the mom of a teenager. Happy 13th birthday, spawn!

So Friday evening I went down to Musimundo, which is like Tower Records here, to look for a total of 13 CDs for my little teen. After the laptop tragedy of last month in which we lost 6,000+ songs on iTunes, not to mention the entire hard drive, spawn and I have been feeling a little morose, a little gobsmacked, as we shuffle about in our lives without an accompanying soundtrack.

I knew picking out 13 decent CDs wasn't going to be simple. This was no Amoeba on Sunset after all! First I had to scoot around aisles and displays of High School Musical 2, fighting the impulse to knock them down. Then there were the muy guapo Latin singers whose CD covers followed me wherever I meandered. I bet they sound as sweet as they look, but that's another research project altogether.

So after about an hour and a half, I left with these babies. It was the best I could do under the circumstances.

1. The Cure Greatest Hits (yes, I know that greatest hits are the refuge of losers, but it was all they had)

2. The Velvet Underground & Nico, Andy Warhol

3. The White Stripes, Icky Thump

4. Make Some Noise, The Campaign to Save Darfur: The Songs of John Lennon (featuring a lot of cool people)

5. Coldplay, a Rush of Blood to the Head (I swore years ago I'd never own Coldplay...does this mean Barbara Streisand isn't too far behind...?)

6. Arcade Fire, Funeral (oh how I heart this album)

7. Green Day, American Idiot (replacement album)

8. Smashing Pumpkins, Zeitgeist (woohoo, never thought I'd see another album by these guys...)

9. This Is It: The Best of Faith No More (introducing band to spawn)

10. Gorillaz, Demon Days (replacement album)

11. Red Hot Chili Peppers, Greatest Hits (spawn's been singing Californication a lot lately...is he trying to tell me he's homesick or have we just seen too many billboards of that David Duchovny show?)

12. The Beatles, Love

13. Fall Out Boy, From Under the Cork Tree (this was recommended to me by my awesome 6-year-old student, Lars)

[A side note: It's amazing how alive and well the 80s is at Musimundo. Bands I hadn't thought of in decades (OK so that's a blatant lie; after all, I do own the wondrous Magic Mic) were overflowing with greatest hits and retrospectives and sometimes--horror of horrors--a dedication "in the style of..." album.]

Spawn also got Guitar Hero for his birthday (bought with the money Titi Lalah sent--thank you, Sarah!), which is this ridiculously weird music video game for PlayStation 2 where you simulate popular rock songs on a miniature Gibson. I tell ya, you haven't lived until you've watched a 13 year old rockin' out to "Surrender" by Cheap Trick. MY EYES! A positive fallout is that he's starting to mention wanting guitar lessons. That's rather like me vowing to take voice lessons after copious hours karaoking. It's heartwarming how the apple doesn't fall far from the tree...

Gotta go--he says he's dedicating a song to me called "Mother" by some band called Danzig. Um.

Tropic of Cancer

The true traveler is he who goes on foot, and even then, he sits down a lot of the time.
-Colette

It's not Thanksgiving or New Year's Eve or somesuch nostalgia-laden holiday. Rather it's another ordinary unordinary day in the life I lead here, where I'm separated latitudinally from everyone I love (minus spawn of course). Melancholy, she is a wickedly persistent mistress (think Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction) and dogs me even in the new hemisphere. But there's just cause.

Sometimes I think I'm insane to be so far away from everyone. Is the experience worth it? I am not always sure. This drive I have (which I've always had) to be a stranger wherever I am, to not belong, can be a real bitch. It forces me to uproot and cast my wandering eye long and wide in search of the elusive anything but here... surely the clichéd battle cry of a broken person.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying I regret my decision to come here. It's more complicated than that. It's just that at the end of the day, no matter where you are, the only thing that stands out are the people nearby. And if the people nearby aren't the ones you love because you hauled ass 6,000 miles away, then you got some 'splaining to yourself to do.

Maybe what I should take from all of this is simply how lucky I am to have a wonderfully funny, unconditionally loving, and amusingly dysfunctional family--extended and core. I'd be insane not to miss that, right?

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Disclaimer: I heart the men (i.e., father, brother, brother-in-law, cousins' husbands, sister's living-in-sin partner) in my life just as much as I do the women. Unfortunately, they're harder to herd into a group and memorialize by photo.