I really like In-N-Out and I actually regret not dining there more often. L. insists on forcing nutritious meals down my gullet, though I think it's slightly hypocritical of him as he would drink liquefied bacon fat by the gallon without the slightest provocation.
After working late one day, he felt guilty enough to obey my orders for an In-N-Out dinner. Besides, didn't I promise my three readers photographic evidence of In-N-Out's religiousity?
On the packet containing my cheeseburger, Revelation 3:20: "Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me."
On the bottom of the cup containing my medium Diet Coke, John 3:16: "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life."
Hmm, isn't John 3:16 as cliched as bible sayings go? I even know it by heart. I suppose it's comforting to know that one will live on, even after dying of a massive heart attack.
I am a dirt cheap drunk. Whenever I drink, the effects of alcohol are felt by the end of the first sip, and the final sip completes my transformation into a flushed, bloodshot and eerily affable human being. A few months ago, at the ripe old age of 27, I did my first shot at a dinner party. It was soju, a Korean potato liquor with a relatively low alcohol percentage, which caused the cook to dismiss my latest breakthrough in alcohol consumption.
My second shot was no less memorable. It was downed last weekend ago at a local cafe. At breakfast. Before I'd even placed my order. AND it was tequila. Witness our waiter and his vat of Jose Cuervo:
Cafes in San Jose aren't in the habit of pouring their customers a stiff drink with their coffee, and certainly not every diner that bustling Saturday morning got one. Bill's Cafe in Willow Glen is a very friendly place, however, and I think the cook's picture-taking of the staff endeared our table to them. The manager was also in high spirits, having partied hard the previous night at the opening of their second joint.
After we cleaned our plates, they hit us with a second round:
The glass with a little
bit of tequila left over is mine. Give me a break, I'm new to this!
I'm just proud that I managed to walk out of the restaurant with my dignity intact. I sat facing the mirror during breakfast and monitored my complexion every two seconds. I didn't get too blotchy or gross, but maybe that was because I had my tequila goggles on. Shall we drink to that?
You know what I'm going to do while I'm here in Northern California? Eat ice cream. A LOT of ice cream. Family-owned or independent ice cream shops hawking delicious cold desserts in a gajillion flavours like fig, orange flower and roasted sparrow (just kidding!) abound in the region. There are so many choices I can't even get excited about the Ben & Jerry's/Haagen Dazs 2-for-$5 deals in supermarkets here.
Last Wednesday, I had a Gianduia gelato (nutella-ish in taste, behind the lighter-hued hazelnut in the picture) at Michael's when we stopped by Palo Alto:
I got a small but densely packed cup dished out by whom I suspect to be the store's Croatian owner. His gentle smileyness discomfited me slightly -- I am still not used to friendly, attentive service. When we were I was finishing our ice creams at one of the store's brightly coloured mosaic tables, we were joined by an adorable 13-month old human with a mango gelato moustache, who seemed to prefer our company to that of his tribal elders. He's no golden retriever puppy, but I can settle for a cute toddler with good taste in dessert.
This past Sunday, we battled a barbarian horde at Yogurt Park in Berkeley for what is supposed to be the city's best frozen yoghurt. Okay, we actually waited for the crowd to thin before getting in line. And fine, we didn't really know what the fuss was all about until we got past the door and saw a wall full of certificates and press accolades. I wasn't keen on getting into a long queue initially, but the cook favoured Yogurt Park because it seemed the most popular. I'm glad we chose Yogurt Park in the end because it turned out to be a Bay Area institution.
My question now is, is it too gluttonous to hit more than one ice cream store in a day? If not, we're looking at 4 trips and about 8 hours of driving in total as I simply must check out Ici and Sketch in Berkeley, Mitchell's (Avocado! Nangka! Thai tea!) and Joe's Ice Cream in SF before I return home.
At certain museums, you can't go anywhere without running smack into art. At the SFMOMA (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art), the art smacks into you.
It reminded me of the time Artsy Sister covered our father's study with red string and called it 'art'. Then again, I can be a bit of a philistine about these things. L, who has better academic credentials (he uses words like 'phenomenological' and talks about 'genderized epistemological styles'), has this to say:
"Our response to the approach of the fan is a physical manifestation of our collective fears of a mechanized future. Simultaneously, the impersonal third party observer participates in this fear as a need for homogeneous group identity, despite having observed many times before the improbability of an accident. The view from afar is also at once a simplified viewing, obfuscating the spatial clarity of a more immediate observer (physically, the one under the fan) and the planar ambiguity of an almost two dimensional view of the observer from afar. This expresses the narratological clarity of those with a clear, diachronic view and those who have a flatter, synchronic view. The temporal distinctions of those two words notwithstanding, the artist is clearly trying to portray the inherent negative dialectic that exists between a view of the present (and arguably inclusively the past) and a view of the future. These Foucauldian reflections create a frame around which we become at once the signifiers and the signified. The unpredictable motions of the pendulum only further underscores this timeless binary opposition."
When he goes on like this, I become afraid of him.
The best scrambled eggs in the world...
Catching The Darjeeling Limited in the evening.
We are living in the golden age of burgers, it seems. Fine, I'm light-years behind in making this pronouncement, but this IS the first time I've mentioned burgers in a blog and burger trends are better tracked elsewhere. Anyway, I like burgers. I liked burgers then as a kid who thought McDonald's was the last word in burgers; I like burgers now as an adult who orders hers with blue cheese but eats only half the bun. I've long outgrown the hockey pucks made of ground rat meat sold as burgers in my elementary school canteen, but I could cultivate a fashionable liking for the unfashionable Ramly burgers sold at roadside stalls in Malaysia had my father not seen a stall operator's little girl defecate not five feet away from her mama's business.
If there's a good burger to be had in town, I will try it. This is, however, a fairly recent resolution that came after I withdrew a self-imposed moratorium on french fries a mere two years ago. It came in time for me to enjoy a couple of Shake Shack burgers in NYC last year, so when I arrived in California, In-N-Out was a natural destination.
In-N-Out is a fast food joint with a very basic menu--an easy choice for dinner when one can't think of anything else, a logical choice when one has to fuel up before an IKEA research trip an hour an a half before the store closes. I wasn't feeling terribly hungry, so I got a cheeseburger (US$1.49) and shared the cook's Animal Style fries which he got with his double-double cheeseburger (also Animal Style).
Animal-style fries means fries with this strange onions, chives and thousand island dressing gunk on top. It is weirdly delicious and one has to eat them with a fork because the mixture binds everything together. Animal Style fries or burgers, as well as items like the X by Y, Protein Style burger and Fries Light are part of the 'secret menu' and are not listed in restaurant menus.
Beef that's never been frozen, preservative-free buns, hand-leafed lettuce, this sure is wholesome, innit? The owners of In-N-Out also very discreetly print, as a reflection of their beliefs, references to bible verses on their paper utensils, which is disconcerting to hell-bound heathens like me only when we think about it... after the meal, of course. I didn't get a photo, but I will the next time.
I'm staring blankly at a Microsoft Word document at work when--
Ring, ring.
"Hullo, mother of mine."
"Hullo Shryh," she says in a somber voice.
I begin to panic. "Wh-what's wrong? Is something the matter?"
"I just wanted to say that I'm very sorry."
"For WHAT?"
"For being a bad mother. I think I owe you girls and apology for being so negative and pessimistic when you were growing up. I fear I have damaged you."
"MOM! You were a foreign wife trying to bring up three children without any support system. Those were pretty trying times, and we certainly don't blame you if you were less than upbeat! And why are you calling me at work to tell me this? Wait--did you attend a seminar or something?"
"Yes, I did. It was on positive thinking and confidence building."
"I see."
"Anyway, I won't take up any more of your time. I just wanted to apologize to you."
"Have you called my sisters?"
"I'm going to."
"Um, okay."
"Bye!"
"Bye..."
Click.
I've dialled the number so many times my fingers fly over the number pad. "Hey Artsy Sister of Shryh? Our mother just took a self-help seminar and she's going to call you next..."
Ring, ring.
I glance at the screen of my circa 2003 Nokia candy bar. "Hi mom! What's up?"
"No, no, no. I just want you to listen. Your dad is sitting in front of his computer with your sister's old electric guitar. He's teaching himself to play from a website."
"Oh, cool."
"There! In the background! Do you hear it?"
"Well I--"
"Hold on. I'm going to hold the phone up to the door of his study."
"Um, sure."
Jeng-jeng-JANG-JANG-jeng-jeng-JANG-JANG-jeng-jeng... "Hear that? Hear that?"
"Yeah, I do. That's great!"
"He says that you have to pay for more advanced lessons, but he doesn't need that right now and the free ones will do."
"Mmm."
"Are you eating leafy green vegetables?"
"The farms can't keep up with my appetite for leafy greens."
"Okay. Bye bye."
"Bye mom."
Whoever created lolcats created a monster.
When the laugh-out-loud cats meme first made its appearance on the internets, I was amused. So amused that I patiently waded through 57 pages of this website in one sitting. And on Malaysian broadband to boot. You are awed.
Then came lolpresidents, which was worth a raised eyebrow or two, then lolbots, lolstartrek, lolgays and to my disappointment, fleshbot had gotten around to lolpr0n (NSFW, need I say more?) before I did. Still, my mind teemed with ideas for the Next Great LOL Thing - lolmarsupials, loldachschunds, lollollipop... but lolgaimans? Total randomness, I don't even know how to react to that.
If you are new to the meme, you might be as baffled as I was when I first started, and perhaps even crave a Proper Explanation as to what this damn thing is all about. Well, here you go, but honestly, you'll learn faster by going through those pictures one by one.
I'm afraid there is an opened bag of pretzels turning into compost somewhere in my apartment. I came home from teambuilding weekend last Saturday with said pretzels (Snyder's of Hanover, the only kind we get here) and a package of chewy mint candies in a plastic bag which I thought I left on the dining table before I collapsed in a heap on the sofa.
It occurred to me yesterday that I have not seen my snacks since. I remember contemplating the plastic bag on the dining table and wondering if I should stash the lot in the fridge to keep the pretzels fresh. Apparently, I've lost it somewhere between the dining table and the fridge. Or I sleep-tossed them into the rubbish bin.
I've looked everywhere. The kitchen cabinets, the vegetable drawer in the fridge and even the freezer. Inside my closet where I keep the khaki canvas overnight bag I used over the weekend. In the shoe cupboard where I deposited my sister's adidas sneakers (also in a plastic bag). In the drawer where we keep our Scrabble set as it's the deepest drawer in the apartment; no pretzels, but I found a bag of dry puppy kibble.
I thought my sister and her boy might have eaten them, though if they did, my sister would have simply left the empty package at the scene of crime and the apartment was suspiciously devoid of debris. "What pretzels?" she texted in response to my query.
It's possible that delirious with exhaustion, I threw everything away. But it's also possible that there is an opened bag of pretzels turning into compost in a corner of my apartment.
You see, I'm hungry.
