december 29my nebraska family, with all its widehearted love has now given way to a bevy of thai ladies who talk fast and melodic and never stop offering an astonishing range of edibles. today i've had the opportunity to eat the second best home cooked bacon ever and fried eggs, donuts, danishes, mcdonald's breakfast biscuits, sbarro pizza, buffalo wings, potato skins with cheese and bacon, sauteed mushrooms, oatmeal cookies, rice crispie treats, christmas sugar cookies, three kinds of toast, brownies, "lard na" - wide noodles with pork and chinese broccoli, "qwateo" - tom yum soup with shrimp, "pad bai kapao" - ground chicken stir fry, sticky rice, lychee jellos, cola flavoured chewing gum, chocolate chip cookies, chocolate covered potato chips, rap snacks "bbqing in the back yard with my honey" potato chips, but i still haven't had a "meat pie"
north of boston:
i'm visiting amy's family now - from one madcap related aventure to another.
there's probably more - booze i resisted even against the custom of "accept a little to avoid being leaned on forever" and the other custom i note here today is when someone says, "you are rich" or "you are handsome" (like when the bill comes, or when there's a dispute over some relatings) it is best to say, "yes thank you" because they have given you a blessing.
amy feels bad about not speaking thai much. her father (and mother?) decided that it would be best if she was not raised in the confusion of a bilinugal home (so much for the 70s) and so now she feels both out of place amongst the chattering multitudes here in this mom's house and with the straight whites at dad's.
today we loaded up in the car in the morning for errands and six people stayed packed in one sedan from noon until 5.30, including amy's dentist visit where six people went in for her appointment - "hello! this is amy for her appoinment. and this is jussatin, her boyfriend, he from california. and this is chung, her aunt, she travel all the way from louisiana! soam her uncle and daraya her cousin from north carolina." etc. it's really astonishing - i'm lucky to have one person along with me on any doctor visit and then to have amy's mom leading an assorted family into the waiting room for a loud round of singsong introductions. it's really quite wonderous.
tomorrow amy and i leave for new york by hook or by car - we have a few hours of driving ahead and then residing with eve and trying to track down and manage time between her and us and wilson and ethan and maybe colinmy aunt marilyn is a tax professional and mentioned to me that independent contractors must pay social security too so, "oh no!" i have increased trepanation about working through unemployment. on one hand i'm inclined to go ahead and get amy a $68 gift certificate to a lingerie chain, and on the other hand, i say, oh gosh, i'm headed into what howard calls "the hive" and can cost $60/day for a noticeable time and i'm not exactly pounding the pavement while i'm there
but life continues to astound and delight - i learned thai cooking technique tonight a little and bought some soup base to make soup and it has no meat orientation built in so i can make food for even vegan friends which is becoming increasingly a concern of all of us.
i'm actually turning over tangible ideas for turning my intangible community into an immense collective money spewing wooden horse which bears inside a thousand revolutionary ideas about human use of technology. but i want to polish things up a little before i make a web site of it.
it's very thrilling that most of my hosts have an internet appliance in their homes - i carry secureCRT on a floppy, and wish they had a scanner so i could show you wedding pictures of my hosts in fine thai silks.
16 year old daraya is standing over my shoulder playing with my pilot asking me how i painted it and harrassing me to get back into her AOL Instant messenger world. she and amy just steamed their faces and removed the blackheads from their noses. but aren't your pores open now for another dirt attack? not if i keep my face deep cleansed. so you're trapped in a product cycle of deep cleansing? no, now that i moisturize without dirt underneath, it should seal out the dirt. wow - that's some scientific shit.
