Talk a Little Pick a Little

With the car acting like a petulant child, threatening to strand us in the middle of nowhere, Anthony and I have no choice but to stay home and annoy each other. It’s true that we both have various projects to occupy us, but with a space so small, it’s inevitable that we end up bickering all day long until one of us passes out from the sheer effort of coming up with witty retorts.

I guess the first argument came about when I decide to sign us up for The Amazing Race. Why not? You get to run around the globe AND win prizes. With a couple of weddings (us Hwangs never do—or buy—anything just once. My brother had three weddings) and a honeymoon coming up, I think it might be economical to see if we can either win the grand prize or one of those nice little vacation package during the legs of the race and use it as a honeymoon. There’s no way I am going to go on a cheapo kayak and tent-related honeymoon. I have never really thought about what I want, but I do know what I don’t want.

The Amazing Race argument leads to a honeymoon destination argument wherein I champion for a resort type deal where mandatory massages, all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet and umbrella drinks are part of the daily schedule. But Anthony wants an adventurous honeymoon complete with harness and paddles and sand wedged up places where the sun don’t shine.

“Why don’t we take separate honeymoon, then?” he snipes.

“That’s not such a bad idea,” I say, mulling it over. I wonder if I can get a discount if I book a honeymoon for one in Tahiti.

“I was joking!” Anthony says, his voice saturated with injury. He goes on at length about what an unfeeling individual I am, except instead of the word “individual”, he uses the word that rhymes with “witch.”

The honeymoon argument ends abruptly since the postie lady pops up right about then to deliver a parcel Anthony is not expecting, thus bringing fourth a stream of lively expletives. I tell him he’s fortunate to be receiving so many parcels like it’s Christmas morning and he should be grateful but he wants more, I suppose.

We resume our bickering when he sits down to watch a DVD and finds out that it’s in the wrong setting.  I complain that it’s such a complicated procedure just to watch a DVD and that when I was living alone I had exactly two remote, one for the TV and one for the VCR. This leads to the discussion about how my TV and VCR were antiquated and that I should be grateful I have something that can’t be purchased in Bedrock right here in front of me.

“Here, let me show you what you need to do,” he says and brings out all three remote controls. “First you press this red button down…wait…that’s not working is it? Oh, it’s the other remote.”

“Duh!” I inject.

“You’re so harsh with me. Now pay attention, because I won’t have you messing this whole thing up again. You push this button twice and then see….wait, hold on. Why is it not working?”

While he sort it out, I go into the kitchen to make myself a sandwich, which evolve into another argument after Anthony decides that he, too, wants a sandwich and notices that I have dabbed into his ham stash.

I accuse him of being cheap and selfish for not sharing his ham with me and that he’s always feeding it to the cat upstairs. Then I point out he’s always gleefully telling me that now that we’ve been dating for two years, everything we own is split down the middle. He proceed to tell me it doesn’t apply to ham, which is so ridiculous that I have no choice but to pants him.

So the car is finally fixed and we are free to roam about and not be in each other’s hair anymore. This is probably a good thing because I have found all my tools sitting on his side of the work table and am gearing up for one hell of a lecture. When I need my T-square, I don’t want to have to root around, looking for it. I mean, how on earth am I supposed to get a box of tissue without having to stand up?

Happy Halloween!

Skin Art

My friend Jean It asked me, when I was last in New York, if I would be interested in designing a full sleeve tattoo for her. I of course jumped at the chance—it was a dream come true!

I once thought about doing tattoos professionally—after all, my college did offer a class featuring a sensational tattoo artist as the instructor. Drawing something on paper is one thing, but etching it permanently into someone’s skin is another. There’s a lot of responsibility involved, and that’s something I’m not willing to undertake. In the end, I’m happy to provide the design and let someone else do the inking.

The original design.

Coincidentally enough, the person inking Jean It’s tat is the same guy who did my Bully tat!

Function Over Fashion

As I am currently unemployed, I see very little reason to put on pants in the morning—the going out pants, I mean. I’ve got two pairs of bum-around shorts that I keep on a constant rotation. That, paired with  my Darth Vader T-shirt, and I’m ready to start my day. One of these shorts dates all the way back to high school and the other one from my freshman year in college. The high school shorts was once a lively shade of olive green but has long since faded into a nondescript gray. The other one can only be described as “off black” and “moth-chewed.” The off-black shorts bears my name on the tag because whenever I used to bring them home to wear around my parents’ house, it would inevitably end up in my brother’s chest of drawers since my mother constantly mistook it for his. This will give you some idea of just how unattractive the shorts are…as my brother’s physique vastly differs from mine.

Needless to say, my shorts has attracted many unwelcomed comments from Anthony.

“Those ought to be burned, girl!” he’d opine. Or else he’d suggest that he’s going to rip them up and turn them into rags. Incensed that he should be so adamant about destroying something of mine, I will hitch the shorts all the way up to my chin, prance around the house and sing the theme song from “Golden Girls.”

My wardrobe seems to pose a constant consternation for Anthony, which I don’t quite understand since he himself possesses a rather questionable collection of, and I put this loosely, clothes. He once walked around the house for an entire month with a sizable rip in his boardies until it finally gave up and disintegrated altogether. But at least I abstain from pointing out the drip stains he’s collecting in the front of his ratty gray shirt instead of insisting that half of his clothes needs to be put out to pasture.

“When I come into some money,” he, man of two pants, tells me one day after eying my shorts with distaste, “I am going to take you shopping. For clothes, not for puppies,” he quickly adds because by now he knows where my thoughts will immediately stray to.

“I have clothes,” I wave to the five shirts I have hanging in the closet.

“Nice ones!” he says with exasperation.

“I’d rather just have the cash,” I tell him and mean it too.

I had nice clothes once. Really well-tailored vintage as well as interesting duds made by grass root artists… from dashikis to dirndls. I also owned Marc Jacobs, Betsey Johnson, Dolce and Gabbana, Gucci, both Anne and Calvin Klein, and a host of other designer clothes. I used to go on hunts for them at an awesome discount designer shop situated quietly next to the railroad tracks in Mineola. It’s one of those well-kept secrets in NY that only the locals knew about. I once bought a Stella McCarthy gown for $30…the alternation cost more than the gown itself!

When I was packing up and moving to Oz, I discovered that I had a closet filled with clothes that I’ve only wore once or not at all. Would I ever need the three-tier baby blue satin and lace Betsey Johnson strapless cocktail gown again? My collection of Anthropologie goodies? Or even my Custo Barcelona shirts? It’s hard to let them all go, but I had to do it. In return I made a handsome profit via ebay. All of a sudden my seemingly frivolous spending became an asset and assured the lifestyle I was accustomed to will not be disrupted.

So when Anthony suggests that he will pad out my wardrobe, I have a momentary flashback of a closet filled with beautiful but useless things…all of them irrelevant now to my current lifestyle, and how hard it had been to unload all of that.

“Save your money,” I tell him. “I’m happy with my shorts.”

The Stranger

There’s nothing I love more than sitting down to a horror movie, a hobby that I’m afraid not many of my friends liked sharing with me. So it’s with no surprise that I was alone in the living room, with a promise of a new thriller on cable that I haven’t seen before, starring Liv Tyler and that guy from “Felicity.” It’s called “The Strangers” and was based on a true incident. There’s something so bone-chilling about director Bryan Bertino’s execution of this film that had me biting my nails at some pivotal scenes. I don’t normally get creeped out by horror movies, but there’s something incessantly horrible about people invading your personal space, armed with a knife and unkind intentions.

Home invasion is something I was very concerned about when I was living in NY. Someone had tried to follow me into my apartment building when I was situated on 15th street one night (but my Spidey senses was in full alert and I closed the outer door on the bastard’s face before he had a chance to react). Someone else had knocked on our door in Queens at midnight, desperate to sell his rain soaked sneakers but perhaps also wanted access to our valuables and vital organs. After moving to the Gold Coast I was a bit concerned that we leave the front door open all day long, but since nothing more menacing than a disoriented youth taking a nap on the sidewalk in the front of the house had occurred the whole time I was here, I stop being worried that someone is going to come in here with a machete and issue unreasonable orders.

I am sitting on the couch with a book when I hear the crunching of the rocks under someone’s feet. The post lady often walks up to our house in the middle of the afternoon with brown paper wrapped goodies, so I’m not the least bit alarmed…that is until I see a hand opening up the screen door and a young woman stepping right into the house.

Like a shot, Anthony’s at the front door, glaring at the young woman and demanding to know who she is looking for. She looks at us with utter confusion and says something like “Gertrude,” except she’s not altogether certain herself. We assure her there’s no one by that name living here but she remains standing there, unconvinced.

“You should knock before you walk into someone’s house,” Anthony admonishes. She apologizes and wanders out, standing in the front of the house for several minutes before walking up to the beach. This whole thing stinks of that eerie scene in “The Strangers” where Gemma Ward knocks on Scott Speedman and Liv Tyler’s door wanting to visit a certain Tamara. Then she stands out on their lawn staring at the house. Can it be that this girl carrying two Coach bags has seen the movie and is keen on re-enacting it for her own amusement? Is a knife stowed in one of the two bags and one is reserved for our decapitated heads? Is she planning on robbing us later in the day and is just “casing the joint?” What she doesn’t know is that I am the owner of a rather large frying pan and can do irrevocable damages to her pert little nose. Or that we have a rather irritable cat living upstairs I can always hurl at her whilst running for my life. It can also be nothing. The girl can just be a simpering idiot with no concept of how the doorbell works. But just to be sure, I will be sitting in the living room tonight with a phone in one hand and a cooking implement in the other.

Past Pages

It’s been a while since I’ve done any work in my travel journal…largely because I haven’t really traveled this year. Lately I’ve been jonsing for a new journal project. Papers had been bought and bound with a an awesome sheet of an ornamental Daniel Flocked as the cover. It’ll probably not be as fun putting the new one together, but I have high hopes. The pages are all vibrantly colored for my convenience!

In the meanwhile, here are some highlights from my past journal project. Enjoy!

I would so love to have a circus sideshow poster hanging in my room.

I absolutely love movies about serial killers who keep obsessively detailed journals that are, often times, focused on one main theme like Kevin Spacey’s in “Se7en.” (Below)

I’d wanted to put together one about the human anatomy since my brother’s left stacks of med school texts in the attic for reference. But I had feared that my mother would find it and it would be hard to persuade to her that it was an art project. Her imagination tends to run away from her with the speed of a bullet train…like the time when she found my controversial line of holiday card samples and was convinced that I was shooting up.

Moleskin, At Last!

While Anthony’s at the Telstra shop today tearing the clerks there a new one over a rather annoying cell phone matter, I wander next door to Borders. When I used to live in the Village, my home away from home had been the Union Square Barnes and Noble. By god, there are no bookstores I know such as that one. There are four stories, all the floors completely stocked with books and periodicals (with a cafe and a media center wedged along in there). I had spent a small fortune in there and proceeded to fill my tiny bread box size apartment with floor to ceiling books. If there had been an earthquake I’d have been crushed to death with my purchases, but boy, what a way to go! Some women collect shoes and Royal Doulton figurines and bail bond receipts, I collected books.

It was like visiting old friends. In my haste to leave NY, I had to get rid of hundreds and thousands of books. Seeing some of the familiar titles sitting on the shelves reminds me of what I used to have and what a pain it was to get rid of them. Books are wonderful things, but it also takes up so much valuable spaces—especially my copy of Andy Warhol’s Giant Size. I had one of the original editions and it weighed about 50 lbs and was roughly the size of a small coffee table. I am a bit sad to see the publishers had come out with a smaller version of it. There’s nothing fun about a book when it can’t double as furniture.

But I also discover a whole line of Moleskin books. They have been my sketchbook of choice before I become desperate and started making my own since I haven’t found an outlet in Oz that vends them.  Moleskins are awesome. They come in three different sizes, they are designed to serve not just visual artists, but also music composers, story bookers, travelers, people who are adamant about writing people’s addresses down by hand. I am partial to their daily planners. It is coming to that time of year when I need to replace my daily planner with a new one. I have been considering sending my parents out on a hunting trip, armed with print outs of the 2010 daily planner, explicit directions to that stationery store in West 17th street that doesn’t have a name (it actually does, it just isn’t marked anywhere on the storefront, a particular quirk of Manhattan vendors and exclusive nightclub owners) and send it to me—a task, I’m sure, that will be taken into consideration when wills are being drawn. But I don’t care about having a chunk taken out of my inheritance as retaliation because I am addicted to these planners. I’ve been using them for several years now and I can’t tell you what a comfort it is to have them when I’m stranded at airports, when an amusing notion hits me, when I spot pygmy albinos having a go at the train conductor and that image must be captured immediately because I haven’t figured out the camera function on my mobile. These books not only record my appointments and birth dates of friends, but it also serves as a sketchbook and a scrapbook. It also contains a map of the world should I have a sudden urge to locate Equatorial Guinea. It has conversion charts from liquid mass to European clothing sizes—which usefulness will come in handy should I end up in the Laplands and wondering about how to order a pair of shoes in Finnish measurements.

Moleskin books are also excellent for rebinding, which I have done in the past to accommodate the explosion of pages from my travels. In my lifelong search for the perfect notebook, these are as close to perfection as it gets.

I know I’m always going on about my bulging 2008 book, and here it is again. This just goes to show how versatile Moleskins are.

It’s Baby Picture Time!

It’s been a while since I gave my niece Leah a shout out.

She’s 6 months old, is doing well, and has apparently learned sign language at day care.

The happy princess of Denver!

Now, if you will excuse me, I must go and throttle Anthony, who’d been blasting his stupid air horn in my ear, thus making this a rather short entry.

Goals and Dreams

I normally don’t watch the news for the simple fact that some of the stories makes me feel ashamed of being part of the human race. But Anthony, being a news junkie, subjects me nightly to the 4:30, the 5:30 and the 6 o’clock news. I tend to tune out the sound, but I have to admit that the one item that grips my attention for the past month is the story of a 16-year-old girl hell bent on becoming the world’s first youngest person to circumnavigate, unsupported and continuously, around the world on her little pink yacht.

When I was 16, my biggest goal in life was to locate a pair of bell bottom pants (this was WAY before Gap came out with the relaxed fit flares). When that was obtained, my second biggest goal was to learn how to astrally project myself so I wouldn’t have to pay to get into a concert, a movie, or a state execution ever again. I mean, when you’re 16, everything seems possible, even dreams of sending your soul out on a field trip. My friends, I’m sure, had no loftier goals other than remembering to leave the house with their pants on. Growing up in the Big Apple has exposed us to so much but it also cloistered us within its uniformed grids. I swear, I have friends, born and bred in NY, who’s never left the tri-state area and think wombats are some sort of amphibious rodent.

Watching Jessica on the news makes me wonder perhaps I should set a bigger goal for myself other than being able to crack an egg open without splintering the shells. I want a boat. I want to be able to travel around the world without having to set foot into a single airport. I tell this to Anthony, who’s usually pretty agreeable when it comes to anything seafaring (although he’s rather close minded about certain things, such as asking Sanrio to be our sponsor so we’ll have a pink boat with Hello Kitty and Friends motif on all the surfaces).

“Well, if we can’t have a Hello Kitty boat,” I say, “can we at least name the boat after me?”

“What? The Miss Irene?”

That sounds kind of stupid, but there won’t be another boat out there with my post-professional moniker.

The chances of us ever owning anything bigger than a kayak is one in a million, but it doesn’t hurt to dream about it, does it? After all, all great accomplishments begins with a dream…and maybe along with the dollar that buys you the winning lotto ticket to help you achieve your dream.

You can check out Jessica Watson and her voyage (and merchandise!) on her website: http://www.jessicawatson.com.au/

Moon Day is Mom’s Day

I am frantically rummaging through the shelves for my date book because that time of year is fast approaching.

“What are you looking for?” Anthony asks from his usual spot on the couch.

“My date book. Have you seen it?”

“No…but we have three calendars in the house. Can’t you use one of those?”

“No…” I murmur. “They don’t have the lunar months on them.”

Anthony looks as those he’s about to ask more questions, but thinks better of it and returns his attention back to the TV. He’s been with me long enough to sense a long and esoteric explaination coming a mile away.

I sigh loudly. “I really need to find the calendar,” I say. “My mother’s birthday is coming and I don’t know when it is.”

“Don’t you?” Anthony asks incredulously. He may have the memory of a goldfish, but when it comes to the birthdays of his loved ones, it’s etched solidly with computer-like precision into his brain.

“It changes every year,” I tell him. My mother inisists on celebrating her birthday according to the lunar calendar. This in itself is no big deal except it falls on a different day every year on the solar calendar. I feel that if the day of her birth hadn’t fallen on the Moon Festival, she probably would have stuck to the solar one instead. I contemplate on going outside at night to observe the lunar cycle because that’s usually a dead giveaway. But sometimes a month repeats itself, which means that I may be ringing my mother to wish her a happy birthday a whole lunar cycle too early.

This lunar calendar business is something Asians follow to a tee. When I was in Taiwan last year, I observed that my uncle has two separate calendars hanging up in his house. A giveaway solar one from the local bank and the really officious looking one from the shop where they also sell joss papers and incense that you have to tear off daily. Try as I might, I could never fully decipher the intricate codes and symbols on the solar calendar. There are good days and bad days and you plan your life according to the planetal alignment and the phases of the moon. You use this calendar, as well as the aid of a soothsayer, to plan all the major events of your life including weddings, opening of a new business, and funerals. Caskets containing the dead sits around in funeral homes sometimes for weeks on end because there are no good days in sight for burial. Brides and grooms sometimes have to marry on a Wednesday afternoon between the hours of three and five because otherwise their marriage will be cursed for eternity.

“Aha!” I say. “Here it is!” Moleskin makes these politically correct daily planners where they list all the major holidays from around the world, including those who worships the moon because it also has pictures of little cycles on it. “Aha! Her birthday is in October this year!” I can finally breathe easier now. Over the years I have foolishly forgotten mom’s birthday and thus invoking various forms of discontent. It’s easier to find out when it is when I was working in Chinatown. When the shops starts piling all sorts of gift boxed moon cakes out, I’ll know it’s getting close (another clue is when my students started to bring me drawings depicting the various scenes  from stories associated with this holiday—the crying woman flying to the moon, the bunny making glutinous rice cakes on the moon, and the peasants attacking the Huns with the aid of a secret message inserted into the moon cakes). But it’s harder to tell here since I am nowhere near a Chinese community.

As long as I’m at it, I might as well look for Dad’s birthdays. That’s right. Birthdays. He’s got two solar calendar ones, which means there are two lunar ones to follow…but that’s another story for another time.