Aunt and uncle catch ups

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Today, we went to visit Chris’s paternal grandmother for about two hours, then spent about five hours at his aunt and uncle’s home nearby. The funny thing is that we spent five hours at his aunt and uncle’s home, yet we didn’t even realize that time had passed that quickly because there was so much to talk about between running around with their grandchildren, who they were babysitting for the weekend.

I thought about my lunch with my aunt last Tuesday before we left for Australia, and I realize how much of a far cry these conversations today were versus the very shallow conversation with my own aunt. My aunt is a well-meaning, happy, good person, but she just doesn’t have it in her to have a conversation with me past very surface level topics. She will ask me, “how is work?” But if I were to say anything more than “good” or “okay” or “terrible,” she wouldn’t know how to react or respond. She will ask me if I am planning to have children shortly after the wedding, and I will respond yes, no, or maybe, and that would be the end of that topic. There’s no deeper digging, no topic that develops past the first question and answer, and some answers are too complex or painful or long for her to fully be interested or engaged in. Tonight, we discussed our wedding preparations, everything from how we chose a photographer to the questions that he would ask us leading up to the wedding to prepare for the wedding day. I could never have that conversation with my aunt… or any of my aunts or uncles who are on my side at all.

As Tolstoy once wrote famously in his epic novel Anna Karenina, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” All families have problems. All relationships have problems. But not all families and relationships see the same issues as “problems.” I’m positive my aunt doesn’t see our shallow conversations as a problem, but I do. I feel like she will never really know me. Even my dad asks me deeper questions than my aunt.

But this is my family. They are who they are, and our relationships aren’t going to change. So, as per usual, I have to keep reminding myself that I need to accept these situations as they are — not capable of change. And that’s okay because I can find deeper conversation with Chris’s family members and a select few of my own friends.

Vietnamese food in Melbourne

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I never realized how large the Vietnamese population in Melbourne was until my second visit here in 2013, when Chris took me to two different Vietnamese neighborhoods, Springvale and Richmond. It shouldn’t surprise me given Australia’s proximity to Vietnam, but it was more just intriguing to me to think of Vietnamese people speaking English with Aussie accents and living in the land Down Under. This morning, I had a craving for pho, so I asked Chris to take me to have some. We decided to go to Springvale, where we passed by a handful of Vietnamese butcher shops one store at a time. I’ve never seen a Vietnamese-specific butcher shop, nor have I ever seen Vietnamese-only barbecue restaurants and takeout counters for classic dishes like heo quay (Vietnamese roast pork belly). Here, there are pho shops that open at 8am, which I also hadn’t seen before outside of Vietnam. Traditionally in Vietnam, pho is a breakfast dish, and here, people actually do have it for breakfast… and queue up for it!

The original place we wanted to go to have pho had too long of a wait (I have never seen a queue for pho, nor have I ever had to wait for it anywhere), so we settled on a place a block away, which ended up still being quite satisfying with a side of jack fruit shake. These shops serve pho and only pho, and they are bustling. I wish New York had Vietnamese food like this and quality that was as easy to find as this.

Maille mustard in Melbourne

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After arriving in Melbourne and having lunch with Chris’s family, Chris and I took a long drive to nowhere and found ourselves at the Woolworth’s supermarket near his parents’ house. I always like to visit grocery stores and supermarkets when we are traveling, even if I have been in the same exact ones in Melbourne multiple times. It just makes me happy to see the variety of food, how it differs in terms of food type, place of origin, and types of readily available ingredients. This time, after a trip to France, I am more cognizant of the French brand mustard Maille, which recently opened a glamorous, high-end store on the Upper West Side in Manhattan (and where I got ripped off into buying a small $9 jar of their basil flavored whole grain mustard). So I was shocked when I saw a shelf of just Maille brand mustard imported from France, and everything was $4 AUD or under! That’s less than $3 USD! I immediately bought one large jar of whole grain Maille mustard and rejoiced in my purchase.

Given how strong the U.S. dollar is in Australia now and how stronger it’s gotten every subsequent visit here, I have a feeling I may be making more food and maybe clothing purchases while I am in town. 🙂

In flight cereal milk

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I just had the most luxurious flying experience from LAX to Melbourne: fourteen and a half hours in the air on a points-upgraded flight to business class, complete with pajamas, turn-down service for my seat that changed into a bed, and endless food and drink served on real ceramic and glassware. I spent ten of those hours sleeping without even realizing it since I was feeling under the weather, but when I woke up, all I could do was think about the cereal milk custard dessert I had before going to sleep and how funny it is now that “cereal milk” flavored anything is so popular now thanks to David Chang and his Momofuku empire.

When Ed and I were kids, we ate a lot of cold cereal, both sugary and plain, and we always drank our milk in the end. No food could go to waste in our house, and in fact, the mere concept of throwing out the sugary flavored milk in the end had never even occurred to me until I saw kids at school on the free lunch program eating their cereal and then dumping their leftover sugary milk into a massive bin. At that point in life, that was one of the most disgusting sights I had ever seen.

To think that today, people are profiting off of “cereal milk” being sold at Momofuku Milk Bar is so mind-boggling and makes me feel sad and a little angry for all those kids who threw out all that good milk in elementary school — first world problems to have access to nutritious cow’s milk but to throw it out without realizing how fortunate they are. And it’s so odd to think that now, the same cereal milk is being sold for five bucks for a small amount, AND the term itself is even trademarked by Momofuku Milk Bar!

Leaving on a jet plane

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We’re leaving today to go home, as in home to Melbourne. I actually caught myself saying “I’m going home” to a colleague, before I added in that I’m going to Chris’s original home since I am obviously not Australian. I had this same thought last year when we flew back to Melbourne, that Melbourne was my home away from home (New York City) away from home (San Francisco), but this time it feels even more like going home because this will be my fourth time coming and staying, and my fourth Christmas in Australia. It’s like a real tradition now, a real “home coming,” and it actually feels comfortable and “normal” to say “I’m going home” when I come here now. I have a family and Chris’s friends here who eagerly look forward to my arrival, who actually want to have real conversations with me about what I am really up to and thinking, and who want to feed me and shower me with hugs and kisses when I walk through their doors. I have more love and affection here than I have ever or will ever have in San Francisco sadly, collectively across family and friends there. That is kind of a sad feeling that in my “real” place of origin I have less love, but I think as time is going on, I’m slowly getting used to it as my reality.

Family “fun”

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Sometimes, I can’t even be around my family for ten minutes without hearing something really senseless and irrational being said or done. I had lunch with my aunt today, who is here for two months from San Francisco to help take care of her grandson in Brooklyn, and she informed me that her son, this grandchild’s dad, and his wife may not be coming to the wedding in March because they noticed that our wedding date is on a Friday, and in their words, “But Ryan has school that day.” This child just turned three years old. His schooling is hardly going to impair him in life if he misses a couple of days for this wedding. And our wedding is on Good Friday when many schools and businesses will be closed. There is zero logic in my family.

The other alternative, as his wife noted, was that my cousin could go, and she could stay behind with their son, who absolutely cannot miss a day of school no matter what. My aunt expressed her disagreement and dissatisfaction to them and to me.

I can’t believe it. Even when I make things really simple for my family, they find ways to make everything hard for themselves.

Texting

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My parents still have a non-smart phone, and with their little flip phone, they have texting blocked because they refuse to pay for it. I am waiting for the day when AT&T forces them to not only get a smartphone, but to also force them into an internet and texting plan. Unfortunately, that day has not come yet.

I was thinking about this today because my aunt has been texting me to confirm lunch plans for tomorrow. She asked to confirm the restaurant name and asked which train stop was closest. It would be so much easier if I could text with my parents instead of calling them to share information or sending them e-mails (to which I never, ever receive a response, so it feels like they are going into a black hole).

Annual handmade Christmas cards

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This year, I’ve recommenced my annual Christmas card making, and I’ve made 12 cards for my family and friends. The last two years, I gave it up due to lack of time (last year with my dad’s heart surgery) and bereavement (losing Ed in 2013), but this year, I know it’s time to start again. Making greeting cards makes me happy and gets me feeling more creative and crafty.

When I was making a list of who to make cards for and send to, I realized I don’t really want to make cards for people I don’t have much to say to even if they are my friends and family. It seems kind of empty. I don’t just want to write a card that says “Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!” That seems so trite and unoriginal. I want to make cards for people who I know a) will appreciate not just getting a card, but the fact that it’s handmade and took a lot of time/effort to create, and b) I have meaningful words I actually want to express in writing.

Getting older and tired

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I’m a good friend. After a night of partying at my company’s holiday party, I agreed to dragging Chris and myself out to Brooklyn to drink and catch up with my good friend and her boyfriend, who earlier this week had shoulder surgery and wanted to be close to his apartment for convenience. I told myself that I’d have two drinks to catch up with them and leave, but somehow that ended up being something more like five drinks plus two shots. And we didn’t get home until past 4am. This morning, I woke up and could barely speak. My voice was gone.

Then, the rest of today felt unproductive, as I had a long list of things I wanted to accomplish our last weekend in New York before leaving for Melbourne for Christmas, and pretty much nothing got done. Two nights in a row of heavy drinking ruins all productivity. Once upon a time, I could have gotten through this, and now almost at 30, I cannot. I’m so exhausted.

San Bernadino shooting

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It’s sad to know that I now live in a country where mass shootings are an everyday occurrence. It’s gotten to a point where they are so everyday that people aren’t phased by hearing the news via radio, TV, or the internet. Mass shootings are part of American culture now in the same way that pop music and Saturday Night Live are. And this time, the San Bernadino shooting appears to have been done at a facility that helps persons with disabilities. How can you be more cruel than to hurt those who already have harder lives and are suffering more than the average person? The gun lobbyists don’t care that all these people are dying; they are pushing irrelevant concepts like mental illness. We can’t even require background checks for people who want to buy guns, which is completely senseless. And it’s become trite when you read articles like this and you see lines about these mass murderers being calm, good, upstanding citizens. In that sense, many of these people are first time (MASSIVE) offenders. How do we identify those who just want to start killing people for the sake of killing without any past history of crime or mental illness? In the mental illness case, many mental illnesses are undiagnosed and unrecognized. The debate could go on and on, but what we are inevitably doing as a society is turning a blind eye to the problem of guns. Easy gun access here is a huge problem that cannot be ignored. Yet it is. People will continue dying – the young, the old, and everyone in between.

Because just as a very succinct Tweet I read yesterday said, “In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate. Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over.”

Seeing that in black and white on my Twitter screen was like pain to my eyes… because it is true.