SIX-TWO COMING OUT

I am so glad the weekend is over. I’ll finally stop spending money. This morning I woke at 10am and got ready for dim sum. We went to Sun Sui Wah on Main and 23rd. I’ve been there several times over the years for dinner with my parents, but never for dim sum. It was also my first time going to dim sum with SJC people.

The place was packed and it was fortunate that Kiyoko made a reservation. There were eight of us, a mix of SJC residents past and present, plus one of Adrian’s friends. Adrian had a hard-core weekend, I’m so proud of him. Anyways, Kiyoko did most of the dim sum ordering. I did however, make some special requests, one of which was chicken feet steamed in black bean sauce. It seems to me, this is the ultimate test of a dim sum eater. I also happen to like chicken feet at dim sum. My mom and dad make fun of me because of that. They say only old women like that stuff. Oh well.

When the cart with the chicken feet arrived, I quickly motioned for the lady to give us a dish. As she put it on our table, I saw that everyone other than Kiyoko eyed it nervously. I said, “Come on everyone, this is the stuff that makes dim sum unique”. The responses I got were varied:

“No way man.”

“How do you eat it?”

“What do you do with the bones?”

“Why don’t you show us?”

I took one of the feet and plopped it on the plate. “You just put one of the toes in your mouth and bite it off,” I told everyone.

All eyes were on me which was weird since usually when I eat it, my mom and dad think I’m just eating normal food, which it is. I took one of the toes up to the second knuckle in my mouth, ripped it off from the foot, and worked it around in my mouth. I got all the skin off, and then I spit out the bones.

“There! That was great, now you all try,” I offered.

There was still some hesitation among the others (Kiyoko, who’s a dim sum veteran, doesn’t like chicken feet in general). To everyone’s credit though, everyone did try it and some liked it more than others.

The rest of dim sum was slightly less interesting, but nonetheless good and filling. On our way back to the cars, Evelyn wondered if we were interested in going for gelato at this place by Clarke and Venables. We all agreed and soon we were in this industrial warehouse area. Then out of nowhere is this gelato place with parents, kids, and cyclists out front. The store proudly proclaimed it had 198 different flavours. As we entered the store, we could see that this was no false boast. We sampled some weird flavours like roasted garlic, balsamic vinegar, durian fruit, and curry. The garlic is actually pretty damn good.

We finally got back to SJC around 3pm. I cleaned up a bit, did some dishes and I ironed four shirts which nearly took me half an hour to do so. It was so humid around that time. I did some web site stuff until dinner. Dinner itself was a bit uninspired, but then again I had been eating quite well the entire weekend.

After dinner, I noticed that I had a box of brownies in my room that I hadn’t made yet. I left my room to go pre-heat the oven upstairs when I ran into Misato in the hallway. Misato is unfortunately moving out of SJC. She’s a real asset to the SJC community and a wonderful person overall. “Erwin, do you want to keep my fridge over the summer?” she said to me. I said yes immediately because I knew she has a big, waist-high fridge and I have a little midget one.

I asked her why she was offering it to me and she said I was the first person she saw in the hallway that she knew. Sweet. I love random luck. Ten minutes later, I have Misato’s beautiful refrigerator in my room. It’s so awesome. It probably holds twice as much food as my current one. Misato cleaned it out meticulously too, so it’s spotless inside. I felt like shopping for food right then and there just to fill it up. I was so happy!

I remembered that I still had to make my brownies, so I went upstairs to that. After my baking was done, I went up to Dana’s room to tell him the brownies were cooling. He had given me the brownie mix and we agreed I’d make it and we’d split it. When I got to his room, he thanked me for baking them, but he also asked me if I wanted to go to DQ for some ice cream. DQ and gelato in the same day? Hmmm…. sure, why not I thought.

Some other SJC people joined us and we piled into Dana’s car for the trip to DQ. I had a shake which I thought had less fat than ice cream did, but I could be totally wrong on that. We had this really funny conversation about how we were all nerds in high school. I tried to convince them all that it was quite the feat for me to be “King of all Nerds” in high school since I had to fight off all the other nerds in a class of 1000 students.

So, the weekend has brought me to this post. Man, what a weekend. It was a lot of fun, but boy, did I spend a lot of money.