Drive Through Breakfast

Some prep history:
I drive past ND's house everyday on the way to work and if he's at home, we'll wave at each other. It's goofy I know. (Sometimes I wonder if we were to split up, if I would have to drive an alternative route to work, the problem is that there is no alternative route that doesn't take five hours. Anyway.)

And more prep history: I always eat two sandwiches in the car on the way to work.

So this morning, for some fuzzy reason- I left my sandwiches on the counter and didn't remember that I was missing something until ten minutes later. Fk! fk! And thus I message him with an appropriate morning epistle of 'I left my breakfast at home! fk! fk!' (I'm a morning person, can you tell?)

I didn't actually think he'd be awake and so I was surprised when he replied 'Stop by. I have breakfast on the go here.'

Ten minutes later, with tactical CIA co-ordination and the help of a bucketload of traffic, he managed to open my cardoor, propel a lunchbox of poached egg and toast into the passenger seat, wave and dash off Flash-style.

And to make my heart go a little bit smushy- it was raining as well.


When I got to work (a million hours later) I opened up the box to see this.



M: There's a bite missing from my toast!
N: Yes cos it WAS my breakfast!

Wherein I rant about Honkie matrons

Just a slight disclaimer beforehand, I'm not disparaging all honkie ladies, just that certain type- those 40plus matrons that carry their LVs like they're hotshit even though their wealth comes from marrying a rich husband and not from any actual any hard work ethic. Yeah, you know which ones I'm talking about- don't pretend like you don't!

So I'm with my cousin Matty for the soft opening of my uncle's cafe and this lady (we'll call her Queen Money for fun) swans in and my uncle comes up to greet her. This is how the conversation actually went and how I tried to keep my eyes from rolling out of my head with sheer force of will

U: Oh hello! Thank you for coming! I appreciate it so much
QM: Oh no problem, I always do what I say.
U: So this must be your lovely daughter.
QM: Yes, I just had to bring her. She has a great taste for eating. She eats wherever she travels, so in Japan, in Europe, in America. We're always looking for fine dining all over the world. Ha! ha! ha!

At this my face contorted into some sort of spasm where it just folded in half. Matty just looks at me and says: I concur.

So we're at different tables and I ignore their conversation but bits of it float towards me like twenty year old air freshener and I hear bitching about shopping. Life is hard.

Nighttime falls and my uncle comes outside to play with the light switches and he adjusts it to give it this amazing effect of being bright yet romantic. He calls over to me and asks," how is it?"
And I respond "Super! It looks great!"

He calls over to her table and asks what she thinks as well.

QM: Well it's fine for Asians, but a bit bright for caucasians because they like it dimmer for their fine dining. But we fine dine so much that we're used to their lighting.

I think I almost spat my orange juice.

Here in a 'normal' situation, an ordinary person would say either a) it's too bright! b) it's a bit dim or c)it's great, thank you. But she is so determined to flaunt her wealth and make her status known to everyone, that a base question that can't be answered without a graceless aside.

Let's play an example game of how I see conversation with her going
M: Oh it's sunny outside
QM: It is isn't it! I must take my Hermes umbrella out to protect my SKII protected skin.

M: How do you find these carrots?
QM: They are nice, but they are nothing like the ones I had last week. They were 700 a carrot and boiled by Belgian monks. Ha! Ha! ha!

Seriously, I hate people like that. It just wouldn't hurt them to show a little grace and humility (and for some reason in Hong Kong, these types of matrons multiply like seagulls on a damn chip. I can't explain it, I have no idea where they come from. They're a mutant phenomenon.)

Divorce as dinner conversation

So the six of us were sitting around the dinner table when for some reason or another it occurred to us that we all had divorced parents. I think we were all a bit gobsmacked by those odds and then we mentioned the mutual friends who were running late and they turned out to be children of divorce as well. Eight out of eight.

When I was a child, no-one had divorced parents. Divorced parents were an anomaly. I think about how ashamed my Dad and Stepmum were of being seen as a blended family and how I was ever the only child on the airplane flying interstate between parents.

Now everyone has a blended family and flights are filled with children who got the short end of the stick in custody battles.

Some of us told stories about the traumatic things their parents had done to their families before and during the divorce. Some of us stayed quiet not wanting to share things which were too personal even for close friends.

I think though that we'll all in our way, be more self aware when we choose our partners to not make the mistakes of our parents.

Coconat spoke up at some point to reassure us ".. it doesn't matter, because despite everything we all turned out okay."

No-one agreed with her though and the table went silent.

In a canoe

Ehm. As much as I love my blackberry and it takes a good photo, I really miss my pink point and shoot. I'm doing so many amazing things lately and I'm only documenting it with my swiss cheese brain (which is overtaken with such useless factoids as did you know the Easter Island statues used to wear hats?) so it'll only be a matter of time before I completely forget that I did anything at all.


So this weekend I went to see Strassman (who doesn't love a bear puppet right?) and
I went kayaking. Yeah me, kayaking. Did you fall down in a dead faint yet? I thought I really haven't pushed the limits of my comfort zone this year so I thought I might go and do something that I wouldn't normally do.

I'd build some emotional growth and have an adventure at the same time. See, and this is where the photos would have come in handy to prove that I did it. Whoops.

In any case, I did it and we didn't run into any speeding boats, were not attacked by any bullsharks (I probably wouldn't have put my hands so flippantly in the water if there were any around) and didn't overturn the canoe at any point (ND did fall in when he was getting out, but that isn't counted I think) but most of all we had fun.

See? I can have outdoorsy and healthy fun! Who woulda thunk.

Older?

I always look sleepy in photos lately. They say that as you get older, your nose gets bigger. They never said that your eyes shrink to go along with it. (There's an easy squinty Asian joke in there somewhere but I'm bigger than that and I won't do it!)

Lessons in Love

She: (after I had done her a favour) I love you!
Me: Haha.. no I love you.
She: Thank you!
Me: Did you say thank you? What does that mean. When someone says I love you- you say I love you too.
She: Oh, I didn't know that.
Me: .. What do you say when your husband says 'wo ai ni'??
She: He's never said it to me.... Stop making me face reality!

(Edited) Sigh

I seriously want to talk about how I feel but I think I'm going to get in trouble for salacious gossiping. So, let's just say this: If your girlfriend has only kissed you once all year? She doesn't really like you all that much. Also, get yourself a new one that likes you.

Kinda saved a dog

The above image is not mine- I pulled it off someone else's images. It's an approximation of what the dog looked like. Actually in all honesty they could probably be identical.**

Let's be frank, I am not a cat person and lucky for me (and unlucky for all the cats in the world because I am a super duper owner) ND doesn't love them either. So I live in a relatively cat-free world. I am without a doubt a dog person. Dogs love me and we generally get along because they don't try to claw out the backs of my thighs.

In a moment of frustration with my company a couple of weeks before, I exclaimed angrily to ND "Fuck this! fuckitall! I'm going to quit and become a dogwalker!"

Of course God heard me and went 'heeheehee.. she thinks she wants to be a dogwalker. I have a plan to make her stay in marketing forever!'

And ever since then I have been saving dogs all over my neighbourhood. That is, rather hilariously you'll find me chasing Ted from downstairs up hills or rounding up poodles back into their gates. Here she comes to save the day.

Today however, I thought I would spend a quiet afternoon in the park near mine.

You know the one. And I was on the phone with St Mary (because I am one of those annoying loud people) and there was no-one around except an old lady and her two dogs. A staffy and Bobby .. a rat terrier? Well, they were in line of my vision and then Bobby was not. Bobby fell straight into the water with a plop. If you can see the photo, it's kind of a deep drop down.

I was baffled. Dogs are dumb at the best of times, how the heck did that happen?

The lady then started calling Bobby and was trying to coax him to swim to safety. Of course, safety was about 100m to the left and Bobby was a small dog. She gave up and hopped down there to save him.

Lucky for her and Bobby- that it was low tide and she was standing on a little shelf. That little shelf is not usually there. She propped Bobby back onto land and by then I was like 'lady, do you need help??' She looked sprightly but she wasn't young. I was a little bit worried about how she thought she was going to climb back up.

That crazy dog was running around in circles and weaving everywhere and she said breathlessly 'Please get him! He's blind!'

And Bobby was weaving right back to the edge of the harbour so I dived for him before he reached and he got frightened and headed the other way, before turning back and almost weaving back into the damn ocean.

Have you ever tried to stop a miniscule (and wet) rat terrier from falling off a ledge? It's kinda hard. Everytime I almost had him by the collar 'here Bobby, here boy, good boy..' he'd duck and go careening too damn close for my liking. That dog had a massive death wish.

Finally (finally!) I had him tightened to a lead and he was frightened (He probably thought the dogcatcher was chasing him around. The staffy was just sitting there enjoying the show.) and I was puffed. I peered over the ledge- 'Are you okay?'
She made her way to dry land and she pulled herself up. I gotta give her props for that.

She thanked me profusely and I made my way back to my handbag/mobile phone/ipad which were rather miraculously still there (Thank jeebus for white middle class suburbs where they couldn't be bothered to steal these kinds of things because they already have them in spades)

At any rate, the lesson for today kiddos, is don't take your blind dog off leash near water. Well you can, if your dog is massive like a saint bernard and doesn't have any chance of falling in. Don't do it if the dog is smaller than your backpack.

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