OakMonster's Den

We’re child-free by choice.

We don’t hate kids.  And we make great auntie and uncle.  We just like to play with them and hand them off to the parents at the end of the day.

We adore Brandon’s two nieces age 8 and 11.  We can hardly wait to hang out with Aurora and James’ 2-year-old Dresden and baby Chloe.  Olaina and Justin’s Ella is still too little to play with but we didn’t mind hanging out with her too.

I’m quite sure the fact that they are relations–or practically relations, our tolerance and patience for them are a lot higher than for that of complete strangers’ kids.

However, we don’t offer to baby sit the kids on our own.  Well, Brandon is okay with taking Dresden to the park for an hour or two, and Little D and I get along swell playing inside the house.  But overall, we never want to be left alone with the young ones for more than a few hours at a time before our patience run out and our heads explode.

We chose to be child-free for a reason.  And our friends know it.

Yet, it’s a constant question we have to dodge here and back in Thailand.  My dad especially.  I haven’t the heart to tell him, so my answer is usually, “I don’t have the money.”  My mom’s friends know I didn’t want kids.  Actually, and quite surprisingly, they were supportive of that choice.

I started to realize I didn’t even want kids back in college.  I still remembered the first time my ex-boyfriend mentioned our future children.  That freaked the fuck out of me out but I played along.  Hahaha. Yeah, sure, honey, a boy and a girl, right? Wonderful.  But in my head, Holy shit he already talks about KIDS?! God I can’t have kids?! I don’t want any kids!!

You can’t imagine the relief when Brandon brought up early on when we started dating that he didn’t want kids.

So far, our choice to be child-free has never been a problem in our social life because we can still hang with our friends who have kids.

We had Aurora and the kids over for dinner often.  And we were perfectly okay with going to the movies with Brandon’s nieces when we were in New Mexico.

On those certain days we weren’t up for kids, we politely decline the invitation for their company.  Most friends understand.  Some don’t.

We are child-free BY CHOICE. And that choice includes choosing to not be around a child when we don’t feel like it.  Because if we want to be with a child all the time, we would’ve chosen to have one.

We respect parents.  We do.  I mean, we can barely stand up to Dresden’s rambunctiousness for a few hours and Aurora has to do this all day with Chloe clinging on to her?  Holy crap!  And then there are friends and single parents who also work full time on top of being a mom/dad.  I mean, seriously.  How do you guys manage all of that?

Props. Mad props to you, parents.

We respect also your choice to have children. And we thank you for bringing your wonderful kids into this world and even share them with us sometimes.

We hope that you respect our choice to not have children–or not be with one when we don’t want to–as well.

I went online to shop for an item I needed for the kitchen that I couldn’t seem to find in the stores.  [I can't say what the item is until it is given. Read on to find out why.]  My friend @MacabrePhotog was the one who inspired me to get one of these, but he himself does not have one.

When I tweeted him that I bought him something, he was quite surprised.  Another friend chimed in asking it was because his birthday was in a couple of months.

Nope. I don’t need an occasion to buy a friend something.

This notion of a gifting without an occasion was quite new to @MacabrePhotog.  He sent me a message later saying that he couldn’t remember the last time someone bought him something for no reason.

Welcome to my circle of friends, I told him.

I have made some new friends this past year or so.  And they haven’t yet gotten used to the fact that I’m quite good at random gifting.

Old friends know that I would come back from a farmer’s market with the last of this season’s Asian pears because I know they like them; that I would turn up with extra cream puffs if I ever go down to Beard Papa’s; or that I would make extra meatballs so the new moms could have them later.

Yet another trait I’ve picked up from my mother.

As long as I remember, my mom and her friends have always picked up something for each other when they were out somewhere.  I’m not talking about souvenirs from far away places–but yes, we received those too–but from a trip to the mall or a stroll through a market.

Bags of mandarin oranges were messengered over from Aunty Rae’s office–because she found a great deal from a fruit vendor when she was out to lunch.  Aunty Sida’s driver dropped off barbecued duck for our dinner since she was at the restaurant that’s famous for duck.  Mom just sent some tote bags she picked up from today’s shopping trip out with my brother as he headed to the sports club to hand it to Aunty Jim.

You get the idea.

Mind you, this was even before cell phones.  They did manage to call each other before stuff get sent over.  But a lot of the times, things would just show up.

Even while I was away in the U.S., I could come home in the summer to find a pile of Thai souvenirs my mom had collected for me to take back to give to people for Christmas.  And 1/3 of that pile would be from the aunties who thought of me while they were out shopping.  Not to mention something else they had gotten for me specifically.

Buying a treat for your friends once in a while never hurt anybody…as long as you can afford it, of course.

That was the message I got from my mom and her friends.  My mom never really taught me to do this.  I just learned from watching her and the aunties.

One of the very last things I got to do with her before she had the stroke, and eventually passed away, was to hit the mall with the aunties.  It was in February and the mall was full of Valentine’s Day stuff.  My mom sent me slinking off to another cashier station to buy everyone a red carnation each. (”But mom, there are ROSES!”  “The roses are too pricey. The aunties will yell at you for wasting money if you get those. Get the carnations!”)

Aunty Sida outdid us by later passing around bright red hand towels with “love” printed on them to everyone.  But we didn’t even see her buy anything!  The trick was that she spotted them on the way to the restroom.   She had them held, then texted her driver to buy them up while we were in a different section of the mall!  LOL

Now I found myself wandering through Target, calling my friend Aurora to ask what size shirt do you think our friend Jim wears because I found a $5 Captain America t-shirt he’d love.

I’m a lot more like my mom that I thought.

Oh, and if you’re thinking I would be driving Brandon crazy with my shopping for other people, guess again.  The mister does the same thing. 

Oh yes. The tradition is back.

First of, in this blog, soccer will be called by its proper name of football.  Thank you.

You know, I’m not an all-the-time football fan.  But every time the Olympics and the World Cup come around, I’m all into it all over again.

It’s a family tradition that I just can’t shake.

Having grown up with 2 older brothers, it’s not difficult to get roped into the spirit of all of the teams.  Frankly, I remember watching enough games but I still don’t know who’s who.  All I know is that since Sunday’s color is red in Thai tradition, my oldest brother claimed it Liverpool Day and we, including our cousins, were thereby demanded to wear red.

My dad, mom, and oldest brother were all educated in England. Naturally, as a household–except for mom who didn’t do sports–we always root for the English.  My oldest brother’s team of choice after that is Germany for its well known precision.  My older brother was all about Brazil. And then it’s everyone’s next favorite team, Italy.  And these are the four teams I root for consistently every 4 years.

With all of that football love in my household, however I personally never own a football jersey.  My mom wouldn’t let me have one because “girls don’t wear football jerseys”.  I couldn’t even get the hand-me-down from my brothers!  My brothers would wear matching jerseys when we went out for Sunday supper.  Say, if it was French food we’re going for that evening, the boys would put on France jerseys and Italy for Italian food.  This, obviously, illicit a lot of smiles.  Not to be left out, I would try to dress myself to match the jerseys as well.  I distinctly remember one outfit of white with accents of blue and red for the French jersey.  Hey, I tried!

So, recently, I just bought myself an Italian jersey, albeit cheap and cheesy from Target and my Italian coworker’s snickering at it.  One childhood depravity fulfilled. Woohoo!

This year, I have 2 coworkers who are even more into the World Cup as I am, the Italian and the Armenian.  I’m sure there’s a joke in there somewhere of “An Italian, an Armenian, and a Thai walk into a bar…” And that’s what we’ve been doing 4 out of 5 days last week, running into Casey’s in Downtown LA at lunch to watch the game with a VERY enthusiastic crowd.

They’re my surrogate football brothers. And I love them for it.

Back in 2006, there was just me in the office with the occasional glances from other coworkers.  But it wasn’t like this year.

Looking back further into my June/July 2006 posts to see what all I’ve said about the World Cup then, instead, I found my posts about my mom’s stroke.  It was hard to read.  There I was, mixing the tragedy of mom’s stroke with the World Cup and other daily life nonsense.  I didn’t know then the horrible effect the stroke would have on my mom. She was in such great spirit.  I also didn’t know then that the stroke would be what would eventually take her from us. Otherwise I wouldn’t have made such light of everything.

Funny how in hindsight you find all these odds and ends.

So, today, in celebration of my family and a little piece of memory of my mother, I’m going to go out there and enjoy my World Cup fever as I have been doing all week.  With the distance between myself and my family nowadays, there are a few things that keep us together.  World Cup watching being one of them.

A lot has happened since I got back from Costa Rica.  As I was coming to grip with how to take life a little bit easier, this shit went down in Bangkok.

“How Did Thailand Come to This?” indeed.  (And this report is pretty accurate and surprisingly unbiased.)

My family home is literally in the war zone.  I mean, they had been since the Red Shirts camped out not 200 meters down the street.  Everyone is safe now, but my dad and brother, my uncle and his family, and our family maid were more or less held hostage by all of the activities all around.

My brother did take a heroic run to take an elderly neighbor with a heart condition to the hospital and returned home with food and supplies to stock up.  And he did it again the day after the city was ablaze, to take my dad with a severely painful “stuck shoulder” to the doctor.  Ah, calcific tendonitis, calcification of the tendons in the shoulder! You know just when to reveal yourself!

I didn’t realize I’ve inherited my mom’s ability to worry too much.

Hellooo anxiety!  Thanks for visiting.

I’m sure the level of angst I had since last Tuesday was multiplied by each mile away from Bangkok.  And that inadvertently made me shut down and mentally run away again.

Ask Brandon what I’ve been doing these past few evenings. That’s right. I sat in front of the TV and didn’t move.  The good ol’ self defense mechanism when things got too much for me to handle, I just ran away into TV Land.

As things seem to be returning to normal in my hometown, I came across another fork in the road of life.

But making the decision on which direction to take wasn’t a problem.  It seems things have been decided for me already.

Those who have read “The Alchemist” know this well: “When a person really desires something, all the universe conspires to help that person to realize his dream.”

So many things happened to so many aspects of my life these past few weeks.

First, a few weeks ago, Brandon and I were deciding what to do for Memorial Day weekend.  Do we stay? Do we go?

Do you want to go to Monterey to re-do our disastrous first romantic getaway or go to Hearst Castle?  How about Joshua Tree before it gets hot?  We couldn’t decide but we know for sure we didn’t want to be in town.

Then I saw posts from our friends in Portland.  And I was reminded that we told them we’d going to visit them this year. Why not now?

Cheech’s dad is visiting but he’s leaving tomorrow morning, leaving him enough time to clean up and be our host.  Matt and Traci are lined up for dinner on Saturday night, and Rachel for Sunday breakfast.

And then just last week, another universal alignment.

Did you know that I’ve always wanted to do archery?  I don’t recall having shot any arrows when I was in Thailand, but I sure as heck ran to the booth the first time we went to Renaissance Faire. I was in love with the long bow.  But I didn’t quite find time or resources to explore further or take it up.

Then I started to go to shooting range with Brandon and his colleagues.  As much as I like to shoot firearms, I don’t really care for the noise.  I’d prefer something quite as deadly but a lot quieter.  We’re back to the archery conversation. And again, it didn’t go anywhere.

And then, out of the clear blue sky, Brandon’s coworker posted something on Facebook about his daughter doing archery class. He found out a new range has recently opened in Los Alamitos.  He was telling me as we got in the car to go get dinner.  But he suddenly changed his mind about where to eat and we ended up at Pasties…which is down the road from the Archery Outpost.

We popped in and I already felt right at home.  We chatted with the friendly staff, and got the tour of the place and a bit of the history of this family business.

This comes in the heel of my decision to step further back from my involvement with Thrill the World Los Angeles.

The universe couldn’t have been clearer about its plan for me.

Holy CRAP! It’s all ready been a week?!

My god. Am I a bad blogger!

But I promise to have something much more entertaining than my weekly food journal in a day or two.

For now, on to Meatless Tuesday.

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Breakfast:

• Open faced “grilled cheese” sandwich: one slice of 7-grain bread, buttered, topped with slices of one whole vine-ripen tomato, sprinkled with Nature’s Seasons seasoning blend, and a few slices of snack-sized cheddar cheese, toasted in the toaster oven until the cheese is melted.
• A mug of full-leaf oolong tea.
• Mid-morning snack: 2 whole grain crackers (they’re like 2.5 inch across!) from Fresh & Easy with generous schmear of whipped cream cheese, my mid-morning snack of choice these days.

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Lunch:

• A bowl of vegetable chili based on the recipe in Food & Wine magazine (which I will blog about later).  In that: heirloom carrots, daikon, red bell peppers, kidney beans, hominy, onion, garlic, chili powder, cumin, and generous shakes of Chipotle Tobasco.  And a piece of 7-grain toast.
• Late dessert/afternoon snack: a Godiva dark chocolate truffle.

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Dinner:

• Because it was a buy one get another one for $2, I got 2 rustica pizzas from Z Pizza: Moroccan (egg plants, pine nuts, feta, basil pesto, caramelized onion) and Mediterranean (artichoke hearts, feta, roasted red peppers, greek olives, pili pili oil).  I ate a few squares out of each.
• A glass of organic peach oolong iced tea.

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Satisfaction level: Meat? What meat?  Nope.  Didn’t miss it one bit.  And I was full all day.

Thoughts: It’s getting easier and easier each week, I have to tell you.  I even didn’t miss the meat too much today.  But I did have an egg for breakfast.  I did crave some proteins for dinner but I didn’t go for my usual burger or ribs, but salmon.  A little weird, I know.  I’m sure I’m going to want me a juicy burger in a few days.

I’m also more conscious now of what I’d eat on a Meatless Tuesday and Brandon has been helpful in keeping me in check on that too.  He’d try to help me think of places I could get something meatless to eat at.

Now, I’ve been thinking about it today that since I’m doing this a Buddhist reason, perhaps I should also not do alcohol on Tuesdays as well to make the whole religious day out of it.  After all, abstaining from alcohol is one of the Five Precepts a good Buddhist should follow.

By not eating meat/eggs on Tuesday, and having not kill anybody, abstaining from taking life is checked off the list.  Abstaining from alcohol? One day a week, I can do that.  Abstaining from sexual misconduct is everyday…although I wonder if lusting after  Taylor Lautner and/or Sam Worthington or dreaming about Jason Mraz counts.  Abstaining from taking what is not given, no klepto here so check.  And finally, abstaining from false speech aka lying. Well, that might be a little hard to swing in a corporate world, but we’ll do our best, won’t we?

Alright. It’s decided. Tuesdays will be meatless AND dry.

Oh boy.

Well crap. I’ve been so busy that this blog is slowly becoming all about my Meatless Tuesday.  Sorry guys!

Just to catch you up, last Wednesday was our 8th wedding anniversary.  On our way to our tradition dinner at Benihana through the infamous SoCal rainstorm, we were rear-ended.

As we crested over the 405 close to Fairview exit, we got out of the carpool lane to get to the 73.  Suddenly in front of us, a black sedan was sideway on the #1 lane.  Its visibly damaged trunk was partly in the carpool lane and the hood in #2 lane.  Unable to swerve around, Brandon slammed the brakes.  We stopped many cars length from the black sedan.  Far enough distance to be safe but yet close enough to see the people in the car trying to get out of their vehicle.

See?  Driving at speed limit, leaving plenty of room in front of you in a torrential rain actually works. Unfortunately, the guy behind us didn’t follow the same rule.

All we could see out the rear view mirror was a smaller car than our Santa Fe disappearing behind us.  And *CRUNCH*.  We bounced around in our seats.  Not too badly, but enough to know we would be in pain the next day.

Some folks had questioned me why we moved from the crash site.  Well, among the many unwise reasons to get out of our vehicle or stay stalled in this lane–oh, I don’t know.  It’s dark.  It’s rainy. We are in the fast lanes with fast cars whizzed recklessly by each side of us? Um. No. We were not sitting out here to cause MORE accidents.

So we started to pull over to the shoulder.  The car that hit us started to follow.  Oh, goodie.  However, by the time we got to the shoulder, there was nobody behind us.

That motherfucker was GONE.

We called 911 and waited for the CHP to show up.  We couldn’t see what became of that black sedan either.

The tow truck showed up first and he told us that he was here for the black sedan that was reported by several people to be blocking the #1 lane.  But there was nobody out there except us, he said.

Soon after that, CHP pulled up and got us off the freeway to file report and talk about the incident.

In short, somebody hit the black sedan and left the scene.  The black sedan, having caused our accident, left the scene.  The guy who crashed into us also left the scene.  If it wasn’t for decent people calling that black sedan in to 911, it would’ve sounded like we made the whole thing up.   I am forever grateful to those good Samaritans who called that in, by the way.

Back to us, with fading adrenaline rush, Brandon and I continued onto Benihana to make the best out of the rest of the evening.  We popped some ibuprofen and went in to enjoy our dinner.  Our necks were tensed but we didn’t quite feel the impact yet.  I tried to dull it with a sample flight of sake…which didn’t really work.

The kicker of it all is that we had just finished fixing up the Santa Fe from Brandon’s day-before-Thanksgiving rear-ending.  (That one was paid for fully by the lady who hit him.)

AND we now found out our insurance apparently only cover physical injury from a hit-and-run/uninsured motorists but NOT the damage to the car.

Then again, this is now a week after the incident, my lower back still is  VERY tensed.  Brandon has been doing well so far but, true to what our doctor told us, sometime the muscles don’t react to the impact until many days later, now the Mister also has the problem.

Now, to top off the cake that was yesterday in the Kingdom of Crazy (aka the office), my back was so tensed I had to go get a massage.  The journey home on the bus took FOREVER as the jackasses, trying to creep up to the congested freeway entrances, blocked intersections all over Downtown LA.  Seriously, if you set LAPD out to ticket all of those bastards blocking traffic, endangering pedestrians as well as impeding traffic, City of LA would totally pull out of the financial shithole they’re in.  But I digress.

The massage part of Meatless Tuesday was nice, but not so much the rest of the day.

It all started at breakfast…

Breakfast

• Half of the Honey Nut Cheerios I originally intended to eat.  I tripped and spilled most of the bowl full of cereal and milk onto my cubicle floor.  *sigh*
• Snack: a slice of lemon poppy seed cake someone brought in.

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Lunch

• Veggie burger at Rowdy Red with only half of the buns.  A bit of the sweet potato fries with ranch dressing. It was really tasty and I personally liked it.  However my guts didn’t want any of that.

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Dinner

• 2 slices of Pizza Hut Veggie Lover pizza.
• A general scoop of Ben & Jerry’s Neopolitan Dynamite.

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Satisfaction Level: I WANT A FUCKING MEATY CHEESEBURGER NOW level.  I was hungry all day.  And cranky because of that.  Well, the botched attempt at breakfast got me nice and hungry through lunch.  I have to give the veggie burger credit for being thoroughly satisfying.  But then it acted up, leaving me miserable and quite literally drained for the rest of the afternoon.  I was so busy I didn’t get to snack before the evening massage either.

Thoughts: Yesterday just sucked in general. *sigh*

Breakfast

• A small bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios and milk.
• Mid morning snack – a few bites out of the 2-lb. tub of Fresh & Easy low fat strawberry yogurt.

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Lunch

• Homemade mac and cheese, half of Barefoot Contessa’s recipe.  Essentially shells, gruyere, and cheddar with a pinch of nutmeg. I also infused the milk with thyme and garlic.

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Dinner

• Brandon made us Top Ramen…
• Dessert: Ben & Jerry’s Neapolitan Dynamite. Lots of it.

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Satisfaction Level: Satisfied.  Didn’t miss meat once!

Guilt Level: Very high for the lack of veggies when they could totally be had.  Oh, and the ice cream gorge.

Thoughts

I took a mental day off on Tuesday (keyword there is MENTAL) and had an ortho appointment in the morning.  I pretty much stayed in all day except for when I ran the books out to mail for Operations Paperback. I mean, I could have gone to the store and get some fresh ingredients to make ratatouille as inspired by the previous night’s Heroes episode.  But I didn’t.

And of course, the blues got me diving into the arms of Ben & Jerry.  I usually enjoyed a couple of bites for dessert anyway.  However, I went to town with that.  Then again, I did avoid the wine which was my original idea for dessert.  One shouldn’t consume a depressant when depressed, a lesson I learned the hard way after my mom died.

That brought us to the blues.

A friend has been waiting for her grandmother to pass away for a few weeks.  This weekend was it.  Having had talked about the experience with the friend all week, it was like reliving the days with my mom again.

Obviously, once I got to work and found out the friend’s grandmother had passed away, feelings beyond my control were set in motion.  I was sad for my friend’s loss.  I was sad for my own loss.  Which brought me to miss my family, my friends, and overall being home.  I was sad for things I don’t have in my life, an interesting form of envy.  You get the picture.

I hid behind my pile of work all day as an excuse to not be social.  Thank god for that because I would’ve started crying.

The next morning, I cried in the shower. For not much of a reason but all of the above.  I knew I couldn’t go to work like that.

Grief is a VERY odd thing.  I mean, soon after my mom’s death?  I get it.  The random sadness and the crying.  2 years after and I’m still affected by some stranger’s death?  That I don’t understand.

Then again, I *am* doing this veggie Tuesday thing in honor of my mom.  So, I guess in someway it’s all related.

I told you about my multi-talented friend Note, the co-owner of Kinnaree Gourmet Thai and tarot card reader extraordinaire.  The latter, at least our group of friends think she is anyway.

I promised Note that I would blog about my month-to-month prediction, so that as time ticks on, we can come back to see how accurate she really is.

Before we get to that, what she said about my overall future gets me giggling.

She said that although I am a team player, I work better alone. Same thing with my social life, great with friends and going out but rather be at home.  She said that I will do well in an international environment. And that if I was to change job, I will find success in working on my own with international connections.

Gee. Doesn’t that sound like I should persue blogging and writing full time? LOL.

She also pointed out that my generosity and willingness to help people will get me in trouble.  Yeah, well, that was proven last year when I loaned money to childhood friend who actually was scamming off everyone she knew. Her poor mom was following her trail paying off the debt, including mine. But I digress.

Also I have to watch my dedication to work. Note pointed out that my doing well at work often means I’m so consumed by it and neglecting the household. Again, that’s true. I lost myself in whatever it is I’m involved in and forget to take care of my personal life.  Brandon knows this well from 2 years of Thrill the World back to back with my Big Gala.

Now, the 12-month prediction.

December: There will be secrets involved either at work or at home. Somebody has a secret and that will complicate things.

January: Watch out for some work harmony issue. That schpiel about me being too generous has something to do with that.

February: Great partnership at work and at home.

March: Other people will have bad news that I would take it upon myself to worry about.  It’s not my bad news but I’ll be bothered by it quite the same way.

April: The lady doth daydream too much. LOL. Something about me not being able to concentrate on the present, instead dreaming about things that could be.

May-June: There will be some obstables I must get over in these two months. Everything will be a struggle but I will win in the end.

July: Disappointment, she said.  That was the only word she gave me for July.

August: Temper rises and there will be some “third hand” interferences in my life. Like someone will try to mess things up for me.

September: I will “lead the army to victory” at work.

October-November: Again, obstacles. This time I will get tangled up in things. I will feel stuck. (Gee…during that time of year, could Thrill the World be something I get tied up on??)

There. You now also have the map to my future year. Stick around to see what may come true!

As for now, Note didn’t mention in her cards but I’m enjoying the time at home.  I had lunch with my family and the Aunties today.  We stuffed ourselves silly with a seafood feast, had great conversations, and remembered mom while at it.  Her friends miss her dearly and I once again serve as the proxy for my mom in hanging out with her friends.

Tuesday is Lalai Sap with the Aunties, movie in the afternoon with a friend, and dinner with Gnarly Kitty.  Wednesday is a day-trip to Aunty Or’s house in Khao Yai now that it’s finished and completed with the backyard orchard, corn field and mini rice paddy.  Thursday looks like a lunch  and shopping date with sister in law and dad. Friday is exclusively all Gang of 4 and a night out with Tong per our tradition. Saturday, last lunch with the family and off to California I go.

International lone wolf, I am!

Sawaddee from the Big Mango, y’all!  A nice, crisp, 75F “winter” Bangkok, no less.  I am enjoying the cool morning here.

I arrived at dawn yesterday and what a day it was!  My brother and sister-in-law picked me up in his brand new BMW X5.  We had breakfast and I was left to myself all morning.  I unpacked, played some piano, and took a crack at the Nikki Heat novel before succumbing to sleep after lunch.

My friend Note called to wake me up and off I went to her condo for a 4:30 p.m. pool party that didn’t happen. LOL.  Another friend showed up and we just hung out waiting for other people.

Meanwhile, in addition to her Kinnaree restaurant, Note has developed a new talent for tarot card reading.  I experienced her talent first hand last night which I will post later. Yes, it deserves its own entry!  Let’s just say that my general card is a Star. So is Lily’s.  It’ll be a good year next year.

The gang later assembled at Kinnaree Gourmet Thai on the back patio, away from general population.  3 other friends showed up for dinner. A few of us partook in a bottle of prosecco.  One of the friends brought home made cupcake and Note was off to assemble an “Earthquake” platter.

Those who are familiar with Swenson’s Ice Cream chain would know that an Earthquake is a big bowl of several scoops of ice cream.  At the request of our gang, Note emerged with a platter of almost every variety of ice cream she had at the restaurant.

I had a plate of half eaten cupcake in my hand as I reached over to get a scoop from the platter.  And SPLAT! The cake landed onto the ice cream.

“Oh my god! 2012 on a plate, you guys! Cupcake meteor!”

We laughed our heads off then.  And of course, I would repeat the same thing a little while later.  After I stopped laughing, I downed the damn cupcake to prevent future disaster.

We then took the party back to Note’s condo where we hung around as two more people get their fortune told, provided commentaries and real estate advise as we went.  All with the background of this cheesy modeling show Thailand has on, sponsored by a “talent” school, teaching modeling, stage presence, acting, and singing type deal. The models were quite horrible less this one girl who can actually act.  There was one hot boy on there that overacts worse than Henry Rollins on Sons of Anarchy.  I thought he was hot until I saw him work the runway. Smarmy and over abundance of narcissism killed it for me. But I totally digress there.

The next thing we knew, the girls’ phones started ringing. It was close to midnight and their moms were wondering where they were at. We knew we all had to go home.

My dad and brother just got back from a business trip this morning. I got to eat breakfast with them, now both are back in bed sleeping off their tiring trip.  I am going off to hang out with Lily and Joy and her kids at Royal Bangkok Sports Club for a swim and lunch.

The plan so far:

Today: Sports Club. Dinner with my bro and his girlfriend. Possible trip to Night Bazaar with my sister-in-law and the girlfriend.

Monday: Lunch with the family and Aunties.

Tuesday: Shopping at Lalai Sap Alley with Lily and the Aunties. Catching a Thai new rom-com hit, almost out of the run, with 2 MD friends later that evening.

Wednesday: The Aunties are taking me to Khao Yai. Aunty Or finally finished her home and they want me to see it.

Friday: Shopping with my gang. Dinner with family.

It’s going to be a busy but relaxing week!

Oddly enough, one should be nice and high after a major life triumph like your first backpacking trip.

Instead, I dropped off the side of Mount San Jacinto into the blues.

Elated, I shot out an email to my family soon after I blogged about it here.

It’s like dropping a pebble into a bottomless well.

Except for a chirp from my sister-in-law, nothing.

Well, heck, at least I expect to hear a “Well, you should’ve been working out so you don’t drag everyone behind”, but I didn’t even get that.

In a way, I did know that I won’t hear anything.  I did expect to hear nothing.   And somehow, knowing that I would probably didn’t get any reply from anyone, it still affected me.

It took me all week to get a hold of that feeling.  That I was sad because my family didn’t seem to share in my joy and triumph.  That I was sad because I had been disillusioned by a sense of closeness.  Facebook can give you that, I guess.

I didn’t think that whole “you need no approval from anyone but yourself” would apply to family members too.

But now I know.

I can breathe easy now.  And continue doing my thing.  Oh all the things my family wouldn’t have approved of otherwise. Frankly, some are still embarrassed with my participation with Thrill the World.  And probably will be again.

I guess when the bar is set so low, that I would continue doing things that would embarrass and disappoint my family, I shouldn’t worry any more.

Huh. That’s right, isn’t it?

I did tons of things I am proud of even if no one else is.

And that is enough.