So far over 1,000 photos have been taken. I have yet to calculate how many kilometers/miles and hours Brandon had driven in the 5 days we spent in South Island…on the opposite side of the road from the U.S., no less.

We had killed absolutely no possums (different than what we have in North America) and rabbits where are both non-native pests here in New Zealand, destroying forests and bird population. However, the Garmin GPS with Kiwi accent tried to kill us by running our car into the river. We guessed she was pissed after all of her “recalculating…make U Turn”s we ignored all day. And we have a video to prove it.

We had at least 6 great meals, 4 of which were a repeat of 2 restaurants, and one incredibily horrible one. We ate a lot but we also walked a lot in Auckland so I think that was what keeping my pants loose.

Yup. More coming soon!

Goals for 2010: 6 out of 10

1. SUCCESS: Lacto-vegetarian Tuesdays. I totally rocked that. Sure, there were some accidental lapses and a few intentional ones, curiously some of those cases involved bacon.  But more or less, I did REALLY good. And I even threw in no alcohol to that mix. So yay me!

2. FAIL: One hour of piano/guitar/singing, twice a month. Another victim of my television habit.

3. SUCCESS: Keep up with Italian. Still going strong despite feeling like the village idiot in class. The joy of learning the third language on your second one.

4. FAIL: Work out at least once a week. HAHAAHAHHAHAHAH …nope.

5. FAIL: Read at least one book a month.  8 out of 12 and two of those are graphic novels. So yeah, I cheated a little bit.  I didn’t do so well this year because I rocked #6. And I got stuck trying to get through “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and “The Zombie Survival Guide” when I should’ve given up and moved on.  The sad reading list looks like this:

1. Serenity: Better Days #1 (Comic book)
2. Serenity: Those Left Behind (Comic book)
3. Angel Time – Anne Rice – the first book I ever hate
4. New Classic Family Dinners – Mark Peel – Read it but haven’t cooked all of it.
5. Dead Until Dark – Charlaine Harris
6. Room – Emma Donoghue [ETA: Totally forgot to mention]
7. Delivering Happiness – Tony Hsieh
8. Naked Heat – “Richard Castle”

 
6.  SUCCESS: Finish reading the magazines as they arrive. And that’s why it eats into #5 goal a little bit.  I usually read my book before I go to bed so I’d bring in the magazines some nights instead.  Someone was laughing at me that I couldn’t finish reading a magazine in a few hours. Unlike other people, I *do* really read my magazines, getting my money’s worth.  Entertainment Weekly gets read the day it arrives, except the big issues.  Food & Wine gets in the next few days as well and will get another going-through when I sift through them later to pull out recipes.  WIRED and Self also get read cover to cover but over a longer period of time, in that order.

7. FAIL: Do my household paperwork on early day from the office.  Not so much. I found myself using that time for something else like catching up to the DVR.  Again, another victim to a television habit.

8. PARTIAL SUCCESS: Eat breakfast everyday.  Not very consistent here, but I did make an effort to do so.

9.  PARTIAL SUCCESS: Take a crack at National Novel Writing Month. Another weak yes.  I did it but didn’t accomplish it.

10. SUCCESS: Keep up with what’s working.  Starbucks and lunch out once a week for most of the year.

*

Goals for 2011

Less ambition! More routine setting!

Well, a lot of the failures last year has to do with bad television habit. It’s like a vicious cycle. If I don’t watch the show(s) that night, then I’d have to sacrifice another night to catch up and therefore losing time. ETC.  Hopefully, I have come up with a good solution.

Here goes!

1. 12 books a year. One of these years I’m going to be able to manage this!  Already have some books lined up to get read:

• Full Dark, No Stars: Stephen King
• Side Jobs: Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden short stories
• Emperor of Maladies: Siddhartha Mukherjee

 
These will be alternating some what with a bunch of cookbooks I haven’t read yet, and the three newest edition.

• Momofuku: David Chang — this has more stories than recipe!
• Ad Hoc At Home: Thomas Keller
• Fiesta at Rick’s: Rick Bayless

 
2. Play piano/guitar/sing on Sundays after dinner for an hour. More manageable and a set schedule on the least busy night of the week.

3. Eat a salad a week…Vegan Tuesdays don’t count! Trying to add more vegetables into the diet here.  And yes, I switched from calling it meatless or vegetarian Tuesdays because I also don’t eat eggs. That just throw people the hell off for some reason.

4. Catch up on DVR on Tuesdays, Thursdays and weekends (Friday is flexible). This doesn’t mean no television on any other night.  We will still watch a show with dinner, but I will not linger on the couch and watch everything else on the DVR every night of the week.  Tuesdays, since I already can’t have meat or alcohol, I’ve gotta have me one of my vices!

5. Cook one new recipe a month…and blog it! This could be a total disaster, but it’ll keep me on schedule at least.  Especially with all the cookbooks I have/want to read.

6. Wednesday Date Night. We MUST establish a day or it never happens!  LOL

7. If the hair needs a wash, work out! With much hair, I am not going back to washing it daily. No way in hell!  So, if it’s the pony tail day, it’s a work out day.  And by work out, I mean doing something active.  Like going for a walk or go to yoga class, or doing some mini workouts with the weights I have sitting on the bathroom floor before hitting the shower.

8. Write every week day on the way to work. It’s proven over November during NaNoWriMo that I *can* write on the bus on the way to work without getting motion sick!  The route is pretty straight on and the traffic is never too staccato. And I don’t really miss the morning nap that much.  That’s an hour of productive time I can have.  And I should use it!

9. A secret goal. If you want to know, you’ll have to ask me personally.

10. Keep up with past success. Weekly Starbucks and lunch out; Vegan & Dry Tuesdays; Italian lessons; Reading magazines as they arrive; and participating in NaNoWriMo.

*

So those are mine. What is/are your goals?

I mean, look at how neglected this blog is!!!

Let’s take a look back this year, see what all I did, and give out some 2010 awards, shall we?

2010 in Pictures:

Drinking Buddy of the Year: Bus Buddy Amanda

We’ve been riding the bus together for a few years and carpooled together numerous times.  But it was this year that Amanda and I started hanging out outside of the bus.  We grabbed a few drinks either in Downtown LA or right here back in Los Alamitos.  We occasionally dragged our husbands with us too, like when we went to the Night Dive at the Aquarium of the Pacific. Next up on our agenda is shopping.  Our wallets should be afraid. Very afraid.

Bar of the Year: Chaya Downtown

I actually have visited less and less Downtown LA hot spots since last year.  Work dynamic continues to shift and happy hour gathering has become more and more difficult to manage.  Yet, I kept finding myself moseying over to Chaya Downtown whenever I have an excuse to do so.

At the beginning, I didn’t really give Chaya much of a chance.  Compared to the cozy vibe at the Library Bar, I felt Chaya was a bit more snooty.  I was proven wrong on that.  Also with Library Bar having become so popular it was too crowded for my liking, Chaya has plenty of space to spread out either right up to the bar or out in their Japanese beer garden.  It’s one of the better places in the financial district for happy hour these days with great menu and strong drink specials.  I mean, that $5 cocktail specials they have would knock a lightweight on her ass, I tell ya!

Chaya bar is not just for drinks, but for lunch too.  Bartender Greg always take a good care of me whether I was just picking up a very reasonably priced to-go bento box or sitting down to pig out alone.  The food was surprising fast out there at the bar versus sitting down at the proper restaurant section.

Newcomer Award: USC Trojan Nation

Fight on!

It only took me 11 years since graduation to get around to buy USC football season ticket.  Bless her heart, at the time of purchase, Gridiron Goddess Amy shouldn’t be spending her money on the ticket, but she did. And we roamed and ruled USC campus as tailgate nomads, lugging our own food and beverages, looking for a place to crash.

During the sesason, I reconnected with old friend Roy aka USC Psycho and crashed at my rarely-seen Trojan brother Joel and his wife Zoe’s tailgate.  I never quite made it to Hawaiian Jen’s group at the engineering quad though, my one regret.  I also made new Trojan tweeps as I tweeted my away games from my couch or at the bar with USC Long Beach Alumni Club.

Yes, the Long Beach Alumni Club is back and very alive!  As destiny would have it, it got resurrected this year.  And naturally, I joined and soon became their director of technology, handling their twitter account and soon to design their website.

More Trojan Nation shenanigan will ensue through the spring, I am sure.  Thank god I’m not a basketball fan too or else my husband will never see me again…

High point of the Year: NaNoWriMo

I have great friends who always supported me through everything I do whether it’s AIDS Walk Long Beach with Team Lesser Weevils or joining GuerilLA in a spectacular improv musical unleashed upon the unsuspecting crowd at Universal City Walk.

This year I took a swing at National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and raised money for the foundation set up in my grandfather’s name in memory of both him and my mom.  Friends were super supportive with donations and encouragement.

I was writing on the bus on the way to work. I was writing it at lunch at work. I was writing some of it at home too.  50,000 words in 30 days proved to be too much for me as my inner editor and procrastinator kept chipping away at my words and my time.  However, I did have half of that for a draft of a memoir about our family’s ties to mom’s two big folders full of fortune teller notes.

Low point of the year (other than a disappointing USC football season): Sickness and death among friends

This year has sucked for so many friends healthwise thus make it a low point of the year.  Friends have been afflicted with fibromyalgia, MS, and cancer. I hate you, diseases, for making my friends’ lives unnecessarily harder. My fist. Your direction. Grrr….

Also,  a former colleague who had been dealing with kidney issues unexpectedly passed away.  He was okay one day and died in his sleep over the weekend. It was quite a jolt.

Holiday of the Year: Halloween for a completely different reason!

The past two years, weeks leading up to Halloween had involved running around with Thrill the World.  This year, I passed on the torch so I get to have my favorite holiday back!  Then again, the costume change this year was the most I’ve ever done.  5 costumes leading up to Halloween, if you can imagine.

1. Halloween Friday: Nerd Herder for work
2. Halloween Friday Party: Slave Leia for a Star Wars party at Amy’s house.
3. Halloween’s Eve: Crazy USC fan gear.  Well, I just topped off with what became my signature Dr. Seuss hat for the game.
4. Halloween afternoon: a Jedi costume was thrown on to visit Gregg at the hospital. I did tell him I was going to bring out Slave Leia but I didn’t think it was appropriate for a hospital.  David said if anyone was to have a heart attack, that would be a good place for it. LOL.
5. Halloween: Resident Evil’s Alice accompanying Brandon’s Tallahassee from Zombieland to our usual trick or treat evening at Paul’s house.

Song of the Year: Teenage Dreams, Glee version

Can’t. Stop. Listening.

Movie of the Year: Toy Story 3.

No, I haven’t seen the Social Network, Inception, The Kids Are Alright, or anything critically acclaimed.  Naturally, Woody and the gang won this round.

Surprise Movie of the Year: Hachi: A Dog’s Tale

It’s a straight-to-video gem.  I’ve grown up knowing the story of the original Hachikp in Japan so I was curious to see this movie Entertainment Weekly and my friend were raving about.  I knew it was going to be a 3 hanky type mush so I expected a little tears in my eyes.  But oh, no. No no no no. THAT was the middle of the movie.  At the end, I was sobbing so hard Brandon asked if I was okay.  I never cried like that for a movie. Ever.

Book of the Year: Delivering Happiness

Amy G. knows me more than I know myself sometimes.  She definitely knows something I don’t when she saved me a pre-release copy of Zappo’s CEO Tony Hsieh’s Delivering Happiness she had received at an event.  It only took me months to get to read it.  And once I did, I was inspired and depressed all at the same time.  You know, excited about the future and the fact that there’s a company out there that has the same perspective about “work should be a happy, inspiring place” as I do. (Damn you, Zappos for being in Las Vegas!)  And of course, it’s a little disheartening to look at my current situation which is not quite what it could be.  Then again, there’s not much fun you can really wring out of the line of work I do. *sigh*

TV Show of the Year: Doctor Who

I might have just become a late fan of the show (helloooo Martha Jones!), but my attachment to David Tennant is pretty strong.  So I was very skeptic of Matt Smith’s taking over.  But the show managed to change my mind and kept me glued.  So, hats off to you, Doctor!

Runner Up: Hawaii Five-O.  Alex O’Loughlin’s taking his shirt off every other week?  If this is not the best show on television I don’t know what is. But to tell you the truth, it’s Scott Caan’s performance that is keeping me hooked.  His big softy, smart alecky Danno is the only real character on the show. Everyone else is kind of two dimensional.

Oh, and you’re welcome for the following clip. (Good luck, Aquaman!)  Alex’ chest deserves his own FB page…oh wait a minute…

Restaurant of the Year: Koi Sushi, Seal Beach

We have always known of Koi Sushi.  As a matter of fact, my memory of it was that Brandon’s parents wanted to take us there once but the line was out the door.  We rediscovered it one day as a part of my quest to find a true Japanese restaurant, not just a place that serves sushi and teriyaki.  Koi was exactly what I was looking for.

They hooked us at our first visit with a huge hunk of braised pork belly “appetizer”.  I mean, we could’ve split that for dinner, it was that big.  And it was delicious.  The teriyaki beef got Brandon addicted.  Tender beef cooked perfectly and the teriyaki sauce that’ not cloying.  What I like most is that they a special menu that changes every week I believe.  Food was fresh and portion is generous.  Service was great.  As long as we get there off peak hours, there wasn’t any line.

When it’s a restaurant that Brandon actually craves, that gets on my favorite restaurant list!

*

Well, that’s my 2010. How did you year go?

That’s as far as I got, which is not too bad considered the constant cage match with my Inner Editor and my serious time management issue. Writing was quite fun but at 1,500 words a day, that has proven to be a little bit too much for me and my crazy fall schedule.

I may not have reached the 50,000 words. Or even my personal goal of 18,000 words. But I do have in my hand $230 donation (with a little bit of interests) to send back to the General Mangkorn Phromyothi Foundation in my mother’s memory, and a beginning of a family memoir.

I may not be able to finish writing in the 30 days given, but I am going to continue writing the story. Someday it will become a full fledged book that becomes an Oscar winning film starring Parminder Nagra as me and Russell Crowe as Brandon.

Okay, maybe an Emmy winning movie on Lifetime starring Olivia Munn and Joe Manganiello. Well, or maybe a Thai telenovella starring Ann Thongprasom and Willy McIntosh…?

/sigh/

Now we wait to see if the exchange rate would go up a little more. We have just gotten to 30 Baht per US dollar. Still nowhere near where the currency used to be but we’ll wait a while and see if that goes up any more by the end of December.

All of you have stuck with me through my first attempt at NaNoWriMo, and I’m very grateful for your support.

Yes, I said first attempt. I will be doing this again, you can bet on it!

Brandon said that maybe next time I should do a lot better if I write a fiction instead. With all the crazy dreams I had, one of them should turn out to be a pretty good novel.

As a matter of fact, there was this dream about a Saint Bernard puppy and a girl left orphaned by a mob hit that killed her parents…

***

Haven’t read about my NaNoWriMo effort? Read this and donate.

Friends in Thailand: To donate, please contact me and I’ll get you the routing number.

Friends in the US and Elsewhere with Facebook: To donate, please go through my FundRazr page here.

Friends in the US and Elsewhere without Facebook: Use this button here:

Seriously.

As I continue to get encouragement emails from the main NaNoWriMo people as well as my regional leader, I keep finding myself doing all the wrong things which they said would happen anyway.

I can’t just keep writing things out; I go back and rework things as I go.  And that’s not really the point of NaNoWriMo.

Being a blogger also doesn’t help as I try to rein things in to keep you folks interested.  It has become a second nature for me to start cringing when what I’m working on started to get lengthy.

And the biggest obstacle of all: time.  I have been doing great typing away on the bus on my way to work.  As a matter of fact, I think I’m going to keep up with this productive habit so my blog would not lapse this much ever again.  Writing at lunch was also good now that I have an office with a door I can close.  When I have a time schedule set up, I’m on it and productive as heck.

In comes the weekend.

I thought I would do all sorts of catching up and making great ways on the weekend and in the evenings.  Oh boy have I been wrong!  By the time I was done with dinner and cleared a show or two out of the DVR, it was time for bed.  The weekend rolled around and because of my social life, I would find myself with a couple hours break…which, selfishly, I would rather watch the Graham Norton Show than work on the computer.

And in a way, I guess there’s a part of me that’s still doing the emotional running away. You can’t possibly imagine all the time I spent on the couch watching TV after mommy died. It was crazy.

The more I write, the more I become aware of how much of my mom’s last few years I had missed.  The guilt of having been away the entire time is nipping at my heels every time I turn on the netbook.  That is probably why I never quite gotten far. Damn guilt.

But I’m aware of it. And I’m trying to work through it. At the end of the month, I will definitely have 17,000 words written. I will make good of that promise. I really want to see what I kind of book I’m going to end up with at the end.

For sure, there are all these holes in the draft I must fill in from all those times I wasn’t there.  Hopefully, doing so will also fill the corresponding holes in my heart.

Thanks again for being here for me!

***

Haven’t read about my NaNoWriMo effort? Read this and donate.

Friends in Thailand: To donate, please contact me and I’ll get you the routing number.

Friends in the US and Elsewhere with Facebook: To donate, please go through my FundRazr page here.

Friends in the US and Elsewhere without Facebook: Use this button here:

First of all, balancing the time between my numerous hobbies and activities, as you all know, during USC football season has proven to be challenging.  Secondly, my inner editor won’t shut the hell up.  I guess that’s a major pitfall of someone who writes short and concise pieces for a living.

And finally, typing through tears is kind of hard.

I know going in that writing a memoir about my mom is going to be difficult.  Band-aids are definitely being ripped open and healed over in almost an instant.  The physical pain in my chest still needs a little getting used to.  Thank god that I have an office now so nobody has to see my occasional bloodshot eyes.  But the warm and fuzzy feeling when I got the words out is quite rewarding.

Then came the news of a dear friend who has recently been diagnosed with lymphoma.  He has just begun his treatment and has a long road ahead of him.

Real life and memories meet on the pages of my Word document, and bring with them feelings I’ve long since put away or learned to live with.

Expecting the best and the worst at the same time was something I perfected when my mom was sick.  While I never gave up on her treatment options, at the same time I resigned to the fact that she might never make it.  I guess so I wouldn’t be disappointed with either outcome.

It seemed I’ve applied that to everything else since then.

So, while I know I might not make it to 50,000, I’m not giving up  NaNoWriMo effort.

I’m also not giving up on the friend.

(And yes, I’m adding this to my word count. So we’re at 5,209 now. It’s a preface material, no?)

***

Haven’t read about my NaNoWriMo effort? Read this and donate.

Friends in Thailand: To donate, please contact me and I’ll get you the routing number.

Friends in the US and Elsewhere with Facebook: To donate, please go through my FundRazr page here.

Friends in the US and Elsewhere without Facebook: Use this button here:

NaNoWriMo is is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved. So, staring November 1 and wrapping up on November 30, participants are aspired to write 50,000 words or about 175 pages novel.  It doesn’t have to be completed. It doesn’t have to be edited.  As they call it, “It’s all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.”

That’s right. 50,000 words in 30 days.  For scale, one page of single spaced Times font size 12 has about 525 words.  That’s about 95 pages of written word I have to crank out.

Hopefully, by November 30, I will have a draft of a memoir on my hands.

“Folder of Fortune” will be a memoir based on a folder full of notes my mother took from her visits to fortune tellers, numerologists, and psychics of Thailand. With mom’s due diligent in checking to see the accuracy of these readings, the folder full of little pieces of paper and torn pages of notebooks hold the key to my family’s past, present, and future.

Now, to keep me motivated, I’m going to raise fund for this pursuit.  $1 for every 100 words.  That’s $500 for 50,000 words!  The more you pledge, the more I will write!

NaNoWriMo is put on by Office of Letters and Light so naturally folks would raise fund for them.  You can too.

However, since this memoir will be in the memory of my mother, I’d like to raise the money for her and my grandfather’s foundation back in Thailand instead.

The General Mangkorn Phromyothi Foundation was founded in my grandfather’s name but with my mom’s love for education in mind.  My grandfather was Thailand’s Minister of Education back in the days so the Ministry of Education asked to use his name for the newly established foundation for their Teacher’s Training Program.  Essentially, the GMP Foundation funds the development of the training program for teachers with a goal to better prepare them to teach children in the rural area of Thailand. The Foundation also provides scholarships for those seeking training in this program.

Friends in Thailand: To donate, please contact me and I’ll get you the routing number.

Friends in the US and Elsewhere with Facebook: To donate, please go through my FundRazr page here.

Friends in the US and Elsewhere without Facebook: Use this button here:

And you will have to trust me with your dollars as the donation is going through PayPal for me to hold onto until I transfer the chunk to Thailand at the end of NaNoWriMo.  And more importantly, US dollars are weak right now (29 Baht/$US) so to maximize your donation, we will have to wait for the rate to go back up…at least 32 baht.  (I’d rather prefer 35 baht, but who knows when we’ll get there at this point!)

So, here’s what I’ll do for you, donors.

1. Every single penny is going to be donated. I’ll pay for all FundRazr and PayPal fees incurred on my end.
2. On December 1, if currency is about/above 32 baht/dollar, I will send the donation home.
3. On December 1, If currency is still below 32 baht/dollar, I will continue to keep watch and give weekly update on “In Memory of Khun Noi” Facebook Page.  The moment we get to 32 baht/dollar, I’ll make the transfer.

I hope you can support me through this journey!

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.

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. 

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.