Let the Fattening Begin

The last few days have been frantically nutty. I went to Orange Peel's flat yesterday. She wanted to know a good dry cleaner, so I showed her (the only) one in the neighbourhood. She's picky because she used to work at a dry cleaning shop, but she patronized this one simply because I drove her there and she had a year's worth of dry cleaning in the boot of her car. As I waded through the sea of needles and condoms that is the entrance way to her building, I wondered how long I could make jokes about her living on the east side of the city. It turned out that her building is really tidy and well kept on the inside. I offered to wash her car because she had nothing to do that day except wrap presents. She said yes, so I left Baby parked in the rain for a few hours while I drove her sexy red Acura to another dry cleaners to pick up my own trousers and then drove it to my flat where I lovingly washed it with Maguiar's car soap and a wool wash mitt. The mitt was white and is now black after dealing with the Acura. I didn't even get the car clean. I sprayed the thing down beforehand, but I could still feel the dirt coming off as I washed it. There were a lot of pine needles and such on the car, but it was mostly road grit caked on to the apron of the car. I noticed the apron was designed for maximal downforce, and mused about the racing potential while I splashed suds on the car. Even after I was done, I could still see a light film on the paint. I didn't get all the dirt, and even as I looked at it from afar, there was still one black spot left on the passenger side door. A quick wipe down and it was gone. As a super favour and the Dax touch, I hoovered out the interior and spritzed the inside with a pear-scented body spray to cover the faint smell of spoilt fruit.

Orange Peel mentioned that she forgot to pick up beer for Christmas, and as I drove home from the dry cleaners, I noted that the government liquor stores were open in my neighbourhood. I called her and asked if she still needed beer, and what kind of petrol she puts in her cute Acura. She told me not to put petrol in, and asked me to pick up a six-pack of canned beer. It was the least I could do, and so I did and then drove her car back to her flat. We hung out for a while and that's when I saw Un homme et une femme, munching on candied almonds and puppy chow. Yup, that's what it was called, puppy chow. It tasted like some crazy mixture of peanut butter, confectioner's sugar and some ingredient to make it stay together in little balls. Her boyfriend came home and told me that he made a copy of the playlist I sent to Lola after she asked for submissions. I was surprised when he said he was able to download all the songs because I couldn't find one on iTunes that had been there a few weeks ago when I mentioned to Lola, but it wasn't there on Christmas Eve when I decided to start using my iPod Shuffle (no snickering please) and opened an account and tried to download the song. See, it was a song that I'd heard all of once in my life when the local music channel played the video. I've kept the name of the song in my head (its a simple title), and was moved to recall the song itself when I watched Tango about a month ago. The song is not in the film, but it reminded me of the song I had heard more than ten years ago. I've managed to download 25 songs from iTunes in the last day or so, and send an e-mail to Apple customer service asking why songs are available one day, but not the next. The song was actually listed on December 24th, but after I set up my account, it had miraculously disappeared. Maybe I'll be able to get the song another way...

I mentioned before that my dad likes to change up plans at the last minute. Often, this happens once per plan but for important events like oh, I dunno, Christmas there is usually a follow-up change on the day. This year, he didn't leave me disappointed. I dressed really natty and drove to dad's. I don't care what other people say about the weather in my city. Where else in the country can one drive around on Christmas without having to de-ice the windshield, let the car run for 10 minutes so that it can warm up, wonder what the hell a block heater is, and have the top down? Yes, no other place than my city. I didn't take the top down, but I coulda. I got to dad's and left Baby parked on the street, poor thing. Inside, I couldn't smell the aroma of a turkey roasting, so I was a little confused. As I mentally prepared for the shock of being told that we were meant to go rock climbing on Christmas because its something a normal family would never do, I was relieved to learn that dinner was still on -- sort of. After opening my gifts and stocking, and taking some backlash over my taste in women, Dad announced that we were going out for chinese. I asked for a few clarifications, and then jumped on board. Afterall, mountain climbing in herringbone tweed with suede elbow patches, (yes, elbow patches which explain why I've worn this blazer a total of three times in my life) is not something I relish. I took the dog for a run. The fucking dog insists on running, its like he's searching for some wayward sheep in the hills of Wales or something. He's too stupid to realize that he's never actually been to Wales, or ever seen a sheep for that matter. Would anyone ever have to put up with this stupidity from a cat? Never. My point exactly.

After dad got up from his nap, he showed me photos of his half-brother who has the same name as him. It's like a bad episode of Newhart. I can just imagine my aunt saying, "Hi, I'm Joolz. This is my brother Bill and this is my other brother Bill." The picture must have been a bad one, because my first impression of it was that my half-uncle had spent his entire stage career in the Drury Lane production of Victor Victoria. Seriously, the photo made him look like an old queen. I could swear he was wearing lipstick and pursing his lips for the camera. He's just a year older than dad, but he looks much older, and if you put a wig on him, he'd be a dead ringer for my gran. He's not a poof though, he has kids. That doesn't prove anything, I know but it is a fair indicator. He had no idea that he had a whole family in Newcastle. He was raised in the south near Hastings. And off we went to dinner...

We were the first to arrive. My dad is always early, partly because he has an uncanny sense of time and partly because he'd been a wheelman since he was fifteen, pulling jobs all over town with his younger brother in tow. He's out of that now, but I learned all my wheelman skills from him, and he still drives like a madman. The staff were actually a bit rude to us until our asian friends arrived. Then they were soooo nice. My dad's girlfriend's baby brother put this together, and topped it with a bottle of mao tai jiu. I'd never tried the stuff, and I now can use Baby as an excuse. I don't want no more nights like my sister's wedding. Bobby got done and had his license pulled for 24 hours - zero tolerance for Novice drivers. Stupidly, I was riding with him, but the copper let us go on account of Bobby and I both looked dead sexy in our kilts, my expert legal knowledge (This wasn't going to be another Rodney King flashpoint if I had anything to say about it), and we also had a stone-cold sober passenger riding shotgun. To be polite, I had a half-shot. I've never tested the theory, but I think there is a plethora of household cleansers that would taste less vile than mao tai jiu, or its evil cousin fen jiu. The Christmas dinner started off very slow. First up, deep fried crab. Its a must have for my dad's girlfriend, but I stay away from it because its still in the shell and I'd have to use chop sticks and all. And the stuff had been prepared super extra spicy. I noticed that the restaurant also prepared the shell and all its offal goodness. I grabbed that and used a fork to eat it. I like crab offal, in Japan they serve it raw and call it kani miso (yum yum yummmmmm), so I figured that if I ate it deep fried it would be about the same. We had waited so long for this dish, that I was famished by the time I tucked in. My kid brother is like, nine and he still gets his crab shelled for him. He is spoilt by his mummy. We also waited so long for the second course that I thought that the crab was all we ordered. After about the third course, things started rolling, and I stuffed myself daft. By the time the last dish (after dessert) came, I could only manage to eat one piece, and only did that because my dad's girlfriend doesn't take refusals lightly. Besides, gai lan is delicious. It's like broccoli stems, but without the bad propaganda. Despite some unpleasantness from our host and an obvious violation of fire code due to the seating capacity, the dinner went off without a hitch. I refuse to toady to a man, who's only been exposed to a free-market economy for a very short period of his life, preach to the converted about how our economy needs just a little more corruption, just because he's picking up the tab. We could be proud, he said, and have a fast growing economy just like China. It's hard to explain the mechanisms of a stable free-market economy to a guy who's won't be convinced, but I essentially made it known that China's "free" market economy is based on very flimsy underpinnings, and had basically lost out to India. Of course, I used the name of an innocent third party country (an nyong!) because if I had touted India at the table, I probably would have received a kwai zi, or maybe a fork to the eye and he had a good shot from where he was sitting.

The sweetness of the whole evening was his daughter, technically my cousin. She's all of about 2 years old and is the cutest button you'd ever see, and looks just like an old girlfriend did in the single baby photo her mum covertly showed me years ago. The baby doesn't remember me, she'd only met me once before. She got a pair of clip-on earrings for Christmas, and looked like she had been overcome with stage fright when Grandma Stone first put them on her, but after everyone clapped, she knew she was the centre of attention. She wouldn't speak to me or my father until I asked to try on her earrings. Well, she thought this was the funniest thing ever, and after I tried them on, she made everybody try them. She's also at that age where the ice cubes in the glass of water are more appetizing than the water, but still won't feed herself. Instead, she just kind of leans in with her mouth agape to let you know that she wants what's on your plate. Or, if you're across the table, she licks her lips even for ice cubes. So, after I drank the water I passed her my glass so that she could have ice cubes for dinner.

Then came the beatdown. Image is very important to my dad's girlfriend's baby brother and his wife. To that end, they have enrolled their son in a private school. I had to bend over backward to ensure the father that, based on my expert linguistic opinion your Honour, the boy had no trace of a chinese accent, which was kind of hard as the kid had taken a vow of silence for Christmas and only looked up from his Gameboy long enough to shake or nod his head. The boy was so pre-occupied by his Gameboy that he didn't watch where he put his food down. On the floor, or on the tablecloth, it didn't really matter to him. But if it didn't come back down on the plate, it mattered to his mother. She had forked out a load of dosh so that her son could attend a prep school and manners were absent at the table. Rabbit punches rained down like hammers of communism. I almost threw myself between the fists and the 7 year old boy who was built like a 4 year old, but remembered the advice I received while working with President Bill Clinton and other Heads of State - Don't take a bullet, let the professionals do it, and the mother stopped before I could intervene. For his part, the kid seemed unphased so I didn't pursue the issue. Secretly, I had to commend the mother on her beatdown skills and her mastery of Korean-style rabbit punching. I had grown up familiar with a smart smack on the backside and worse but not like jumping rope or hot irons or anything, but when I met Mrs. Park I learned an even more cunning method of beating. She used to beat her daughters with closed fists, rabbit punching their thighs. Even as grown women, they would run when their mother threatened to punch the legs. A good amount of pain for zero to minimal bruising. Well, now the 7 year old was getting what his mother learned at the Mrs. Park School for Wayward Girls - Shanghai branch.

And where was Hank during all of this? Shmoozing Ayako, that's where. Or so I thought, so I couldn't enjoy myself completely. My kid brother offered a few suggestions to get back at Hank, but coming from a second-former these suggestions had only a limited amount of intrigue. After dinner I went back to my dad's place and watched Texas Hold'em on the telly. A few friends talk about this game like it's the shit. I don't find it any more exciting than regular 5-card stud poker, which I find incredibly boring. I guess when you're actually playing and have money involved, there is some sort of rush. I apologized to Baby for leaving her out in the rain for 8 hours. She's been in a sore mood ever since we saw Concha, the cute red Acura. When we got back to the flat, I went down in the lift to deliver Hank's gifts and ended up speaking to his roommate. She told me that Ayako was not out with Hank, but with Hank's other roommate Kazu. My brain started to get a little fuzzy, but I let it go. This Kazu is probably a total lame ass. I know he's a loner, so the lame ass stuff is probably also true, and I can beat that any day (maybe).

So its that time of year again to chow down on chocs and nuts. I just polished off a chocolate bar that Santa left me that should have had a warning on it along the lines of "If you're not diabetic now, you soon will be" and a fine bottle of Holy Grail Ale that somehow found its way into my stocking. I'm about to try my scratcher. A grand a week for 25 years (tax free!) feels sugary sweet right now. Imagine all the things that Baby and I (oh yeah, and Ayako) could do with that kind of dosh. I haven't done the calculations, but I think I'd rather take the future value of the cash stream, than take the present value of all future cash inflows which is what the lottery corporation is likely to throw in front of my face should I have a lucky scratcher. I hate betting against interest rates. Sorry, I was channeling the spirit of an accountant there for a mo.

This year of 2005 has been quite a good one on the whole. January saw me adopting a neglected Baby, ignored by the dealership because she's a 2003 model, but brand new underneath. There have been a few negatives this year, but I've learned to think like my ex-manager - Step #1, Deny deny deny until you can't deny anymore, and then spin the negative into a positive. Step #2, Ingest daily dose of Paxil if necessary. So by that logic, the year has been chock full of positives. Really though, through all the trials and chores I have learned a lot about myself and others in general. That makes all the bad good. And in contrast to all the bad, the goodness of true friends really shined through, like a freaking lighthouse or something. Thanks to my recruiter, I'm gonna hit the ground running in 2006 and I couldn't ask to be in a better position. As for movies, the end of 2005 has brought a load of turnips. I was tempted to stick around work late on Friday and then mosey on over to the "art house" cinema and watch Syriana, a film I touted a few months back but I rushed home instead to remove the coffee stains on my French cuffs that had been so rude as to barge into my life Friday morning. Also, Friday night's Cantonese film Oh, My Three Guys wasn't worth watching, plus the reception was too fuzzy so I couldn't read the subtitles, So I let it play in the background while I worked on the blog. Yesterday's Bollywood film was a repeat, but it was really good when I saw it the first time. Qurbani stars Vinod Khanna, father of Akshaye Khanna one of my favourite actors which actually makes my Hindi friends laugh. Apparently Akshaye is considered a weak actor, and after seeing his dad a few times I'd have to agree. The movie also co-stars Zeenat Aman, the most beautiful woman in Bollywood at the time, based on her appearance in the film and the fact that my telly has fuzzy reception. Sunday night's movie Bai fan bai gan jue 2 or Feel 100% II looked pretty good but I turned it off because I was tired and the subtitles were too fuzzy. And watching a bit of this film, I could have sworn that it had Sammi Cheung in it, but I was wrong. It also might have helped if I had seen Feel 100%, the original before this one to get some sort of back story.

The end of 2005 is looking up as a New Year's Eve K-Bear is in the works. It's been a while since I've seen him, and it should be fun. Nothing like last year, ah good times, but measured doses of fun can be very relaxing too. I can't wait to tell him about all the work I've done on the movie. Maybe he'll sign the contract now. I still haven't been able to find a dancing bear this side of Russia, but that's basically all that's holding up the talent. Everything else is in place.