Ever since I read this post from Stodgy White Guy - I've been trying to figure out a way to solve his problem. I am a New Yorker and I am not more than 5 minutes from decent pizza. Even in the suburban sanctuary I live in - there are five slice joints that all are vying for "Best Pizza In Town". I complain about pizza in other states when I'm out of the New York Tri-State Area. I can't even imagine the complaints I'd have about pizza from other countries.
I've had my own experiences with a "Taiwanese version" of pizza. My mother working in a bakery for about five years and every once in a while she'd bring home pizza dough home for me so I could roll out my own pizzas. My grandmother (a woman who doesn't really feel there is a difference between BBQ sauce and marinara sauce) decided to do her own pizzas too. These were true adventures in taste. I'll end it with that because I love my grandmother dearly and don't want to insult her.
Perhaps some ex-pats should get together and let Sliceny.com where to find decent pizza in Asia. My only other thought - Boboli crust and finding the topping ingredients and firing it up on a pizza stone over a grill (not too many Asian households have ovens either!). Though I have heard that Pizza Hut in Korea isn't bad so maybe Taiwanese Pizza Hut has improved.
It has been so cold and awful in New York lately that it's taken all my strength to simply get out of bed in the morning and not call in sick to the world. Just the thought of staying in my warm happy cocoon of warmth and hibernating the day away starts a mental battle that takes about a half hour in the morning. Then the hunched over trudging and all day shivering and shuffling tends to exhaust me. This is my lame excuse.
On with my trials and tribulations.
So, somewhere in my high school years my aunt ran off with my mother's once boyfriend/fiance. And somewhere in my high school years was when I gained my freedom. You see, I grew up in a bubble. Through the years my upbringing was very strict. I was to focus on my studies and be a "good" girl. I was actually nagged to be a "good Chinese" girl - but it was hard being that I didn't live in China or Taiwan and didn't know anyone who was Chinese outside of my own family. I didn't sleep over at other little girls houses, I rarely even went to other families homes. If anyone wanted to play with me they had to come to my house. My mother knew what I was doing with my time or at least where I was spending my time. I rebelled as much as I could during that period. I listened to alternative music and tried to fit in as best as I could. But my time after school was usually spent working at my mother's store - so I didn't have too much time to be a wild child.
When my aunt ran off - it all changed. My mother became more distant and drifted away into work. Unfortunately, her business started unraveling and eventually went bankrupt. She sadly picked herself up and started working for a business associate that was starting a bakery and she ran the restaurant supply end of it. My grandmother, who had lived with us since my birth, left to help her other children in Taiwan. My mother began to work nights at the bakery she now worked at and soon a new world opened up to me. Now I didn't go all nutty like the girls in Thirteen but I definitely tried to "find myself" in those years. I made friends that were more wild than me. I went to parties. I stayed out all night and started to smoke cigarettes and marijuana. I still had to make everything appear the same to my mother. She caught me sneaking in at 5am one night and tried to throw me out of the house. I quickly blamed my aunt' leaving for my behavior and all was resolved in minutes with my mother. Before the family fell apart, my mother had a network of people to constantly watch me and make sure I was being "good". Now I began making my own rules. I was able to manipulate my mother slightly into making my life a little more of my own - though I wasn't able to fully gain control of the reins, I was able to sometimes pick the path. I managed to quit working at the bakery that she also worked for. For the first time in my life, I had a legitimate job and my mother didn't work with me.
The world moved on for a while. My grandmother moved back to the US because she didn't get along with her daughter-in-law's. I went to the local Community College and tried to stay out of the house as much as possible. I started working at an animal hospital and I started considering working with animals. The world seemed to be working with me instead of against me.
Oh boy, I have to attend to my actual job for a while. I will continue the saga later.
As The World Turns - My "Liun Shu Ju [Soap Opera]"
There isn't a simple way of explaining some of the situations in my life....so I'll try explaining it as best as possible. Hopefully you won't get too confused.
My grandmother had five children in Taiwan- my mother was the oldest, then my three uncles and finally my aunt, who was the baby. After my mother married my father, she moved to the United States. She asked my grandmother to come over for a while and help her care for her soon to be born child. Then she asked my aunt to come over too. She convinced her baby sister that coming to the United States would be a huge opportunity for her and she'd be able to study here. Unfortunately, my mother really intended to start a business and needed my aunt to help her out. So, my aunt never made it to college in the United States.
My aunt came here and basically became my mother's servant. She was my babysitter and my mother's employee. I think every year she grew to resent my mother more and more. At some point she gave up her dream of going to college and just set out to find a rich man to marry her. She was young, pretty and funny...so she didn't have any trouble finding men to date. As a child, I barely left her side. She was my big sister and I loved her dearly. I'm sure she cared for me but looking back I was a huge pain in the ass. My mother and grandmother sent me out with her on dates so no "funny business" would happen. Unfortunately, she seemed to date a lot of losers. It seemed like as we moved farther and farther from New York City her choices of desirable men from the dating pool seemed to grow smaller and smaller. She didn't get to meet many men slaving away for my mother either.
When I was about twelve or thirteen my mother met a man that she began to date seriously. Let's call him Charles for now because I can't remember his Chinese name. She met Charles because it was time "she had a man in her life". She always felt that we needed a man around because things needed to be fixed or heavy things needed moving. There had been other guys before but this one moved in with our little family (my grandmother, aunt, mother and myself) fairly soon and stayed for a while. Things began to look up - my mother and Charles set up a little business together, we moved into a bigger house and things were calm and serene.
But at some point it turned and got really ugly. I don't really remember what happened...I was probably caught up in my own teen angst at the time. My aunt and this Charles started to become really close. I had heard them at night joking around and drinking tea in the middle of the night but I didn't know it was leading to. It seemed like my home was splitting apart and everyone was against my mother. Soon the business began to fail, we had to sell the house and move to a smaller one. When we moved I noticed that Charles moved from my mother's room to my aunt's. We didn't acknowledge it in the house - we tried to remain as normal as possible....but the tension was unbearable. One night my aunt came into my room and told me to not let my mother stop me from going to college...and then she left with that guy (who I am now assuming is my uncle?) I haven't seen her since. I think for a little while she kept in touch with my grandmother...but they soon lost track of one another. I haven't seen her for about twelve years and now I am desperate to find her.
She has no idea that my mother, her sister, died. She has no idea how depressed my grandmother was and sometimes is still. And it would just be nice if my grandmother had a child to rely on that could speak the same language. I had my dad run her info through some police computer but he came up with an address she is no longer at.
There are many advantages to quitting your soul crushing job to pursue other studies. First, you feel like you are doing something with your life that will benefit you in the long term. Then other things fall into place. Your skin looks brighter from the rest. You feel more relaxed. You get errands and projects done that you hadn't had any time for before.
Two weeks later you realize you've seen way too many hours of bad TV, you are sleeping more than one human being should and that you are putting off all those errands and projects for "another day".
When I was ten years old, I discovered it wasn't normal for you to get into car accidents all the time. I had been in eight "fender-benders" with my mother by the time I had reached my first year of double digits. My mother wasn't a terrible driver. My mother was a tiny woman who drove like hell on wheels. She had a tendency to fall in love with big boats that doubled as cars - she drove huge Cadillac's, SUV's and minivans. With the combined force of a woman that barely cleared five feet and some of the biggest cars made - she was something to be feared. When she moved to New York, the accidents almost stopped. She said that she understood New York more than anywhere else in America. She never got lost or felt intimidated on the road again. She felt it was easier to drive here than anywhere else she had ever been. Of course, my mother drove like a NYC taxi driver - sometimes worse. But, she made me equally brave about getting behind the wheel in Manhattan.
When I was thirteen, my mother supplied blank video tapes and VCR tape cases to video stores all over Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. She delivered daily to mom and pop video stores and small shops. I was often left in the delivery van as "security" or to move the van if the cops came around the corner. She never gave me driving lessons, she just showed me once how to put the van in gear and step on the gas and the brake. "You are smart. It's easy to drive" she said to me. I usually sat in the car, white with fear that I'd actually have to move the car. My hands would get cold and clammy because I was sure that I would get caught and get into trouble if I even sat in the driver seat. The day finally came when my mother was in a store when a patrol car came around and flashed their lights behind the double-parked van. This was my first experience behind the wheel - driving a huge white van around city blocks so we wouldn't get a ticket. And it was easy. I mean, I was kind of jerky at first but no one really noticed. I drove on Flatbush at night years before I was allowed a permit. I cruised down Broadway. I sailed down Main Street.
All my life my mother lectured me about not knowing Chinese. She would tell me on a daily basis "You need to learn Chinese! You spoke so well when you were little. Are you ashamed [of being Chinese]?" I would simply shake my head and smile and try to avoid the topic as much as possible. I would insist that I wasn't ashamed but I just wasn't good with languages and I had lost the Chinese during the time when my parents were separated (I lived with Dad - the American) . Of course she yelled at me for being too "American" and not being a proper Chinese girl. But I was a good student so my mother didn't harass me too often. I was too busy trying to find my fit in the world. This somehow meant that I couldn't learn Chinese. "How will you speak to your grandmother?" my mother would ask me. And I would usually answer in some smart ass way "Well, that's what you are for."
I lost my translator in April 2002. And now I do regret not learning Chinese. When my mother passed away, I was left with the responsibility of taking care of my 80-something year old grandmother, who can't really speak English. I have to say she does try and has a decent vocabulary. I have only a couple of Chinese phrases that I occasionally throw out to help me explain concepts and situations - but I am still far from being able to communicate well with my grandmother. One of the only things I did have going for me was a gaggle of Taiwanese students that went to the local college who had rented rooms from my mother. When my mom passed away, they were there for my grandmother. I will never be able to repay those students - they were the best friends I had at the time and I didn't even realize it. But they all eventually finished school and had to return home to Taiwan. And soon, my grandmother grew to be very depressed and lonely. So, what do you do when you can't speak to the person you are taking care of, don't live that close to a Chinese community and have no ties to anyone in your culture. You google your heart out.
When my mother was sick, I found a listing for the Chinese-American Cancer Society who had volunteers from a Buddhist charity called the Tzu-Chi visit my mother and grandmother. It was the first time I had seen my grandmother smile the entire time my mother was bedridden by her cancer. A wonderful woman from the charity helped me organize my mother's funeral so it was a proper Buddhist funeral and called my grandmother frequently. I sold the house my mother owned and bought a smaller one close to it because my grandmother didn't want to be too far from the area. A decision I still wish I fought against harder since we have no other ties to the area. But it still wasn't enough, when I went out to work my grandmother would walk around the neighborhood looking for other Chinese people to talk to (she eventually found an Asian person and left a note on their door- unfortunately, they were Korean). I found that the Visiting Nurse Service had an Asian speaking program, but they didn't have any for my area. I found through a Chinese speaking psychologist (grandma did NOT enjoy her one day of therapy) a day care program for Asian speakers on Long Island at the Parker Jewish Institute . Grandma finally found something she enjoyed and somewhere that helped her loneliness and depression.
Now ....It's a little better. I am taking Chinese lessons on Sunday mornings. And while I try and maintain being a hip, nearing thirty female thang....I will learn Chinese, I will embrace Hello Kitty, I will not suppress the "too cute" way Asians say "bye bye" when I leave a room, and I will try and learn about my culture...in my own way.
1) I hope that if I see some fool in a trucker hat in 2004.....he will be slow enough for me to catch and beat to a pulp.
2) I hope that the new trend for female musicians in 2004....is wearingclothes.
3) Sadly enough, I hope that fads and trents aren't so quick lived ....no child growing up in these years is going to have a sense of nostalgia at all over things past.
4)I hope to have my own sleazy sex tape all over the internet and still be able to print out lovely holiday cards with my family like this in 2004. (see the Hilton's card mid page - Link via Gawker )
5) I hope that if another big news story happens in NYC - that my boyfriend will remember his digital camera and that this time we pick a better meeting spot for any potential disasters.
6) I hope that I can keep up with some resolutions (I usually don't make any but these seemed much easier to keep) Manhattan Transfer, Link via The Kicker 7) I hope that more people start to love and appreciate "Reno 911!" for the comic art that it is.
8) I hope that Howard Dean's weirdly robotic smile stops haunting me at night. Presidential candidates shouldn't push the smile if they look really weird doing it - that goes for Kerry too. Just stop - you're creeping me out.
