Sneak preview of upcoming novel.
Thursday, January 26, 2006
If I get fired this week, it'll be becauseI keep spacing out for half-hours at a time, deeply involved in cutting off my hairs' split ends. The sunlight catches one of the tiny forked strands in the corner of my eye, and that's it. I'm off, desk scissors in hand.
I keep asking my stylist to trim it all off, but then she says, "You wanna keep the length, right?" and leaves most of them on. Either that or the ends of my hair are very dry and just keep breaking. That's the more likely explanation, I guess. I need to cut off an inch of hard-earned length, then. I can't stop thinking about it. That need runs along the bottom of my mind like a dumb Top 40 song. (This morning it's "Confessions" by Usher. Hate the song, can't stop thinking about it. But at least it's not "My Hump" anymore. Oh, no... Why did I type that?)
So my boss walks by, and I'm holding up the tips of my hair in the window, squinting at them cross-eyes, scissors held up like a sword. Mumbling, "Just when I thought I was something... Something, something, got one on the way... These are my confessions..." He looks askance. I can't blame him.
In other vanity-related news,
I'm running a little contest to see how long I can go without buying new work clothes. All my pants (which are all black or gray) feel too short. I only have six or seven tops, 90% of which are pink or green. I need new clothes, but the stores don't have any good ones in my size. Plus, I don't really see the light of day here. So I'm rebelling, and saving money, by buying nothing. I only buy weekend wear. Screw the rest.
Now I know why the women here dress the way they do (which is to say, shabbily). Because, seriously, who cares? We don't see clients, and no one looks at us. No one to impress but each other. Everyone here compliments my purses, but they don't buy new purses for themselves. What's the point, right? All we need to do is count the minutes...
Oh, man, that's getting depressing.
I've been wanting to bust out my sewing machine and make perfectly fitted clothes that I'd like, but that really is a hobby I don't have time for. As the Peanuts kids would say: *sigh*. I should quit whining and lose some weight. But it's so much easier to write books, instead. That's how hard losing weight is - so hard that you'd rather write books. Easier than both of those, however, is playing World of Warcraft and filling virtual shopping carts with things I'll never buy. That's the easiest thing of all, especially if you eat snacks while you're doing it.
Happy Chinese New Year.
That is to say, "Kung hey fat choi." I memorized that so I can say it to my boyfriend's parents as I hand them a bag of oranges or tangerines this weekend. Rest assured that I will forget it when the time comes. I'm getting to where I can understand lots of little words and sentences in their language. But I can't ever pronounce them with the right tone.
So I thought I would learn Vietnamese, instead. His parents speak about 37 languages, English and Spanish being the ones in which they're least fluent. Vietnamese is the Asian language I'm exposed to most, being that I have a medical condition that causes me to frequently crave Vietnamese food. So I'm learning the words. Com means rice. Pho is the beef soup. Bun is the vermicelli noodles. Except picture all those words with little punctuation marks all over them. Thit nuong is the most important phrase in the Vietnamese language. It means beautful, lean, vinegar-y sweet barbecued pork. Gah-(oi) (don't know the spelling) means my favorite vinegar-y salad. Meh-(ee) means Latino.
So... I can't pronounce any of those right, either. So many long dipthongs and tripthongs. But the waitresses are willing to understand me when I try. "Pho! Tai! Lung!" I gulp at them like a tertiary character in a bad Kung Fu movie. They smile and write down the real words that mean "beef soup, large." Not even my boyfriend pronounces it all correctly. But they don't smile when he gets it wrong. "Sell-out," they think, mistaking him for Vietnamese, instead of the one-of-a-myriad-million-types-of-Chinese that he is.
"That's good," Hoa tells me. She's one our Vietnamese friends. "You almost know how to say it. I can't get this idiot to remember anything," she adds, lightly punching her boyfriend Rick. He's Salvadoran. I smile sympathetically. Rick says he's looking into language courses at a local community center. He and I may not ever speak Vietnamese for shit but, as Latinos, we share the innate desire to show respect for the parents of our significant others.
I found a "Learn to speak Vietnamese" CD-Rom, but I haven't had time to get into it yet. It promises to have me speaking the language within a week.
That'll be nice. It'll be a relief to be able to say "Hello, how are you" to my boyfriend's parents, without them turning to him and saying, "What did your girlfriend just call us?" Also, I'll be able to order all the barbecued pork I want, however far I roam. Also, I'll be able to get even more gossip from the women at my pedicure place.
I'll let y'all know how it goes. I'll make a graphic that indicates our progress. Rick's avatar will be a tortoise, and mine will be a hare.
Just kidding, Rick. Kung hey fat choi, y'all. Happy Tet. Prospero ano nuevo, tambien. 11:10 AM #
Comments:
Gwen, if you ever come to NYC, I'll take you to (or, if you prefer, recommend to you) the best ever Vietnamese restaurant. It's super inexpensive, but oh so delicious, with nice waiters to boot. It's called Pho Na Trang (there are two restaurants with this name in the city, but only one is the real one) and it's gotten rave reviews from everyone I've ever gone there with.# posted by
kate : 2:24 PM
I mean Pho Nha Trang, not Pho Na Trang, but then we always call it Pho, and the rest of the world calls it Nha Trang. So there you go - liking the food, in my case, does not translate to remembering the words.
# posted by
kate : 2:27 PM
Sounds good, Na or Nha. I'm checking Orbitz for flights as we speak. Heh.
Here, my boyfriend's and kids' fave is called Pho Saigon. Hoa's fave is Pho Cong Li, I believe. My cousins' is Pho Nguyen.
I have to be different, so mine is Tau Bay. They put cinnamon and anise in their pho, and no one likes it but me, apparently.
All of us, however, share the pleasure of saying "What the pho?" to each other on the way to the restaurants.
# posted by
Gwen : 2:38 PM
Tad has just informed me that his favorite pho place is actually Pho King Good. His second favorite is Pho King Delicious, followed by Pho King Su-pah.
Thank you, Tad.
# posted by
Gwen : 3:01 PM
My favorite is Pho Queen. Is she the wife of Pho King Delicious?
# posted by
Aidan : 4:12 PM
No. She's Dairy Queen's cousin.
# posted by
Gwen : 4:15 PM
Chuc Mung Nam Moi.
That's happy new year in Vietnamese. I'm supposed to practice this for the weekend.
# posted by
MissCathee : 5:00 PM
I love it. Gotta love the inter-ethnic relationships. Reading that almost made me forget kung hey fat choi.
Look - I tagged you in the post above this.
# posted by
Gwen : 9:07 PM
Actually, (in Chinese) it's more like, "gong hay fat choi." But then again, I don't speak Cantonese, so it's not like I'm saying it exactly right. Either way, getting free money in red envelopes is cool.
# posted by
Datty : 12:03 AM
Gwen, maybe you should try Japanese? It's not tonal; there are only two irregular verbs (kuru and suru); there are only five vowels (which are just like Spanish); no dipthongs; you can get away with only learning two verb tenses (present and past) and the progressive form if you stick to the polite verb forms (OK, so you'll sound like a foreigner - like their not gonna figure that out anyway). Some adjectives do conjugate (i.e. "the was-red book was red"), but that's manageable.
# posted by
R.T. Lemur : 9:15 AM
RT: I have been thinking about learning Japanese, since you telling me at a party way back that it's atonal. That's such a temptation for a flat-voice chick like me.
... but his parents don't speak Japanese. My choices are Tsiu Chow (that's spelled wrong, of course), Vietnamese, and Cantonese. And Mandarin, to a lesser extent. Of those, Vietnamese is the most practical here in HTown. I think Vietnamese is the new Spanish, for us.
After Vietnamese, I'll learn Japanese for my big trip to Sanrio World. You will be called on to help me practice. "Peach Panda!" we'll say to each other. And, "He's not lazy! He's simply relaxed!"
# posted by
Gwen : 9:23 AM
My post might be a little late, but I need to do some justice for myself. I don't like Pho Cong Ly, it sucks! I only like my dad's pho, it's very flavorful and you actually get to taste the sweetness of the soup because of all the bones that have been simmered over a couple of hours. Unlike a lot of pho places, they mass-cook so you lose a lot of the flavor, instead, you get msg that flavors it. But still, that doesn't stop me from eating pho at some restaurant once in a while.
As for Rick, he's trying??? I guess. Well he wants to learn but I'm not pushing hard enough.
# posted by
Hoa : 1:36 PM
Ha. Okay, sorry I maligned you by misnaming your fave. I like to exaggerate a lot, though.
The other day at Saigon I saw a guy with a little plate of purple onions. It made me think of you.
# posted by
Gwen : 9:44 AM
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