These are the highlights of my trip. Three months late.
MY MOM
My mom hates cooking. You can taste the bitterness and resentment in every bite of her food. It was worse when I was a kid because she worked a full-time job and didn’t want to plan and make an elaborate meal when she got home. We lived off Hamburger Helper, Spam, Hungry Man, Lunchables and other staples of the white-trash diet. If it was sold in a can or at 30 degrees F, I probably had it at least once.
But one dinner stood out. It’s the dinner that defines her culinary endeavors, the one that is brought up frequently to remind her what a terrible mother she was and how it’s amazing I lived past the age of 10 with the nutritional deficiencies I experienced.
One day, she brought home a frozen meatloaf. Not any frozen meatloaf. A frozen meatloaf with a coating of frozen ketchup. It was the most vile frozen meal I’d had, even worse than the frozen clams casino. And so to honor her on her birthday, I had this cake made, albeit months before the actual event.
Now that I’ve moved to another continent, my mom has replaced me with a dog. Not that I’m bitter or anything about him having a better, more-expensive wardrobe than I had when growing up or being treated to ice cream after every meal. I celebrate that she’s found someone to love and who needs her because it means I never have to hear “When am I going to have some grandkids?”
While walking around Mong Kok, an area of Hong Kong noted for its abundance of clothing stores selling ridiculous shirts, I found the perfect Christmas gift for her. And made her wear it to prove she still cares a little bit about me.FAMILY
You haven’t lived until you’ve played drunken Pokeno with an aunt and uncle who are fundamentalist Christians, a germphobic aunt who refuses to shake hands and a cousin who converted to Islam in prison during a stint for drug dealing. Unfortunately, that wasn’t this year’s festivities.
The cousin no longer follows the path of Mohammed. He found his latest salvation by knocking up an unemployed, married mother-of-three who spent most of her pregnancy downing Red Bulls. One of her kids is a 6-year-old girl nicknamed Bubba and another is a 9-year-old diabetic boy who wanted me to add him on PSN so we could play MW2 together. His user name has “187” in it. And he needed an emergency insulin injection after dinner because his mom just lets him eat cake and deviled eggs.
Oh, and these are the cups from which we drank our jug wine. Because that's how we roll in the 609.
FRIENDS
“Karaoke in a tiki restaurant. Cans of Four Loko.” That’s how friends enticed me to hang out with them . It doesn’t take much. I don’t think they sell Four Loko in Hong Kong—at least I’ve never seen it—but I’d followed the controversy in the US and was curious to try it. I can’t wait until the 2060 HBO series “Frathouse Empire,” about Jaxson Taylor and his Four Loko bootlegging operation.
The tiki restaurant is Lee’s Hawaiian Islander in Lyndhurst, NJ, and its décor and waiters haven’t been changed since the 1970s. The food is typical Americanized Chinese cuisine, meat and seafood smothered in a sickly sweet sauce of deliciousness. I’m happy for you foodies who crave legit Cantonese-style food and pooh-pooh what Happy Panda No. 4 serves up, but I eat Cantonese food almost every day. I wanted General Tso’s chicken. For the vegetarians, the waiters very enthusiastically try to sell their “poo-poo for two.”
The drinks are all some incredibly alcoholic variation of hard liquor and a citrus juice served in a tacky faux Polynesian-style cup that you drank out of with a straw.
And on Friday nights, when we went, they have karaoke. If you’re a Hong Konger or long-time resident of Hong Kong, yeah, karaoke, what-the-fuck-ever. You’re over it. You’ve had your fill of playing dice drinking games while aunties warble through Cantopop ballads.
No, this is karaoke sung by guidos in a tiki restaurant owned by former Hong Kongers. You are not that jaded. You would find this awesome too.
Around 9 pm, karaoke night started and the disabled Hong Konger waiter hobbled over to the DJ stand to sing along.
This is the place in North Jersey for otherwise creepy, anti-social people to show off their crooning skills. One guy was there alone and sang from the Pedophile Karaoke Soundtrack: "Father Figure," "Into the Night" and "Every Breath You Take."
Then there was the middle-aged Italian-American couple who looked like Ginny Sack and Bobby Bacalhau and sang from the Mafia Movies Set in the 1960s Soundtrack. And they call it puppy loooove.
It was so perfectly New Jersey, I teared up a bit.
As for the Four Loko, it's still in my in-laws' refrigerator.
EVERYTHING ELSE
I thought immigration agents welcoming back US citizens by shooting at the ceiling and yelling "America, fuck yeah!" was a bit over the top. Very over the top was, upon learning that I now live in Hong Kong, the immigration agent asking, “Well then, what’s your business in the US?” Um, I’m a fucking citizen. Here’s my passport. That’s my reason.
Surprised US doesn't have their own version of Hong Kong’s e-Channel that can scan if citizen/resident is too swarthy and lock them in for enhanced screening.
Passed a dwarf in a Santa hat riding his Rascal scooter in traffic and knew I was really home.
The tractor trailer accident that closed all lanes on Route 1 and left me waiting for two hours was a big welcome home. Like a good Jersey girl, I used that time productively, bitching to other drivers and doing my nails.
Beer-battered burgers in Atlantic City. That's what's up.
Only I go on vacation and end up at the county prosecutor's office to give a statement about suspected healthcare fraud.
In two days, I ate 8 slices of DeLorenzo's pizza, 7 slices of Denino's pizza, a a pint of Halo Farms ice cream and four cannolis from Pasticceria Bruno on Staten Island.
Overheard at Trenton hospital while visiting my uncle: "I can't believe we're gonna sue them over some damn flip-flops." I didn’t want to know.
Worker at pizzeria was so fascinated by my Hong Kong money, he paid me US$3 for a HK$20 bill and then taped it to the wall.
Staten Island tattoo shop's sign said they "fix old and poor tattoo's." I don't think I'd trust them with that.
I love that kids have no concept of adults' ages. I was throwing the ball around with my parents' neighbors' boys when one asked, "Are you home from college?" HELL YES, KID.
Husband and I went to my father-in-law's American Legion post. A veteran there told us: "You're American. Don't forget your roots. New Jersey and Staten Island. Don't turn..." And he slanted his eyes.
Forgot how friendly Americans are. Learned all about the Burlington Coat Factory fitting-room attendant's chest cold and irritable bowel syndrome.
I now laugh when Americans say their kitchen is too small. Oh, you can only fit a dishwasher, oven, fridge, microwave and small table? Poor babies.
Visited friend with 2-year-old. It's amazing how conversations with toddlers sound like porn dialogue. "Do you want to hold your banana while you play?"My mom's bacalhau. Divine.
Realized Amish cuisine is just inbred white-people soul food.
I visit in-laws in Staten Island just for this. Father-in-law: Do ya want King's Arms for lunch? Me: Where's the King's Arms? Father-in-law: Up the queen's ass!
Pennsylvania drivers are like mainland Chinese: slow moving, stay to the left and don't know when to get the fuck out of your way,
Waitress in Mexican restaurant: Hola. Mother-in-law: That's all I heard when I was on vacation at that resort in Mexico! Hola. Hola. Hola. Me: Yeah, it means, "Shut up, whitey."
And you know you're in America when this number of eggs is the standard for an omelette.
1 comments:
For Thanksgiving, we'd get a frozen turkey roll, which was processed turkey meat squeezed into a cylinder and topped with a layer of "skin." (Even we knew that this wasn't a natural part of the meat). The "gravy" was frozen onto the bottom of the pan and would melt as the whole thing defrosted in the oven.
On the side was cranberry sauce, still holding the ribbed shape of the can from which it came.
I'm being unfair here. My parents are actually good cooks. They made wonderful Cantonese food, but the food of suburban America baffled them.
When I was very young (presumably, before we discovered jam), we had Wonderbread spread with margarine sprinkled with white sugar.
The sad thing is that my parents would make snow peas grown in the garden, or beef flavored with mandarin peels they dried themselves, and all we kids wanted were Happy Meals, TV dinners, frozen chicken pot pie and Sara Lee cake.
Post a Comment