Meet The Parents. Check!

I'm sleeping over at one of my students' houses today. I'm approximately 95% sure he's not going to murder me in my sleep, way higher than with some of my other students. He went skiing in the morning so we moved our class from 11AM to 8PM and since the subway goes home at 11PM and we have a 3+ hour class, he offered me to either stay the night or he'd pay for a taxi to take me home. My Sunday morning class got cancelled on account of lazy-studentitis so I decided to stay.

I met Yuan Yuan's mom yesterday and I'm pretty sure she likes me. I don't think she's going to try to steal me away from Yuan Yuan, especially since she's already married, but I think the overall impression I made was favorable. Yuan Yuan told me this morning that her mom was saying yesterday how she found me "quite polite for a foreigner," whatever that means, and pretty handsome, not too tall but not too short. Yuan Yuan assured me that she rushed to the defense of the foreigners of the world against such vicious calumny but I don't see why she bothered as it could only hurt my standing. Silly Yuan Yuan, so straightforward.

[WARNING: spoilers ahead]

We got to know each other over dinner, the three of us, though Yuan Yuan and I already knew each other pretty well. Coincidence? We had some roast duck, the Beijing special, and I made sure to order six times the amount we would consume if we were only worried about filling our and the people's at the neighboring tables stomachs. So I definitely passed round 1. Then we talked a bit about what I do, which is a topic ever popular with women and women's mothers. I somehow managed to restrain myself from dropping a Mark's-life-philosophy bomb on her and ruining any chances of seeing Yuan Yuan again in this lifetime without full body reconstructive surgery. When she asked me how long I'm planning to stay in Beijing, I remembered Lucy's advice and said that I had no plans of leaving in the near future except for the purpose of visiting my family. And when her mom asked me which I liked better, China or America, I neatly avoided the question by asking her which of her daughters she liked better. At that point it turned out she had a sense of humor.

There was only one slightly awkward moment. We stopped by a little convenience store on the way back because mommy needed to buy some needles and thread. I wondered allowed if Yuan Yuan knew how to sew and she answered me in the typical Jewish answer/question manner "Have you ever seen me sew?" to which my sarcasm reflex responded without my consent: "I've never seen what you do in the bathroom but I'm guessing you might know how to use the toilet." I don't know what her mother made of that. I think she could tell I was lying. That xkcd comic came to mind.


http://xkcd.com/275

Oh yea, I forgot to mention that there were three languages at play during the whole adventure. Yuan Yuan's mom doesn't really speak Mandarin. She speaks her hometown's dialect of Mandarin, which has a lot of words in common with the original, though often with different tones. Kind of like jive. So the dinner went something like this:

Yuan Yuan's mom: Hey Holm, I dig this duck yo.
Yuan Yuan: Col' got to be yo! I pray to J I get the same ol' same ol'.
Mark: I totally agree. Or I would if I understood what you're talking about. Unless it was something I wouldn't agree with of course.

After every few minutes of hometown dialect, Yuan Yuan would ask me if I understood what they were talking about. Against all expectations, I actually managed to do pretty well; I almost always got the gist of the conversation though I'd miss most of the words.

So overall I think I did way better than when I met Chun's parents in college, sometime before graduation. That time I think I forgot to turn on my brain and told them all about how I had no idea what I was doing next but that after I skipped the graduation ceremony because that was totally lame and only lame traditional parents came to see that, I was probably going to Texas to start a band and that maybe we'd sleep with other people for a while as long as there was a steady stream of groupies and if there wasn't then I'd definitely maybe possibly come back and be a good boyfriend for at least a while but who knows if that would ever happen because who knows what's going to happen in the future anyway and that I loved their daughter. By the time I got to that last part I think her father was already halfway to Massachusetts General Hospital with a severe case of reality-overdose. Compared to that, yesterday I passed with flying colors.

Bad Movie

Saw Wall-E today. Blah.

The first 6 hours of the should-be trilogy were almost bearable. There were cuteness, silly music, and cockroaches - apparently a recipe for success judging by IMDb's thousands of satisfied fans. It used to be that when prompted for my opinion on a movie, I could safely defer to IMDb; this saved the trouble of later defending said opinion. But now IMDb must be in league with the movie companies because the average rating for a crappy movie is around 8. Wall-E is rated an astounding 9.3. I would have been happy to agree if I hadn't watched it. Unfortunately I did, and even the IMDb-sponsored professional applauders in the theater couldn't convince me of a single point deserved above a "5 for special effects."

"It's OK, it's over, you made it," I thought, as I made my way back to the car with my parents and my little sister. Wrong! My dad, though he claimed the movie had bored him into a stupor, would not stop reenacting the aforementioned boredom, with such skill that I fell asleep at least 8 times behind the wheel on the 2-mile ride home. Bored my ass! Now the traitor's probably voting on IMDb to infalte Wall-E's rating to an even greater obscenity.

Just heard from Chun, she loved it of course. This is good intel - she is not to be trusted.

Showed grandma our music today. Can't say she loved it. I showed her ~5 songs, and when I mentioned Mario was still finishing one of them, she asked "why finish? They all sound the same." Ouch. No worries though, grandma's been discredited. I grabbed a piece of apple pie as I left her house, and it smelled like cheese. When she shoved a tomato under my nose to smell the divinity, it smelled like the fish she'd been slicing. Hey, if she can't tell the difference between those...

Long Day

Mom's looking over my shoulder, so I can't unleash my full writing potential. Half will do.

Went to Hana's house today. They were definitely unprepared to entertain me. I was counting on at least some singing, money showering, and "we're not worthy"'s accompanied by heads banging against the floor, but all I got was a good meal and an even better serving of boooring. They all camped out in the den and watched a recorded Turkey-Germany soccer match, and no amount tears or begging succeeded in making them tell me to shut up and go home. I don't understand, if you have a match taped and can watch it any time, why would you ever watch it? Especially when I'm around waiting to be entertained.

Mom's learning Stairway to Heaven so she can go to Guitar Center and piss them off - all guitar stores have Stairway to Heaven on their blacklists. Luckily for them, she only practices once every couple of months, usually in different and not always consecutive years.

Chun studying for MCATs is reflecting poorly on my self-esteem. Every now and then, she'll come at me with a "hey, I've got a really easy question for ya...," just to make sure I feel like a moron when I can't even understand what it's asking. I of course proceed to do just that, and she has her fill of laughs. Then she leaves me and returns to her career-building, while I frantically shake my computer upside down so my tears don't short its circuits.

Michelle's having a sleepover today, so there are suddenly two Michelles in the house (her friend is also a Michelle). This is pretty much your classic domestic nightmare. Right now they're upstairs and judging from the sounds, they're either mudwrestling, practicing dropkicks, or sacrificing an uncooperative goat. I hear thud after thud, and lots of giggling that'll soon make its way downstairs, meet Mom, and seamlessly become sobbing if not screaming.