Fancy Lunch

Yesterday I was invited to the home of S.Y., who is a distant relative who lives close by (see what I did there?^).  Besides myself there were three other guests, so including S.Y. and his wife it was six for lunch.  Well, it turned out he had rustled up an elaborate seven-course meal (not counting dessert) -- with a printed menu -- with wine for each course, and he'd prepared it all himself (his wife was a lovely hostess but she is not obsessively into gourmet cooking like he is;  in fact I wouldn't be at all surprised if he'd asked her to keep out of 'his' kitchen while he was working on his gourmet project).  I just wish I'd remembered to take more photos, because all the courses were not just tasty, but gorgeous to look at, as well.  And as the other guests were leaving I was asked to stay behind to enjoy the company and conversation and sample some more of his wine.  I ended up staying past midnight and came home still feeling tipsy.  What an unusual and interesting day for this semi-recluse!

Like A Waking Dream

Early morning drive from back when I was still working for L.A. County.  A strangely dreamy-looking sky overlooking some very down-to-earth traffic made for a rather surreal juxtaposition.

Pot O'Gold?

Since the Leprechaun has made darn certain it'll be really hard to dig up, why not just relax and enjoy the rare sight of a "rainbow" on the sidewalk instead...😊

Like Puppies And Kittens

Or goldfish -- just look at those "mouths"!

Construction crane attracting the attention of curious sky creatures.

Coming Home

I was just ascending the steps to the lobby when I caught sight of this shadow of myself, created by some indirect source behind me. 

It's another one of those images that mysteriously put me in a wistful and somewhat melancholy frame of mind.  

Well, perhaps in this case I can venture a guess as to one possible reason:  the backwards ballcap, the t-shirt, the knee shorts and the silhouette lacking features -- all conspired to erase age and make my shadow-self appear like the kid I have not been in many, many years.  Kind of like Miyazaki's "Howl's Moving Castle" in reverse.  But unlike the title of this post, I can never go home again.

A Dream III

 

A Trip Down Memory Lane

Before mom became too sick to continue, we had this semi-ritualized routine where on Fridays I would pick her up for lunch, then we would go to this cafe for tea, and follow it up with a shopping trip to the Koreatown Plaza Market.  The assistant manager there often stationed himself by the door to greet customers, and amusingly enough, he always greeted us in Japanese -"Konnichiwa!".

[Interestingly, this also happened several years before this when we took a trip to Seoul, Korea.  Shopkeepers at the Namdaemun Market often greeted us in Japanese.  I guess a certain foreignness stood out about us in Korea... but in L.A.?]

Anyway, so we made a point of talking to the man in Korean, just to set him straight, but I think that just served to confuse him, because then he started to talk to us in English, rather than Korean.  I've since read stories about funny mix-ups like this happening to other people as well;  I guess when people have convinced themselves of something and suddenly expectation is met by a different reality, the result can be a bit of chaos.

A couple of weeks later, we're back at the market and we see him again, manning a register this time, and he must have forgotten what happened last time because he again said "Konnichiwa!".  So this time mom spoke to him in Japanese, bless her heart,😁😆😄 -- and he asked ME what she said😂😅.  So I told him what little I understood of it: that it was good of him, a senior staffer, to help out on the floor -- and he bowed to mom and said to her in Korean that he helps out however he can when things get busy.  Then he says to me in English(!), Thank you, what a nice lady she is, and said goodbye in English.

What the hey, I think he had so convinced himself that we were Japanese that hearing us speak Korean didn't really register, and when we pushed the point it was just confusing -- like, Wait, that kind of sounded like Korean... Japanese people can do that?  Great!

It's kind of like when mom, her gentleman and I were together : I spoke Korean to her, she spoke Japanese to him (he was Japanese-American), and he spoke English to me.

Mom is the sassy-looking cutie to the right of her sisters

EDIT:  Man, how could I forget about this!  Years after the series of incidents with the market manager, I sent away for an analysis of my DNA sample.  It was just idle curiosity, mostly a lark, but when the results came back I was flabbergasted -- according to 23andMe, I'm pretty much equal parts Korean and Japanese (39% and 36%)!  So that's why people have been telling me that I "look Japanese" - whatever that would mean - all my life.  Apparently, within the last 200 years or so there was an influx of Japanese genes somewhere in my family tree.  My guess is it's on my father's side, as his family was based in the southeastern part of the Korean peninsula, which faces Japan, and some Japanese  merchants lived there even before Japan took over Korea in the 20th century (but this is pure speculation on my part).  And BTW my parents grew up during the period of Japanese occupation, which is why mom spoke excellent Japanese, and was actually more comfortable speaking Japanese than Korean in some ways.

The Crawfordsville Monster Returns

Bird in peril of being swallowed up by giant one-eyed sky creature!

A Bit Eerie

From a couple of years ago.  I was feeling somewhat adventurous and took a random subway ride to a far place I'd never been to before.  I ended up at Uijeongbu (this place was mentioned in the episode of the M.A.S.H. TV series where Hawkeye sustains a concussion in a road accident and is helped by a kind farmer's family;  boy, I feel like such a nerd -- and an old one at that😎).  I emerged from the station and encountered this scene.  How it was, that the whole street was so bereft of human traffic in broad day, I'll never know.  Makes me think of apocalyptic scenarios in 'end-of -the-world' movies.

How Amusing

Just realized that my 'seal' (displayed at the top of the page in the blog intro)

bears an accidental resemblance to the Chinese character for 'picture', 'painting', or 'image'.

圖

Me, the art major with a master's in painting.  Who runs a blog of images😄😆

Blooming Darkness

Two evenings ago I watched with a mixture of awe, fascination, and yes, a little fear, as this piece of darkness in the sky grew and grew with amazing speed.  This set of images records only a couple of minutes, if even that.  It was almost like watching a living thing grow from infancy to old age, living out a very fast, volatile, gaseous life.

Feeling Un-PC Makes Me Feel Old

Three favorite old pipes.

Yeah, I know... but I still miss the ignorant bad old days when a man could just light up his pipe and take a few puffs openly.  I love the smell of tobacco smoke.

What The Weird Heck

The things you notice when you suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder, and have to look at every little thing twice, just to make sure you saw it.

I was just walking by when I happened to notice something truly odd.  This little trickle of water (or whatever it was) -- it looked exactly as if it had set out to flow downstream, in a perfectly ordinary, uniform manner, but then suddenly decided to duck below the surface of the road for a spell, as if that section of the pavement were something like a blanket, before re-emerging and pooling at the end.

Like I said, "What the heck?"

Черные глаза

Today I had occasion to experience something that is strange and unusual, perhaps even unique - a girl with the most extraordinary eyes.

I was rattling along on the line 3 subway train.  At a stop I don't remember, this young woman got on with her mama or auntie and sat across from me.  She was pretty attractive and of course I noticed^.  At first I thought she might be a foreigner because of a certain cast to her face, but maybe she wasn't, as the older woman she was with was quite 'ordinary' looking (of course, I don't mean that in a derogatory way).  Anyway, I kept stealing glances at her because - well, you know, just because^ -- but didn't really note anything unusual beyond her pretty features;  but then she turned to look in my direction, and I was transfixed!

Her eyes were - I don't know how to describe what I saw.  They were certainly normal-sized, but it seemed to me - at least at the time - that they were amazingly deep and dark, almost like the big black eyes of cartoon characters, only "blacker than black".  That's the only way I can describe it -- her eyes were "blacker than black".  What the heck, I was just spellbound.  How is it possible to encounter something like this in real life, on a living person?  On a noisy subway train ride full of distractions, no less?  After that first shocking eye-lock I kept looking at her, and yes, even when she wasn't looking at me directly, her eyes seemed huge and "blacker than black".

I don't know, maybe she was one of those human-disguised extraterrestrials the ET-nuts are always going on about;  or maybe I was recognizing someone I knew in a past life?  When someone impresses me deeply that's my standard explanation^.

Call me sentimental, sure, maybe even kitchy, but it may well be that similar collective experiences of others before me have resulted in this well-known song, "Очи чёрные" (Dark Eyes):  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quA5c2oOa_8