Monthly Archives: May 2006

Five, seven, five

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Yesterday night after making dancing, drinking and making fun of the lead singer at the Babasónicos concert, Oso and I headed back to my apartment. Once there, he slouched on the black futon and drank water. He noticed an inflatable Cranium helmet and we took silly pictures in it. We had forgotten the lead singer, his crazy clothes and attitude. Instead the Apartment 3 topics resurfaced: boys, pop culture, politics and sex.

Oso had a complaint for me.

“What ever happened to the haiku? You owe us like a couple hundred days…”

I know. I responded. Last year I made it a goal to write a daily haiku. At the end of each month, I’d post them on the old blog. I kept it up for the first half of the year, but then I just stopped. I was running out of fresh things to say about days that were rather routine. And then when I did have something new and interesting to write in 5-7-5 format, I found that it was a little too private to share.

I’m not just writing haiku anymore, it doesn’t seem like I’m writing much of anything, including things about my personal life on this blog.

Anyway, for Oso, I wrote a haiku. Here it is… and no, I will not explain it. (Maybe.)

[deleted to protect the innocent...]

Combing my hair is a waste of time

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Kahlea doesn't believe in combing her hair either
Kahlea at the Neff-Chung Wedding (May, 2006)

‘Nuff said.

Alternate title: things I (re)learned on Saturday.

  1. Brides really don’t have to worry about being shown up by other women. They gotta worry about the babies.
  2. Babies got a super tight grip.
  3. I thought the cutest babies were related to me, but I was wrong.
  4. Seeing your long time friends as parents is pretty cool even if a little odd.
  5. Curry chicken is yummy (unrelated to the others, I know, but that’s what we ate at the reception).

Poor people’s food

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On Wednesday, I went through a dozen old voice mail messages and started deleting them. I came across one from my sister from last week. I don’t think I ever fully listened to it, because I would have remembered the content of the message.

“Hey Cindy, just calling to let you know that we’re making tacos de papa (not VR [our dog who we also call Papas]) and wanted to see if you wanted to come home for dinner. Or we can bring them to you ’cause we’re nice like that. Ok, love you. Buh bye.”

A craving for tacos de papa (potato tacos) immediately developed and I called out to Isa, “Hey, you want to go to dollar tacos night at Don Antonio’s?”

Isa was down and we showed up to the crowded restaurant on Pico and Barrington. We drank sangría and margaritas while we waited. I half watched some NBA playoff game about to go into overtime and munched on chips while we caught up. She felt behind in her first few days back at school (teaching) and scolded me for some recent actions.

We were seated 45 minutes later and devoured our tacos de papa and tacos de pollo. In the mean time, we had a conversation on how some of our favorite foods are “poor people’s food.”

I get the phrase from my mom. Back when we were kids, she’d occasionally take care of Adam and Gigi, the children of some friends who were pretty well off. They weren’t rich, but definitely middle class. We weren’t poor either, but the differences between the two families were clear.

Adam loved the food my mom cooked and insisted that he hated going out to dinner all the time with his parents. One evening, Adam raved over the chilaquiles my mom served for dinner.

My mom said, “well Adam, you know this is poor people’s food.”

Adam replied, “well, if this is poor people’s food, then I want to be poor.”

I love poor people’s food.

My taste buds love the following:

  1. Tacos de papa
  2. Chilaquiles
  3. Sopa de fideo
  4. Tacos de aguacate
  5. Frijoles de la olla

Mil palabras: Emergent movement

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Exiting at MacArthur Park/Westlake Metro Station
Westlake/MacArthur Park Metro Station

I’m still working on trying to put my thoughts together to express something coherent on how I felt at the end of the day on May 1st.

I’m not quite sure of how I fit in to this emergent movement or what my role is or should be. I’m not an immigrant and am not working class. I don’t want to speak for anyone, but know that this is one of those situations where my voice [unfortunately] carries more legitimacy because I speak the language, don’t have an accent, I was born here and have a couple of letters after my name. That privilege sucks… ’cause really what the hell do I know?

No work, no school, no buying, no selling

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You know what I think is super cool about Blogotitlán? Well, that many of us have similar viewpoints on issues like undocumented immigration. It’s not necessarily that we all think the same, but we do have different experiences that inform the way we see things and I find it much more comfortable to talk about my decision to join the boycott here than on blogging.la.

I also love the fact that my scope of May Day/A Day Without an Immigrant is not just about Los Angeles or Southern California. I can go through my RSS feeds or Flickr and see photos from all over. Dude, we really need to get planning on that meetup.

Right now, I should be resting, but I was too eager to upload all of my photos (90+). It’s hard to choose a favorite, but for now I’ll leave you with Petra, my roommate’s mother. She inspired Isa to join the boycott. Isa and I made a few signs in the morning. The following sign was my idea, Isa made it, and Petra carried it. It seemed to be a hit.

Petra's sign got a lot of attention