I am officially overloaded on Bay Area lifestyle. I yearn, I pine for the simple, narrow homogeneity I left behind in good old, parochial Boston. Faraway from multi-culti, rainbow, LGB&T, harmony and diversity.
Today is both the anniversary of Scots poet Robert Burns’ birthday and the eve of the Chinese Lunar New Year. In the words of Toddish McWong, Gung Haggis Fat Choy.
Last night was a feast of a Bobbie Burns dinner. The food was straight up tradition–cock-a-leekie soup, a steaming haggis, neeps and tatties and generous glasses of scotch whiskey. Of course, this being the foodie land that it is, there was also a vegetarian “haggis,” honey baked ham and a crusty Obama loaf.
Delicious.
For the script, tradition was a bit bent, especially in the gender sense of toasting the lads and the lassies. And, far from the shores of Loch Lomond, one among us here in the new world sported a distant Scots bloodline, for the rest there was Irish, Chinese, Cuban and a wee bit of French representing, and who the hell knows what else, including different nations, separate from ethnicities and a whole slew of languages. Very melting pot it was. Did I mention there was whiskey? I was there for a dram or two.
Today, it was a steamboat of homemade goodness in a home full of revelers for the coming Chinese New Year. Before I left Boston, I don’t think I had a clear sense of from just how many places Chinese people could have hailed. Clue: More than just the main land. Today’s meal included Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, China, the Philippines and the U.S. of A., with food from everywhere and some fusion-ing.
Also delicious.
After chatting my way through cultures and ethnicities and countries and traditions, I’m happily lying on the couch all back in my vanilla cocoon. People and open-mindedness are fucking exhausting. But tasty.
Oh and an even better coda, and why I don’t really mind diversity. If life is all about the stories you hear, I got a good one today. A woman afraid of all betoothed mammals because of an unfortunate monkey biting as a toddler. It was impossible to say to her face how cool I thought a monkey bite to the chin story is, while she was backing off from the family dog.
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