Last Night of the Lunar New Year

2-15-13

It is Friday. The weather is beautiful; partly sunny 68 going up to 78. I’ll take a bike ride, perhaps to Jason’s supermarket in Chung Yo department store to get smoked salmon (lox) and Philadelphia cream cheese, if but from Australia, better than nothing, to put on the $2us New York Bagel bagels we bought last evening. I will try to make falafel with tahini sauce and the tomato and lettuce from the Italian dinner salad. We got three extra nan from Andrew’s to use as pita and dip in the tahini.

      There was some talk at Shih-Dong’s place about us taking his children to see a movie this week but nothing has become of it and the week is almost over. Monday everyone goes back to work and school, including me.

      Yesterday morning, I didn’t ride the bike. Instead, I took a long walk up Dong-Shan Road to the stationary store to get Leona a Valentine’s Day card. I then went to the plant nursery and dropped 380NT on a flower pot, soil, and a few more plants for the balcony in our living room.

 

2-16-13

      The dinner worked out well despite the falafel balls disintegrating in the boiling water. I think the problem was the oil wasn’t hot enough; it needed to be 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Leona solved the problem by adding a scrambled egg and frying the chickpea balls in a pan.

 Ellen arrived at 6:30 with her two daughters, her boyfriend and his grown son. The six of us sat down to eat at the makeshift dinner table; a desk added to the length covered with a tablecloth.  After preparing dinner, I then made three hamburgers for the younger three and placed them where I thought they would sit, at the side of the table.  (When I pointed it out she said it was the blue cheese on the burger she liked and, anyway, it was Australian beef which she suddenly didn’t mind.)

After dinner, Ellen said she wanted this grass jelly beverage famously sold on Dong-Shan Road up the mountain. Either she asked Leona or Leona offered to go get it . Leona ended up giving Ellen’s boyfriend’s son the directions (without calling the store) and he and Ellen’s older sister took their father’s car up there. It turns out they got lost for a while and then discovered the store was closed. They had to get the grass jelly drink at another less famous store. This kind of impromptu behavior, usually frowned on by Leona, was okay if a guest prompted it. Leona gets upset at me when I change a plan.

 She and her two daughters went back to watching that Chinese soap opera which, apparently, was on all day long, on two channels, in a marathon; she could have watched it at home the next day.

 

Ellen’s boyfriend is an intelligent mild-mannered man, my age, who  had to remind Ellen a few times that they were planning to visit a night market in Taichung which they couldn’t do if she continued to watch the soap opera on TV. Leona who went in and out of the kitchen preparing fruit for dessert. The topic was politics and the military and I kept the men in the room and Leona entertained with conversation while Ellen and her daughters enjoyed their favorite TV program.