Belated Happy Birthday to A-Dog!

Dear A-Dog,

I hope you had a wonderful birthday last week.  Below is a birthday cake with tap shoes.  I hope you will grace us with a dance soon!

nn

Happy Birthday to Willy Wonka!!

For Willy Wonka on his special day, a nice cup of coffee with yummy coffee cake inside!  I hope you have a great birthday and that it is filled with relaxation and rejuvenation!

nn

Extremely Belated Happy Birthday to Ghetto FOBulous!

A veggie cake for you, kind sir!  I wish you a very happy year and many more to come.  May the wind be at your back and your ghettos be fobulous!

nn

Happy Belated Birthday to Freelance Midget!

Here is an Eiffel Tower cake to go with your Eiffel Tower vacaaaayyyy...

(Yes, I heard about your other birthday present--lucky you!)

Happy Birthday and may you have another 27 years of fabulousness!

nn

Happy Birthday, MonkeyPig!!

MonkeyPig, here is a cake for you.

Art imitates life.  For those of you who have not met MonkeyPig in person or who hasn't seen her in a while, MP is definitely high on life.  Every dinner at her house is a party with MonkeyPig, Wooh Dau, and Baysee.  [Woo:  Hey!  Me, too!  Happy birthday, mom!]

MonkeyPig, here's to another 43 years of bananas!

Halloween Adventure, Day 2

Chinese idiom of the day: 讀屎片
Transliteration: study diapers
Phonetic: duk6 si2 pin3
Meaning: refers to a person who studies but remains ignorant or stupid

Today, MonkeyPig went to the first day of her medical conference.  However, every time I texted her asking what she was doing, she'd respond with one of two answers:

1.  "Eating."
2.  "Pooping."

Never "studying" or "listening to lecture."  Never.  All I ever heard about was the egg custards, the BBQ pork buns, ...and their aftermath.

Since MP is obviously a talented doctor, there is no way that the idiom, "讀屎片," could apply to her.   So, for the first time in Idiom of the Day history, I'm going to modify the idiom to my needs.  The new idiom is going to be:

Chinese idiom of the day: 讀蛋撻
Transliteration: study egg tarts
Phonetic: duk6 daan3 taat3
Meaning: refers to a person who is supposed to be studying a serious subject but is instead enjoying life.

But something really nice happened as a result of this--I was the beneficiary of the first of several days of breakfast pastries!

Halloween Adventure, Day 1

Today, MonkeyPig left early to go to a medical conference in San Francisco, but that didn't stop her from complaining. I had meticulously crafted a schedule of things we'd do and eat during her visit and the first grumblings have been submitted to me via text message. Wah Toh will appreciate this because of a similar incident which happened during the whale watching trip a month ago (not blogged--sorry). This is also an opportunity to reinstate a modified version of the highly popular Chinese Idiom of the Day feature but only for the limited time of one week--the duration of MonkeyPig's stay. The modification will be: I will disclose the meaning of the idiom and you need not guess it.

Chinese idiom of the day: 貨不對辦
Transliteration: product not match sample
Phonetic: fo3 bat1 deoi3 baan6
Meaning: bait and switch

Back in September, MonkeyPig, Ca Loc, and I travelled to Wah Toh's neck of the woods for a whale watching vacation. Prior to arriving, MonkeyPig had requested that Wah Toh make "gwei deou" for her first night there. Unfortunately, due to the fact that Wah Toh and MonkeyPig had gone to different schools in Saigon, each of them had a different idea of what "gwei deou" should be. Apparently, each of these schools had a street vendor standing outside, and who had made completely different styles of "gwei deou." On arrival, MonkeyPig sensed that something was not quite right when the dish of gwei deou was presented to her because it was in the style of Wah Toh's school's street vendor, and not MonkeyPig's school's street vendor. Compounding the problem was that MonkeyPig had requested an additional dish of salt-baked chicken, which arrived as a different type of chicken. To be fair, Wah Toh also had to accommodate other guests who were not into salt-baked chicken.

But the damage was done. At this point, MonkeyPig proclaimed, "貨不對辦!" Throughout the trip, MonkeyPig used this idiom like a war cry.

Aggravating the situation was a family friend who very nicely offered to make MonkeyPig's style of "gwei deou" for her and even invited MonkeyPig to stay at her house on the next visit. This prompted Wah Toh to say to MonkeyPig, "When you leave at the end of this trip, remember to delete my number from your phone. The next time you visit, you can stay with your new friend and eat her food. Maybe I'll send some eggs from my chickens to you at that time--but maybe not."

Thus, "貨不對辦" has enjoyed renewed popularity in conversations among the sisters.

Today, I am on the receiving end of MonkeyPig's accusation. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I had meticulously crafted a schedule for our Halloween Adventure. I am not posting it here because it's so detailed that anybody who would want to harm us could easily find us using the schedule, but I trust the The Nu Warren Friends, so if you are a Friend (you are if you receive the email pings for whenever I post something here), and if you wish to see the schedule, please email me for it.

But back to the 貨不對辦. On this schedule are suggested restaurants, two of which serve curry (a Japanese curry house and a Pakistani restaurant that happens to have "curry" in its name, but I really want to go there for the roasted chicken). This morning, I received the following text from MonkeyPig:

I have a complaint on the agenda. Why so much curry.

Not having received a response from me, MonkeyPig reiterates her complaint three hours later but this time with urgency:

Why are we eating so much curry? I want a refund. The meal portion of this vacation sucks. If i want "phor butt dui ban," I might as well as go to Wah Toh's house. Oh, I get the overwhelming amount of Indian food. You want to pay tribute to the large Indian population in Silicon Valley.

So. Will we eat curry on our Halloween Adventure? You'll have to keep reading to find out.



UPDATE
Text from nn:

First of all, there are only two curry places I suggested and one is Japanese the other is Pakistani. I thought you might be interested in Japanese curry. It's kinda interesting. The Pakistani one, I really want you to eat the oven roasted chicken there. Not the curry. The oven that they cook the chicken in is authentic. It was broken one time and they had to buy a new one. They needed three days to let it cool down before they could remove it and swap in the new one. That's how hot it gets. Took another three days to get the new one hot enough to use. That's why I thought you would like to try it. Besides, the chicken is delicious.

Text from MonkeyPig:

Ok. It they were in Afghanistan, they could've heated up the oven with IED (improvised explosive device) quickly. Parki curry place ok.  Japanese curry--I've not been impressed when I was in Hawaii.