I'll be 29 on monday.

My girlfriend and I were walking home the other day huddled together bracing against the San Francisco wind.

"It's almost winter again," she said.

How quickly it comes around again, just when you feel like the days can squeeze out one more beautiful day of sunshine, the inevitable will always come. Sundown at 5pm. Fog filled mornings blanketing the sky. It'll be my 29th winter.

"It's a sobering thought isn't it?" I shared my thought out loud with her, "that the two of us have seen 29 winters, we probably only remember 25 of them."

We walked in silence, mulling this over in our heads.

We all look towards infinity, it's why we write, document, try to see time as a whole. Perhaps we all want to be there, looking at the centuries in both directions.

I try to snap both of our minds back to the present. "We'll just have to make memories of different seasons in different parts of the world. Spend a few years in New York. One or two in China..."

Our voices trailed off into the wind amongst the kid playing basketball in the park as old folks and tourists pass us in the opposite direction, huddled into their fleeces like ducks before they sleep.

back from a 6days in vegas helping out homies for Pool and Magic. Standing around selling artistic t-shirt designs to shops like urban outfitters and enterprising father/son teams out to rid high school and college kids of their disposable income to look fresh in tees that match their sneakers.

Pool is a hipster convention, bright neon colors, girls in vintage dresses with hairdos to match, american apparel girls passing out free thongs with their asses hanging out, Japanese girls straight out of Fruits, Japanese guys with much better hair than the girls, hot girls with full tattoo sleeves, tight jeans, etc etc ad nauseum.

Nothing seemed that cool or looked like it's going to be the next hot thing. Although, I'm going into a mod phase now rocking more ben sherman shirts. Aside from that I ain't paying over $100 for a shirt of any kind...

Off to the library for a catering gig.

Oh yea, Obama Obama Obama.

I watched the speech on PBS free from all the pundits. I think I may have been the only one listening to the song that played after the speech, a country song mind you, quite an odd choice so I had to listen to the lyrics.

"Only in America
One man can go to prison,
One man can be president
Only in America"

I cried. As cynical as I am, I realized at that moment that I truly never thought I'd see this day in my lifetime. So soon. Sure, he's got to win first, but to see how much people are putting their hopes into him, I'm amazed.

His running for president is a referendum on race, change for the future, the American dream, and the idea that we can hope for a better America. I like the way he started out his speech, acknowledging this idea, that it's not about Barack Obama, it's about everyone that's been rejuvenated to vote, mobilize and moved to take back this country.

I'd be the first to tell you that change does not come easy, but watching that speech, thinking about my parents, my personal history, american history, all of it. I do want to hope, I do want to dream, I do want to think that all of us are here to create something better...


some

Since Giles posted his, I'm posting mine...



original here

"Notice how the performers use their hands with such grace and detail, you'll find that everywhere in Chinese culture, even when you go to McDonalds they hand you your food with the same grace"

Paraphrased from who I think was Bob Costas.

Granted he got called out on it by his co-host but that was pretty darned ridiculous.

followup to: an open letter to Baron Davis



You can have him back all you want. I'm so over him.

My apologies to all the people that have lost their homes, but you have to admit there's gotta be a better way to write that headline...

I'm such a 9 year old boy...

Dear Mr. Davis,

In my head, I'm having a battle, because I know that you made the right decision for yourself to go home to Los Angeles, but I just can't get over the three great years you put into bringing the Warriors back from oblivion. The thirteen-year old boy in me just had his heart broken, because there was this something that Larry Hughes, Gilbert Arenas, Antwan Jamison, John Starks, Terry Cummings, Bimbo Coles, and yes even Jason Richardson, could never do when I watched all those Warriors games, and that was get excited, have hope, and believe in my sports heroes again.

I watched you play when you were at UCLA, heck I wanted to even go there for school. I was graduating high school when you started your freshman year and broke into the game and tore up the court. I was watching when you made a ridiculous one-hand fast break down and elevated with more power than anyone in college I'd ever seen do, and then you hurt your knee right after that play. That was when I knew your name, this kid with so much potential, I watched that moment praying you'd be alright.

You came back from your injury and made it to the NBA. Your first few years were filled with frustration and you weren't on many people's radar playing on the Hornets. But when the Warriors traded for you, I knew something was going to happen, good things.

And here it was, a young NBA star in the making, who was finally coming into his own. We're about the same age Baron, and I felt like we were both putting away the same things that made us children and growing into adults, accepting responsibility and becoming leaders. That leadership is what the Warriors sorely needed. Since 1993, noone's taken ownership of this team, but you finally did. Your teammates believed in it, your coach believed in it, and all of us fans, man, did we believe in it. Watching men around my age pulling out our old warriors gear talking about the Warriors again, felt good, we could finally have some pride in reminiscing about Run TMC.

I'd heard somewhere your politics were on point too, that you were trying to make a difference. I was hoping one day we'd meet, shoot the shit about how to make a difference with your money. We did meet face to face at one brief moment, but now, I won't get that chance again...

That 13 year old boy just lost his sports hero, is staring at his poster of you dunking over Andrei Kirilenko and wondering what to do with it. It's okay, I understand how much you want to be at home, playing for the fans you know and grew up with, you'll have a better shot at becoming an All-Star now. Now I'll just have to blame everything on LA.

Signed,

leonard


P.S.

Is this really what convinced you?

derek get well soon you crazy sob.

Notes for the week:

Accomplished

Panel for promoting my film project.
Nailed 6 recipes down to do my first full on catered party for 30+ people.
Party smells like Success!
Getting really good at making and rolling out dumpling dough, just wait I'll be able to crank out 1,000 in an an hour.
Got a lead on Mangalitsa pork
Lost in the poker game.
feelin good.

Made my own okonomiyaki. Read about it here

Have Food Will Travel: Pearl River Delta from Leonard on Vimeo.

If you haven't seen this sample reel yet, we just finished polishing up this version, but still need to raise money to finish the piece. Let me know what you think. The film can also be seen at www.kitchenstink.com

Just east of the epicenter, 1,000 students and teachers were killed or missing at a collapsed high school in Beichuan county — a six-story building reduced to a pile of rubble about two yards high, according to Xinhua. Xinhua said 80 percent of the buildings had collapsed in Beichuan alone.

At another leveled school in Dujiangyan, 900 students were feared dead. As bodies of teenagers were carried out on doors used as makeshift stretchers, relatives lit incense and candles and also set off fireworks to ward away evil spirits.

I can't keep reading this stuff. I can barely even look at the pictures in thumbnails.

We're still waiting to hear word from my uncle who lives in Chongqing, near the epicenter. We got word from a from a friend of his that he was supposed to be out of town. Death toll nearing 12,000.

life is precious. God, heavens, help us all.

UPDATE: Just heard that my uncle is ok. He was away but his apartment is damaged and he can't return. His girlfriend's family is sleeping in their car like many others.

Driving down the California Coast for the weekend. Anyone recommend any places to stop?

I think this might have been why I once wanted to become a teacher...Not as great a theme song as say Perfect Strangers, but didn't realize it had such nice shots of NYC.

Kitchenstink.com is up and running.

New food, restaurant, business, and life blog. That's where you'll see all my food projects go, the film, cooking, food events, products, etc. I'm not just businessman, I'm a BUSINESS man!

something like that. happy reading.

Is this evidence that the Man is trying to keep the black man down?

hmmmm.

France

At first, I was going to post a semi-angry tirade about the protests of the olympic torch...and then I remembered back to my friend David Huang, a photographer who had recently taken up the cause of overseas Tibetans, and those living here in exile. I am confused by all of this. The logic I use to defend my gut reaction at times sounds like a white apologist.

I am not a decision maker in any of this. I, like many times in my political life, feel absolutely impotent in make any change. This makes me want to make fun of those that want to make change. However, there is something undeniably ironic that protestors of the torch are stopped by their own police, beaten and dragged and prevented from interferring with a symbol of peace in the "free world". What is freedom? Economic freedom? Freedom of expression? Freedom to watch youtube? Freedom to eat a nourishing meal?

Ultimately, after all this anger and frustration, I'm saddened. I'm saddened that I can't come to a resolution for all of this. I am who I am. Chinese born in America that has a growing love, admiration and wonder about a place I'm beginning to get to know. I am an American of another ancestry that is still looking and building towards that golden opportunity known as the elusive American Dream that I thought was impossibilty with my own parents as living proofs. I am 28, and pragmatic, I no longer want to deal with politics, only resolution.

my original thoughts are behind the cut. I think I'm just processing outloud.

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mother wears a postage stamp over her heart to keep a memory of her father fresh in her mind
a faded black ink impression reads ROC over yellowing airmail sticker
her fingers are shiny metal plugs she places into a telephone switchboard
her voice crackling Cantonese, Hong Kong, May Gok, Sam Fan Cee

her son is glass and steel as his head touches the sky lost amidst fog and glimpses of blue
his ears hear 802.11G, his hands glued to a cell phone like a pet
veins of cable connections and ethernet wires wind their way up his legs
as he becomes a beacon of bluetooth power, a blue light blinking in his left ear
his pockets hold devices like armor as he steps onto a plane to Shanghai without a fear in his heart

grandmother sits on the couch remote in hand, scanning the three channels she knows by heart
her cane rests on the edge of her arm, which in its former life as a paddle had dipped itself into the yangtze river
her ears no longer hear the radio, the echo of communist and KMT voices have long faded away
and here she breathes an Olympic dream, once witness to far more fearsome things a square of students in heaven
speaks to her great grandchildren face to face laughing in the eyes of history.

Wed to Strangers, Vietnamese Wives Build Korean Lives
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
Published: March 30, 2008
Such factors as the rising social status of Korean women and a surplus of bachelors resulting from a preference for sons is forcing many Korean men to seek brides in other Asian countries.