Danny ChaiLong, boring weekend recap. People like Karen who find this page boring to begin with, click back immediately.
Actually, I have to start off by saying that I’m a huge Karen fan. Reason being, she’s an incredible friend to Jieun, and I love the way she makes Jieun feel. That’s a secret to getting in my good graces, btw (not that anyone’s ever wanted to, but you know, theoretically): be good to Jieun. Conversely, treat her poorly, and I’ll hold a grudge for a really long time.
Anyway, I hope it’s OK to tell this story, but I think it sums up Karen’s character well. One year, on Karen’s birthday, Jieun had a particularly busy, crappy day and ended up forgetting to call, so that evening, Karen ends up calling Jieun, saying how someone forgot someone’s birthday. Jieun of course feels bad, but starts telling her about her crappy day and the bulk of the conversation turns into Karen consoling Jieun. On her own birthday. That’s Karen in a nutshell. Giving and caring, at least as far as Jieun is concerned.
This weekend we went to SoCal for a wedding. Abby’s first time on a plane. I was actually fairly concerned about it beforehand, because we’ve heard a number of horror stories from other parents about traveling with babies. Even though L.A. is a quick flight, one other parent described an L.A. flight he took with his baby as the longest 1.5 hours of his life. So there was more than a little trepidation there. As it turned out, Abby was an angel, made only about 45 seconds of total noise, and we were very grateful.
We also got to experience for the first time a perk I had forgotten all about: when they announce preboarding for families with small children, it hit me – hey, that’s us! We’re a family! We have small children! We get to preboard! That was kind of nifty. Doesn’t quite make up for the tripling of gear we need to travel with, but it’s nice nonetheless.
Saturday afternoon we hung out with Karen, Norma, Sangsoo, and their kids a the Park residence in Valencia. Although we know many families with small children up here, I don’t fully feel like they’re peers; they’re more like mentors in my mind, so it was kind of different and nice to hang out with families that are more peer-like. They have 3 boys between them, and I had an interesting convo with Sangsoo. He seems to think that there’s a real daddy’s little girl effect with fathers. Fathers he knows all love their kids, but in his estimation, fathers of boys sometimes feel like they want some time away and feel more tired, whereas fathers of girls can’t wait to come home from work every day. I have zero idea if this is true; it’s probably not, but still interesting.
We ate with Jieun’s fam at DaDo Sushi. Korean-owned, of course. People seem to think I’m an L.A. hater. It’s not that I hate L.A. I actually really like the people. There are just things about it that bother me, that I’m reminded of every single time I go there. I’ve written about it too much to rehash, but it’s traffic, smog, heat, and insularity. The last being not just a general L.A.-centricity, but ethnic insularity. In SoCal, it’s possible for Koreans to (and many do) interact only with other Koreans. Going to Korean markets, dentists, doctors, dry-cleaners, eating at Chinese, Japanese, and Korean restaurants that are all Korean-owned. I have no logical basis for being bothered by that, but I am. I realized this when at dinner, a Caucasian family came in to eat and I was startled. I was so used to there only being other Koreans there wherever we ate that when a non-Asian family came in it was striking. I dunno, that doesn’t seem right to me.
Sunday we went to church at Ambassador Church, where we met up with Gloria. Second time at the church and I like it a lot. I’d probably go there if I lived in the area. Not too Korean, not too big, and they seem like good people. Anyway, the sermon was on The DaVinci Code. I’m all in favor of stuff like this, churches tying in to relevant stuff going in culture, like many churches are doing with TDC and did before when the Passion of the Christ came out. I just think it’s a good way to reach out to people are are maybe more plugged in to what’s going on in pop culture and maybe less so to the church.
Anyway, I’m amending what I said on Henry page. I had said before that it was primarily blasphemous, not necessarily heretical. Based on some Dan Brown quotes from the sermon, I’m going to say that it’s heretical also. Because yeah, it’s a fictional novel, but Brown insists both in the intro to the book and in interviews (e.g. with Matt Lauer) that all the historical elements of it are true. Lauer asked him, if it was a non-fiction book, which of the historical elements would change, and Brown replied that none of it would. I don’t know if that’s what he truly believes, but publicly he insists that it’s all true, and that’s fairly heretical.
Lunch with Gloria, Jane, and Jonathan at Corner Place. Good time had by all. Incidentally, one thing I do love about L.A. is the food. I can think of tons of foods I like to that are only in L.A. And one of them is the dongchimigooksoo at Corner Place. It’s Jieun’s favorite, with good reason. Delicious. Anyway, the Chais with three lawyers, and here’s one thing I like about lawyers – when they get together, they don’t dominate the conversation talking about law, the way practitioners of other professions do. As an outsider, I very much appreciate that.
Not much to say about the wedding, except that it involved a 3+ generation Japanese-American and a Filipino, so it wasn’t like most Asian weddings I go to. First Filipino wedding I’ve seen. Things that stuck out to me: short toasts, loud cheers, huge extended family.
Got to the airport late this morning and we barely made the flight. Abby was great on the plane, other than considerately pooping three times. Nowadays, she grunts and scrunches her face for minutes before she actually lets loose. It’s the most hilarious thing I’ve ever seen.
“And that was my weekend”. Boring.