Tonight I went out with my brother’s best friend from High School, he took me to this place called Hukilai (I forgot what it’s called so I just threw in an arbitrary foreign noise for the sake of convenience) that serves Hawaiian food. I never knew there was such a thing as hawaiian food, I mean I know they eat SOMETHING, but when I try to imagine what it is, I just see masticated flowers and shelled coconuts.
Hawaiian food is basically anything with spam on it or anything with shoyu and sesame oil in American sized portions. Which in my book is good stuff. While plowing through my salad that was large enough to feed a family of Balkan refugees, it dawned on me that this was my first real dinner since leaving Southern California. And I couldn’t even finish it.
So even if I didn’t see BSS or Xiomara’s baby, there was one part of my trip that was going according to planand that was my craptastic $3.00/day meal plan, which buys you…coffee and not much else. I guess it’s because my budget’s so tight (which I blame Amoeba records and Acres of Books for) that I’ve been subsisting on cookies and dollar mugs of brew; but there really isn’t much for me to try here in the states, gastronomically at least, since I ruled out beef and pork from my diet. Seriously, who goes to in-an-out burger and orders the veggie pattie? Sure I’m in the vegan capital of America, but I’m not feeling the vegan-ness. The air still smells like chicken strips and pastrami.
Maybe it’s also because I ruled out beef from my diet that I’ve turned into such a pussy when it comes to eating. In Bert’s words, I eat like a girl. Which isn’t really fair, considering I spent Halloween weekend pretending I worked the evening shift with him at their shop in Pier 39 just so I could get “employee discounts” at all the shops in the Pier (which pretty much explains the cookie-coffee diet). When you work evenings, you pretty much forget that there’s such a thing as dinner.
—-
Halloween weekend was fun. There were all these kids trick or treating at Pier 39, and as an efficient and courteous “employee” of Hand and Mind gift shop, I got to hand out their candy and tell them to get the hell away if they didn’t bother to come in costume. Also I was waiting for someone dressed up as Britney circa 2007 VMAs to come by. Oh oh! and we carved our first pumpkin! We had to pretend we were 10 year old koreans just to get it free from the patch.
Maybe we didn’t even have to pretend, earlier a streetcar driver greeted Bert and I with,
Streetcar man: “How are you guys doing? You two look so young I bet you couldn’t even buy a softdrink without getting carded!”
Me: “Thank you! Actually I’m 52 and my face is just pumped with ass fat.”
Nah, didn’t actually say that. Sure he meant well, but I’d have to be Teri Hatcher to take that as a compliment.
Alice Sarmiento 