I love sushi.

Like a race track, a movie theater, or the lottery, a sushi bar is a place of possibility. The unpredictability of the sushi conveyor belt, the impossibility of knowing what will pass your seat next, seem to promise even the most unlikely. At any moment, you could aim for a dish of sashimi but grab a pair of arctic clam sushis by mistake, and find that you like them much more. A particularly flustered waiter could bring you a hand roll you never ordered and end up catching your fancy.You could discover that the mayonnaise-laced prawns look quite revolting up close and be caught in the act of sneaking them back onto the conveyor belt. While ordering you could be told that the restaurant had run out of salmon, only to watch several plates of it parade past your table just as you are about to leave. 

In truth, there was much we did not forsee that Friday, even before we began ordering sushis and sashimi. I did not expect to find Ann wearing mismatched slippers as she proudly showed me her spotless living room. Karen did not expect to walk up several flights of stairs before realizing that she could not find the right door because she was in the wrong building. And who would have thought that as several batches of cranberry oatmeal cookies shriveled in the oven, we would be too distracted by Scrabble troubles to notice?  

When spending time with family and friends, you often come to expect the ordinary. Because these are the people you love most, they are also the people you often find most predictable. Daddy will always do something absentminded, like wear a bib out of the dentist's office or try to force his way into a restaurant that has already closed. Mommy and Emily will never agree on which clothes are fit to wear, but will always manage to reach some sort of compromise. Ann, Karen, and Christine will never mention rabbits without adding some sort of derogatory comment involving "unwashed" and "disgusting." 

The patterns you observe become, in your mind, established facts, and you become grow certain that things could never happen any other way. You learn to anticipate their reactions and take precautions. (ex: Baby Rabbit should mentioned minimally in conversation.) And yet, somehow, even when all patterns have seemingly been noted and mapped out, the unexpected happens. Mommy and Emily actually decide on a dress for Emily's junior prom together. Daddy sits through a doctor's appointment with me without once asking me a question about personal hygiene or the last time I washed my hair. My friends overcome their phobia of rabbits and kidnap mine, only to return her to me, several hours of frantic questioning later, in a sealed sandwich bag. 

One of the things that surprised me most this Friday was the discovery that there are people who care what I write in my blog. Who leave comments so I can experience the thrill of getting feedback. Who read my posts and remember enough to discuss them over miso soup and sushi, if only to debate whether my latest story is about a cockroach, or if watermelon really can be eaten from the bottom up. 

The art of surprising yourself

There is no surprise like one you leave for yourself. Perhaps it is the chicken salad sandwich you left in your purse several days ago because you decided to eat a granola bar instead, the sweaty socks you crammed into the recesses of your backpack after basketball practice last Tuesday, the roll of dollar bills you accidentally left in the medicine cabinet the last time you were looking for band-aids.

Why wait for others to leave you surprises when you can take care of it yourself? Save a slice of cake and hide it behind the leftovers in your refrigerator. Stow a couple of quarters into a bag you've forgotten you had. By the time you rummage through the leftovers from last week, or unearth that bag again during spring cleaning, that cake, those quarters will have become gifts, far exceeding their original value. The delight and self-congratulation that comes with these discoveries, the certainty that there are more blessings to stumble across and the freshness of suddenly looking forward to the day ahead. You are charmed, all because you thought to keep a few coins buried away.

Then again, there are surprises you probably don't want to leave for yourself. Overdue phone bills, smelly laundry, fingernail clippings, unrefrigerated ice cream, expired gift cards. The homework assignment you accidentally left between the pages of your biology textbook and did not find until the morning it was due. The coupon for free yogurt you finally collected enough stamps on but never got around to using until it was too late. These surprises spring out from nowhere and pound away at your optimism and measure of self-worth. At these moments, you lament the loss of free yogurt and the curse of your own forgetfulness.

Until you find the surprise you left for yourself in the medicine cabinet, and the world is right once more.

Half-eaten

Half-eaten snacks are the usual fare around here-at least when I attempt to bring home anything remotely edible. An bag of chips already opened, a sandwich with most of the ham and cheese missing.To most, receiving a half-eaten sandwich would be anything but a sign of affection, but Emily has come to speak this language of "leftovers." She knows when I say, "I brought a something for you" and uncover a slightly flattened doughnut with teethmarks in it, I mean "I thought of you today while sitting in Mister Donut, so I left half of this for you."And when I rummage through expired coupons and loose change after a day out to fish out a crumpled bag of grape gummies from the depths of my purse, she knows that it is an apology of sorts, for not spending the day with her.

Of course, if given the choice, I would choose a chocolate eclair untouched in its wax paper wrapping, every sprinkle still in place. Emily would probably do the same-I cannot flatter myself into thinking that every unwrapped, half-eaten pastry I bring home is somehow worth an entire bun to her. Even the waitress gave me an incredulous look when I asked her to pack the few strands of pasta left in my plate into a takeout box. But in collecting these tidbits of food and snacks, it is as though I am collecting bits of my day to share with her-the lemon ice tea I bought at Hi-life after shooting hoops at school, the sausage I ordered from a vendor near the thrift store, the bit of penne with meat sauce I saved from dinner with friends at the Italian restaurant downtown.

I may be hopelessly possessive when it comes to food. I may often find myself absentmindedly munching on whatever I happen to be holding, and may be addicted to gummies, doughnuts, and sugary snacks. Perhaps I bring home half-eaten snacks because I can do no better. But I like to think that, in bringing Emily half of a doughnut or a few rolls from dinner, I am somehow telling her that I wish she could have been there too.   

A bug's life in the Yang house

Whether clad in striped pajamas or a Donald Duck costume, whether lounging on the couch or perched on the dining room table, my mom is constantly prepared for battle. For while some choose to tackle countries or social institutions, her battle is with any cockroach, mosquito, and ant foolhardy enough to set an abdomen in her path. Usually this means the pests that inhabit this cauliflower-colored, 20 sq. ft. space we call home, and when the slipper smacks and the flyswatter sounds, the rest of us scramble to stay out of the way .

Though sounds of falling furniture or slamming bathroom doors have come to signal scrimmages in this ongoing war, most of my mom's work is done stealthily, in the hours after bedtime. It is not until I have woken in the morning that I learn of the mosquito that persisted in buzzing in her ear until she smashed it with my copy of To Kill a Mockingbird at 3 AM, or the cockroach my mom ended up tearing in half (armed with tissues, she assured me) to ensure it would not revive (something, she also assured me, cockroaches are known to do). She recounts these campaigns with the pride of a seasoned general recalling battles hard won, and though her accounts involve discovering caterpillars in the vegetables and laying siege to ant colonies, they impress me more than any war story ever could. While I cannot understand battle tactics or army formations, I do understand the horror of stepping over a dried orange peel and realizing that it has legs and has begun scuttling across the floor, or the disappointment of uncovering the fruit tart you've been saving for days only to find that ants have nibbled their way through it.

But for somehow to devotes so much of her free time to wrangling with creepy crawlies underneath the refrigerator, my mom also seems to feel a strange affinity for these intruders. After once discovering an entire cockroach casting balanced on an orange in our pantry, she decided to mount the display, exoskeleton and all, on our kitchen shelf. She inspected it, admired it, gloated over it, and pointed it out to visitors as though it were an art exhibit. The cockroach casting remained there for days until we coaxed her to discard it with promises of a newfangled mosquito zapper.

Swimming upstream

Because my life tends to be a template of grays and browns, I often choose to deal in the figurative rather than the literal. With idioms come mentions of things thrilling and out of the ordinary (like lions and rolling stones), and when the closest you've come to selling your soul to anyone is succumbing to Bieber Fever, it becomes necessary to take certain liberties with language.

But this time, I have manage to transcend the curse of living only in the figurative. This time, I can, at last, use an idiom and mean it literally. This time, when I write that I swam upstream, I mean that I swam upstream. In a bathing suit. And goggles.

In an attempt to make something of a summer that has been squandered on Youtube and gummy bears, I agreed to go swimming for the first time since PE class ended a year ago. My friends and I headed to a swimming pool in a middle school nearby, they armed with towels and shampoo, I, with the flab I had accumulated over nine months of college (I had forgotten shampoo and soap). After floundering our way through several laps, we decided it was time to rest, and while the others relaxed in a warm bath, I ventured into another pool of cold water that wrapped around the spa. I found to my surprise, that the water moved counterclockwise. An invisible force propelled Spongebob-clad kids and neon colored floating boards in a gigantic circle, and I was riveted. I joined their ranks, amusing myself by kneeling on the tiled floor of the pool and riding the current, like a surfer, if surfers surfed on their knees.

Ten minutes later, the thrill of gliding around on my sore kneecaps had faded, and I decided I would become a rebel. I would swim upstream.

Maneuvering my way through the stream of swimmers so that I faced clockwise, I then began the doggy paddle of my life. The current shoved against my battered body relentlessly, and every so often, someone would barrel into me, and I would be carried several feet downstream. It was as though I alone had entered a salmon run, only for humans in swim caps, and though I had once watched a documentary on the salmon run, it was not until that moment that I began to feel a brotherhood with salmon everywhere. Only they knew this feeling of futility, of struggling against this single, unyielding force.

And though my thighs ached and the lifeguard was probably screaming "SOMEONE STOP HER," I felt strangely accomplished. As though, in my desperate thrashing, I had demonstrated the courage to not only swim against a current generated by powerful jets of chlorinated water discharged into a circular pool, but to carry myself with strength and determination even among naysayers, to paddle upstream even in life. I paddled forward, certain I had done what Elizabeth Bennet would have done had she snapped on a pair of goggles.

That is, until I paddled straight into one of the kids clinging to a floating board, elbowing him into the wall so forcefully that he burst into tears.

There is a time and place for swimming upstream. Wednesday afternoons at the Guangfu Middle School swimming pool is not one of them.

TV Soulmate

my sister

It is important to watch TV with someone who understands you. Someone who doesn't mind that you spent the past twenty minutes trying to guess what will happen next and so now have no idea what's going on, who appreciates the esoteric humor of uneven nostrils, and who agrees almost as fervently that the two men should just ditch the girl they're fighting over and start a life together. Someone who won't try to strangle you after you've ruined the second kissing scene in film (she also noticed the string of saliva), and who looks forward to watching 我們這一家 as much as you do.

I did not come to appreciate the value of a television soulmate until I spent an afternoon watching television with my uncle's family. The episode we happened to be watching involved scene after scene in which the characters seemed to do little but gaze fervently into one another's eyes while dramatic music swelled in the background. I suddenly remembered that my biology teacher once reminded us to watch for saccades (rapid shifting of the retina to focus on certain parts of an image) when the camera zoomed in on the eyes, and snorted in amusement at the thought of the lovers' eyes twitching uncontrollably to orchestral accompaniment. Once the snort had escaped, I regretted it. Snorting out loud while watching TV on someone else's couch had to be bad manners. Had I been watching tv with Emily, she would have been amused to learn about involuntary eye twitching, but my cousin simply glanced at me, disturbed by my insensitivity to the lovers' plight.

Our TV-watching ritual at home involves yelling constantly at the screen, finishing each other's sentences, making irrelevant observations regarding asymmetrical eyebrows-and an unnecessary number of hi-fives. "She almost tripped! She almost tripped! Did you see that? Hi-five!" I don't know why I find romantic climaxes so hilarious, or "she almost tripped" worthy of a hi-five. I don't know why I feel a compulsion to make a prediction every few minutes (I am rarely correct, but I always speak with great conviction), or feel a need to substitute professions of love with lines about cucumber sandwiches and boogers. But at least Emily feels the same way. And while none of my friends can understand my obsession with 我們這一家, Emily knows why I laugh every time 花媽 starts lecturing her kids or wages a war against the mosquitoes in the living room. Because we share so many things in our lives, Emily has also come to share my sense of humor. She knows what I am thinking when orchestra starts and the male and female lead get that look in their eye. And she knows our mom looks exactly like 花媽 when she gets starts swatting those mosquitoes.

Watermelons

I consider my mom an expert when it comes to shopping for vegetables and fruits. She knows instinctively which tomatoes are sweetest, which mushrooms are fresh, and even which peas to pick. Over the course of countless trips to the marketplace, I have managed to collect some tips--tips that concern everything from the ripeness of wax apples and mangoes to the benefits of yellow kiwis . Papayas should be long rather than wide (those wider in girth tend to be hollow), and heads of cabbage should be springy rather than solid to ensure flavor and juiciness. Yet, such tidbits of knowledge are just that--tidbits, and this infinitely useful art form never ceases to bewilder me.

As it bewilders my dad. He is not so accomplished in the arts of grocery shopping--his area of expertise lies in physics, and in explaining things like gravity and rainbows in unnecessarily complex terms. But lately, he's begun to dabble in this other field of science, and he's been improving at a startling rate. My dad is now solely responsible for buying the guavas in our refrigerator. Not to mention the fact that he's also gained a considerable amount of confidence in his choice of watermelons.

Over the months, my two parents have formed dangerously different views on how to pick watermelons.

According to my dad, when picking a watermelon, one must vigorously tap the melon in question, and then listen intently for several seconds afterwards, measuring the frequency of the reverberations beneath the mottled green rind. To demonstrate his theory, my dad once tapped a "good" watermelon and a "bad" watermelon. Although my dim ears could detect little difference ("slap, slap" versus "slap, slap"), my dad assured me that the first sound was much "juicier" and "sweeter." (I let it go. He might have momentarily confused his sound and taste adjectives, but he really sounded like he knew what he was doing. I also didn't want him pressing his ear against the watermelons--with unusual tenderness I might add--any longer than absolutely necessary. What if we were seen?)

So when we went to RT Mart last week and stumbled upon the crate of watermelons in the aisle beside the pineapples, it went something like this:

"Look! Watermelons!" (That was me. I tend to state the obvious.)

"Here! I'll choose one!"

My dad made his way to the crate and proceeded to tap every watermelon in sight. The rest of the family winced. What if one of the watermelons exploded without warning? What if someone we knew was lurking in an aisle nearby?

"No, no, that's not how you do it. Here's a good one." No doubt thinking the same things I did, my mom quickly brushed him aside and, summoning her magical powers, pointed to another one. Of course, my dad then began to tap that one, and the echoes apparently told him something else.

"No. This one doesn't sound sweet enough."

"That one." This time, the watermelon my mom pointed to was beneath four or five other watermelons, but such an awkward position did nothing to deter my tireless father. Cramming his hand into the tangle of melons, he finally managed to tap the target. We waited in suspense.

"All right! This one it is then!"

Thus began a five minute struggle to move the other watermelons out of the way so we could place the chosen one into our cart. Emphatic gesturing and serious discussion of logistics was involved, and I am sure the people who happened to wander past aisle nine were shocked by the aggressiveness of our attack and the number of watermelons we balanced in our arms. But what may have seemed like chaotic juggling to others was somehow comforting to me. As we wrestled and heaved, chattered and grunted, I couldn't help but smile to the melon I happened to be cradling.

After ten years' worth of squabbles over toothbrush mix-ups and whose turn it is to wash the dishes, we're still moving watermelons together.

You and Me--I've missed you

When it comes to formal writing, "you" and "me" are often marked as the untouchables of the English language, right alongside "alot" and "dude." They have become the lepers of polite society, words that, in suggesting a direct and intimate connection with both the audience and the writer herself, endanger the tone of objectivity and professionalism academics and other smart people seek. People reading research papers or critical analysis want to be offered a view from the outside in, not a direct glimpse into the writer's heart. Or their own.

Of course, I'm not saying that third person and professionalism do not have their place. Limiting the use of words that speak of a more personal narrative certainly makes it more difficult for biased misconceptions to surface and distort critical analysis. Detachment, to a certain extent, is essential in academic work.

But how I've missed being able to poke the reader in the eye with a rousing "you," or sprinkling in a dash of personality with a handy first person pronoun! One of the reasons blogs are often much more entertaining to read is because they unabashedly flaunt their subjective and even biased content. These posts address their audiences with the familiarity of a particularly outspoken and slightly eccentric neighbor, and seem to hold nothing back. "There is nothing quite as degrading as trying to have a serious argument when you're half drunk and dressed up like a giant pumpkin of the tooth fairy" (Hyperbole and a Half) or "Yes, I packed wipes. I'M A MOTHER" (Dooce) are statements that, in their hilarious candour, click immediately with their reader's own thoughts and experiences. They are calls, reminders to examine the humanness of the words that surround them, and to seek some sort of connection. They say "yeah you, I'm talking to you" or "have you ever come across the same thing I have?" Where "one" is reserved, ever-courteous, and often hypothetical, "you" and "me" are rude, invasive, and unapologetic.

In reclaiming these two words, it feels as though I am somehow reclaiming my audience, and myself. No longer do I have to disguise the fact that I am reaching out to an audience (whether they are listening or not), or that my opinions and my interpretations are my own.

Oh you and me, how I've missed you.