Romance

Valentine's Day makes me feel crabby.

I remember in my college days, my boyfriends would always break up with me right before Valentine's Day so they didn't have to shell out for flowers. (Yeah, I dated some real winners.) I took to calling Valentine's Day "V.D." One year I threw a party and insisted that everyone come alone and wear black. I think that was my best Valentine's Day ever.

A has many fine qualities but he is not a romantic. He once bought me a tub of ice cream for my birthday. And last Friday, for our pre-Valentine's date, he took me to a divey punk bar. Somehow, listening to the Circle Jerks at headache-inducing decibels just doesn't put me in the mood for love.

Then again, in my experience, romantic guys are either (a) playas or (b) gay, and sometimes both. Maybe unromantic isn't such a bad thing.

Happy V.D. everyone.

(I love you, A.)

Hines Ward

I read an interesting article about Hines Ward* in the L.A. Times today. According to the article, Ward is causing some Koreans to rethink the traditional prejudice against mixed-race Koreans of African-American descent.

In other sports-related news, A was overjoyed when the Koreans won gold and silver in short-track speed skating.

*Apologies to the Seahawks fans among us.

New Type Snack of Rice & Corn

Sometimes when A and Amuni go to the market, Amuni buys a treat for K. These puffed rice cakes are slightly sweet, crunchy and addictive. The three of us killed a whole package yesterday. K also likes kim (dried seaweed) and squash porridge, which comes in a little microwaveable cup.

Children's Museum

This morning K and I went with some friends to the Children's Museum at La Habra. It's a great place to spend a couple of hours with a toddler.

We started out in the playroom, where we pushed the kids around on this circular bicycle. (Their legs weren't long enough to reach the pedals.)



The room also has a plastic castle, a slide, assorted books and toys, and a fake tree. In other words, it's toddler heaven. Next door is a child-sized theater with dress-up clothes, a stage, and a piano. Our kids were a little too young to enjoy dress-ups, but they had fun yelling into the mike and banging on the piano.

Another part of the museum houses a carousel, the front part of a real bus (they can climb in it and pretend to drive), and a play supermarket.



The mounted animals in this room gave my friends the creeps.



The toys and displays are well-worn, but of course the kids didn't mind, and for five dollars it was a great value. The only downside is that it's about forty minutes from here, and K threw a screaming hissy fit had a little meltdown in the car on the way home.

Americanized

Whenever we get together with A's family, I always notice that some of A's relatives are much more assimilated than others. A's uncle in upstate New York speaks fluent English, and two of his kids married non-Koreans. He likes American food. His son played college football. A's other uncles, who live near us, aren't assimilated at all. One of them lives in a big house with his oldest son, (Korean) daughter-in-law, and grandchildren. They speak Korean all the time, and they eat only Korean food.

Like their uncles, A and his brothers have assimilated to varying degrees. A is the oldest and most "Americanized"*. His middle brother is married to a Korean-American woman, speaks Korean at home, and travels to Korea every year or so. Their younger brother is somewhere in between. He hangs out with other Asian-Americans, but not always Koreans, and his fiance is Vietnamese.

I think it's strange that siblings, who share the same genes and family background, would be so different in the ways they assimilate, or don't. For the older generation, it seems to be dictated by how much time they've lived in places where there are no other Koreans. For New York Uncle, assimilation wasn't really a choice. They were the only Koreans around, and he's a doctor so he had to use English at his job. For the other uncles, English wasn't necessary at work, and it was possible to live their whole lives (more or less) without venturing out of the Korean-American community here.

Southern California must be the most Korean place outside of Korea. You can listen to Korean radio during the day, watch three hours of Korean TV at night, shop at Korean markets, and go to Korean church. I often think it's both a blessing and a curse. It makes the transition for immigrants easier, but it also keeps them isolated in their own community, and it puts a huge burden on the kids, who are forced to translate and mediate between the two cultures.

For 1.5 or 2nd-generation Korean-Americans, assimilation seems to be more about personality. I think A and his brothers have made subconscious choices about what aspects of Korean culture they'll accept/ reject. Their assimilation is also situational. When he's with his family, A becomes a lot more Korean, and of course when he's with me he's more "American". But the fact that he chose to marry me, a non-Korean, is telling.

I don't like "Americanized" because it suggests you can't hold onto your own culture and be American. But it's the word A and his brothers use to talk about assimilation.

Santa Monica

You might be in Santa Monica if...

a woman is applying makeup to a man's face in the middle of the street as a camera crew waits in the background.
you see a Porsche Cayenne and a Hummer right next to each other.
you overhear a young woman telling her parents that she gets her hair done at the same salon as a B-list celebrity.
you're pretty sure the person at the table next to you is a B-list celebrity (and you're craning your neck/ racking your brain to figure out who it is.)

Aging gracefully is a foreign concept in L.A. I kept seeing middle-aged dads dressed like teenage skate-punks. I wanted to yell at them, "Dude, you are in your forties, and you have a kid. You are by definition unhip. Trying to look hip only makes you pathetic."

*****

When we first moved here, we did a lot of touristy things for a few months, and then we more or less stopped venturing out of our little corner of SoCal on the weekends. A spends a lot of time in his car during the week, so the last thing he wants to do on the weekend is sit in traffic. But today we got brave and decided to go to Santa Monica. We left early enough in the morning to miss the traffic on the 405.

We found an amazingly kid-friendly restaurant. By kid-friendly I mean that it was loud, had aisles wide enough to accomodate strollers, and offered stroller parking in the rear of the restaurant. We saw lots of other small kids, and there were plentiful high chairs and a children's menu. Restaurants like these are rare (unless you count big chains, and we hardly ever eat at those places.) I wish there were more of them. The waiter kept the coffee flowing, and the food was delicious too. More importantly, I felt like I could breathe.



K enjoyed the Santa Monica Promenade. It was nice to be able to let her run around in the middle of the street. She danced to the street musicians' music, and she loved seeing all the dogs.

Speech and Hearing

K: Cocks. Cocks?
Me: Socks!
K: Cocks.

*******

I don't have eyes in the back of my head, but my hearing has improved since K became a toddler. The squeaky-mattress sound at 3:00 in the morning means she's about to stand and say, "Uppa uppa uppa!" If I hear the crinkle of plastic, I know she is busy unwrapping every maxi pad in the package. (Sometimes I let her do that just to get a couple of minutes of free time.) From the bathroom I can hear the scraping of a chair as she pulls it up to climb on the table. But when I hear nothing at all, I know we're in BIG TROUBLE.