I was lucky enough to be off site where I used to work and close to the Asian market that I used to frequent. Being the middle of the day, I assumed that I’d have the whole store (warehouse, actually) to myself. Leisurely strolling the aisles, I was quickly alerted by this loud and heavily accented chatter.

Rice crew/crispies, poser Asians with a gangster mentality, had to get their “snack on” and decided to stop in the store. They filled their baskets with noodle packets, cookies, and strange fruit-flavored gummi candies. Despite my disdain for this slacker teen group, I was slightly jealous of their friendship. These kids were obviously of different ethnicities all brought together by their parents who decided to make their living in the United States.

I never had the benefit Asian friends growing up and so I consider myself very narrow minded in other Asian cultures outside of my own. I look at these kids and I wonder how I would have turned out if I had a strong Asian influence growing up. I imagine my huge posse, splitting up into groups of five. Those groups cramming into riced up Hondas or Toyotas, scraped and scarred from crazy street racing or regular driving habits. We would head off a parking lot, to dance to the high bass tunes pouring out of the trunk of the most beat up rice rocket.

We’d get drunk off of malt liquor or cheap beer and stink of name-brand cigarettes. At the end of the night, we’d go get some phở and ironically complain about the ethnic things that we don’t want to do, just because we have to do them with our parents. We’d burst into impromptu karaoke as the cramped rice rockets become more roomy, as we all get dropped off at home. Sneaking a cigarette on the back porch trying not to be caught by the parents, then off to bed as a free-spirited individual and awake as a dutiful member of a large, close-knit Asian family.

Meh, so long as I was never one of them I can feel comfortable in judging them from afar… fucking ching chong stanky-ass slacker parasites

I’m just shaking off a cold and I’m now starting to shift into the pink. This being my second cold in a relatively short span of time, my parents worried and fussed over me (from a distance). Happily I can use my illness as an excuse not to be cordial over the phone or see them in person.

In one of our daily “this is how I think your life should be managed” phone calls with mom, she non-challantly slipped in the statement “Dad says he wasn’t as sick as you are, at your age.” As mom’s general tips of well-being, finance, and cultural sensitivity kept puring from the receiver, I pondered Dad’s remark.

Dad was in the air force at my age — living on an island nation, in a time where recreational travel on a fecal tube was an extravagance, where drug reps to this day aren’t driving around in fancy cars pushing antibiotics and resistant strains of germs, without a global economy that relies on businessmen spreading commerce and viruses as easily as shaking one’s hand. Dad’s exposure to migrating vectors at my age, was very very slim.

It is an amazing feat that I am not sick every day of my life between the flux of H1Bs on planes to/from their countries, the lack of hand washing skills of everyone’s children, and the sheer determination of people not to use their “sick time” to recover from being sick (as I am guilty of). I can choose be healthy and cold/flu free in my 20s, I just have to isolate myself from people and places. How am I supposed to cultivate a jaded world view and disdain for the common man without getting a little friendly with the natives, or in my case… natives and migratory foreigners who wish to be natives?

Much like the impotent exodus I wrote about in 2005, the amount of Indian migration in and out of this office results in the donut area being over run with the boiled bespangled sweets. I have said on countless occasions I’m not one to criticize the culture and cuisine of others, save for when it is egregiously thrown in my face. Now that I have eaten my obligatory (mind you very tasty) sweets, I am sick and tired of:

– flour boiled in butter and cane sugar
– chickpea flour boiled in butter and cane sugar
– graham flour boiled in butter and cane sugar
– ground nut four boiled in butter and cane sugar

– any of the aforementioned “sweets” made with milk solids partially replacing the flour
– any of the aforementioned “sweets” made with coconut oil instead of butter
– any of the aforementioned “sweets” decorated in silver leaf
– any of the aforementioned “sweets” decorated in gold leaf

– loose desserts served with a common plastic spoon to which people are invited to scoop with then empty high above one’s mouth to give the air of hygiene