“So Augustus dismounted and the steed was taken to the stable and fed…”

Two days after we got back from NO, we took our Honda to a dealership. When I was vacuuming it, I spotted a messy groove between the two seats in the second row. No matter which way I tried, I just couldn’t get to it. The vacuum head was too big. Plus, it wasn’t curved in the right angle.

They say that human brain is programmed so that it will automatically erase when all fails. I used to think so, too. Not any more.

It started as a harmless trip to the bathroom. I was sitting on the toilet, innocent as a baby. I got a little bored, so I started to look around the room. For a brief moment, my eyes rested on the thin gray dust line along the bottom trim of the bathroom wall. Quick as a flash, the ball of memory passed (curse the crack between the stove and the edge of the countertop!), bounced sideways, and slammed back.

I left the bathroom, a crushed woman.

I suspect that Will and Kate didn’t pull off as perfect a wedding as it seemed. Who can be the “flawless” performer when scrutilized under a magnifying glass? Yet such is the pressure to not to make any mistakes in public. Several years ago, there was a huge outcry over the pantomimic farce that was on CCTV’s Spring Festival Gala. I laughed when I first read about it in the news. Now, the performers have my deepest sympathies–at least with writing, you can always go back and change things.

We went to a jazz concert while we were in NO. The concert was a jolting experience for me in more than one way. Compared with other types of music, jazz is very much oriented towards moods and improvisations. And since each person can improvise a piece as he sees fit, is it possible to have seamless group coordination, seamless at least to the ear of a layperson like me? The answer is yes. At the concert, we saw a cellist, a drummer, a pianist, and a singer work in such fine harmony, if one can use “harmony” to describe something like jazz.

What was more, not only did the singer take breaks to drink water, he actually took a long, deep breath before drawing out the last note of a song. “It’s not precise science” was the apology he offered. At first, I was a little disturbed by the cheek of the man, then I thought: “why not?” If you can’t time it seamlessly or lack the wit to cover up your imperfections with a joke, then why not admit it?

For something as imprecise as music, it’s amazing there’s so much fuss going around about not making mistakes. I’m a big fan of classic music. And yet if there’s one thing one might find vexing about classic music, it is that tendency toward absolute perfectness, particularly those sonatas. They ARE beautiful–there’s no doubt about it–but it’s a kind of constrained, fragile beauty–too sweet, if you know what I mean, and it calls to mind the title of Tennessee Williams’ play “The Glass Menagerie”.

It’s like the difference between 工笔and 写意. For me,　工笔 as a type of art is not as probing as 写意. You WILL marvel at 工 笔’s immaculate details. After the first wow, however, there’s not much left for you to think about, methinks.

The air of NO is permeated with romance. There’s no escaping it.

One evening, I was taking a stroll on a street in the French Quarter, when I saw an elderly couple, all dressed-up, saying goodbye to each other at a narrow, iron-laced gate nearby. The woman murmured, “So will you kiss me goodbye?”, or something like that. I was too abashed to pause to see what the man did. For a moment, I thought I was in the middle of Casablanca…

But there’s romance of another sort.

A lot of NO’s courtyards are hidden away behind long, narrow alleys. If you’re curious enough to peep in, you’ll chance upon many gems. There’s always more and more of them, like venturing into one amazing cave after another.

So you fell in love with NO at first sight? Wait till you kiss her lips! (夫子一把：销魂须待体肤之亲）.

Shortly after the clock struck 12, she sat down at the piano and started to play “Auld Lang Syne”, unprompted. This was the first time I heard her play the song. I could actually make out the tune while she was at it. So what if you couldn’t win awards in piano competitions? It’s the ability to rise to the occasion that matters.

I tweaked the recipe a little. Tastes better than it looks.

Here are some ingredients we bought at New Orleans for creole and cajun foods:

Tags: cajun food, creole food, ingredients

Claire is too big to sit on Santa’s lap, and Kat is at where Claire was 4 years ago. Another year rolled by, with too much deja vu…

Funny how memory works. Why does our brain filter certain things out while retaining others? Why do certain things trigger certain memories? Why are some things fixed in our reminiscences, bonded like Siamese twins?

MM was reading The Little Engine That Could the other day–the very story I read to her while we were in a waiting room at Children’s Atlanta 4 years ago. All I can recall about that day is that she was real fussy when she was wheeled out of the operation room and the title of the book we read together prior to her ear tube surgery.

When I think about the Spring Festival, the first thing that comes to mind is peanut candies, of all things!

I can remember some things that a person did, but completely forget about the name of the person that did it.

There was a couple that I was casually aquainted with in grad school. Today, 10 years later, I spotted the face of the wife from a crowd, but the man seemed like a total stranger to me.

When staying at a hotel, one might as well just wash her hair with plain water. Hotel shampoo either doesn’t have any conditioner in it at all or those 2-in-1 things that don’t do what they are supposed to. The day after I shampoo, my hair would be in such a mess, as if YY and MM had just wiped their sticky fingers on it. It only feels normal again–i.e. I can run the comb through it– on the 3rd day, when it’s conditioned with the oil from my own hair. By then, it’s time to wash it again.

You know what makes a 5-star hotel a 5-star?

It’s not their services, their facilities, or the cleaniness of the towels. It’s that first sniff that you take when you step into the room. We’ve stayed at a number of chain hotels in the past, and Hilton is, so far, the least smelliest.