Buy Your Friends With Jello
Last night, Chris took me to Cam, the largest Chinese grocer in the city. (It is unimpressive by national standards, but for this bleach-white city, it's better than nothing.) My desk at my new job has been bare this whole week, and no living space of mine will ever be without the most necessary decoration of all: FOOD.
I can't read Chinese (I quit Chinese school in the 4th grade and I do not regret it thankyouverymuch), but I've grown up in its culture enough to have a strong sense of what I want. So I roamed up and down every aisle, looking for foods that struck my fancy.
Among packets of squid and pickled lettuce (oh shit, I just realized I forgot jellyfish and seaweed), I bought a large tub of lychee jello cups. I'd been trying to fit into my work's hip culture all week, and suddenly, I had an AHA moment.
"Christopher," I said, "I am going to buy my friends with jello."
He laughed.
"No really," I insisted. "No one knows what lychee is, much less seen a tub of little lychee jello cups. I will set it on my desk. People will flock to my desk in curiosity, we shall converse, I shall have friends, and voila! I shall be integrated. It's brilliant."
I lugged that tub, a pack of dried squid, and a pack of beef formosa to my desk today. Within minutes, our secretary spotted the tub and came right over. "What is that? I'm scared of it. Can I try it? What does it taste like? Is it a jello shot?" One by one they came, asking the same questions.
With an innocent face, I replied, "Oh this? Oh you should try it! C'mon, you know you want to..."
Ahhh...one more brilliant Leslie plan, deployed and accomplished.
I can't read Chinese (I quit Chinese school in the 4th grade and I do not regret it thankyouverymuch), but I've grown up in its culture enough to have a strong sense of what I want. So I roamed up and down every aisle, looking for foods that struck my fancy.
Among packets of squid and pickled lettuce (oh shit, I just realized I forgot jellyfish and seaweed), I bought a large tub of lychee jello cups. I'd been trying to fit into my work's hip culture all week, and suddenly, I had an AHA moment.
"Christopher," I said, "I am going to buy my friends with jello."
He laughed.
"No really," I insisted. "No one knows what lychee is, much less seen a tub of little lychee jello cups. I will set it on my desk. People will flock to my desk in curiosity, we shall converse, I shall have friends, and voila! I shall be integrated. It's brilliant."
I lugged that tub, a pack of dried squid, and a pack of beef formosa to my desk today. Within minutes, our secretary spotted the tub and came right over. "What is that? I'm scared of it. Can I try it? What does it taste like? Is it a jello shot?" One by one they came, asking the same questions.
With an innocent face, I replied, "Oh this? Oh you should try it! C'mon, you know you want to..."
Ahhh...one more brilliant Leslie plan, deployed and accomplished.
posted by The mini ninja at 12:08 AM
8 Comments:
SUCCESS!
What the hell is lychee anyway?
Only Chinese I know is pork fried rice and crab rangoon. (:
lychee is a fruit. it's sweet, pearl colored, and has a chewy texture.
Like tapioca?
isn't tapioca a pudding? or is that tapioca pudding...for some reason I've never liked tapioca, but I've never tried it. what is it? p.s. cheese rangoons and pork fried rice! that's funny. I must open your eyes to the great world of authentic asian cuisine. (Although I must say, I'm not particularly fond of it myself these days, having eaten it all my life.)
Tapioca is the frog eye thingies IN the pudding, I think.
I'm not very adventurous with food. I don't use condiments, I hate sauce on my pasta, and I used to only eat the crust of pizza. Once, when I was MUCH younger, my mom made Chinese with the soft noodles (forgive me, I have NO idea what they're called) and I said it looked like worms, and I got sent to my room.
One day you'll have a child just like you. I do. BAH!
If I had a child just like me, she'd be born obnoxiously loud and taper off sometime after 15 years. But she would eat everything. Watch out.
Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.
When he was young, my husband was taken out to a Chinese restaurant for lunch by some clients. For dessert, he was asked if he'd like some lychees. "No thanks," he said. "I don't like cheese." One of those embarrassing moments to 'dine out on' for life!!
Gab At Les
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