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.
