Not Too Bad

Nat King Cole - Autumn Leaves (French)
I absolutely love this song in this version from this singer. I can't find the French version anywhere except for Pandora, so I can only hope the luck is on my side to hear it.

This weekend turned out to be a lot better than I'd expected.

I went to my first Friday chemistry lecture of the quarter and went to Sacramento with my parents to visit family since we weren't able to do so before Tet. I was really dreading it because I never love going to Sacramento; I usually find myself just sitting around, staring off. It's not horrible, but since we were going to stay the night also, I grumbled a lot. Antoine's birthday party was also that night, so I was a little bitter that I was going to miss it after not hanging out with him for about.. 4 years?

At around 4:30, we arrived at my grandparents' house at which we were going to also stay the night. There was going to be a family dinner at my aunt's in the evening, so I had a lot of time to kill. My uncle, Bac Tien, served me pho after bragging about how his pho is hella bomb (though not in those words). It was... pretty bad. My parents agreed with my thoughts, but of course, none of us said it aloud. My mom made a few comments on how it wasn't sweet enough and that it was too salty. I'm not sure if it was the saltiness that got me; I can't describe it correctly, but it tasted to me like it came from a powder and more water needed to be added.

The family dinner was alright. I'm pretty indifferent to most things. The food was fine to me. We were having hot pot with noodles, and I didn't think the broth was very flavorful and there was some weird additional dip for whatever was cooked in the hot pot, but I thought it was okay. My parents corrected me in the car during the trip back home the following day by saying it was some of the worst they'd ever had. Whoops. Anyway, I hung out with my cousins a bit. We played Apples to Apples and Cranium. I'm usually pretty competitive, but I was tired and playing with mostly 12 year olds. My cousin, Thuy Linh, is pretty chill. She's 12 years old, I think, but she was a painnnnn when she was a little kid. Now she's pretty cool, but I can't say the same for all of her friends. I don't mean to pick on little girls, but two of her friends whose names I forgot seemed really... stupid, and it's not just because they were both on the opposing team haha. They just acted very dimwitted and kept messing up Cranium. For example, if you're supposed to draw and try to get your teammates to guess the word/phrase, your teammates can't see the word on the card because.. obviously, they're supposed to guess! They kept showing each other the card and looking at the answer while my team kept yelling at them to stop fucking up (again, not in those words).

One of my cousins who is a year younger than me, Thuy Dan, is cool to talk to. I'm not close to any of my cousins, regrettably, but we always have okay small talk, though I hate small talk. Anyway, she has a new boyfriend who goes home with her every weekend she goes home from UOP, I guess. At first glance, I thought, She could do better. I didn't talk to him, but he seems alright in the average, unspectacular way (I try not to judge..). She left her house early with her boyfriend to go to a hotel to stay with his parents who were visiting from LA. According to my aunt, his parents asked Thuy Dan to stay with them for a night. Call me traditional, but that's just absurd. Maybe if they all went vacationing together, that would be reasonable to stay with the boyfriend's parents, but she left home to stay at a hotel with them. I can't really put my finger on it, but I find it weird. What surprised me most was that my uncle and aunt approved. I guess my aunt has gotten soft, but I would've expected my uncle to immediately dismiss such a proposition. I thought it was really strange, but it's not my business, so I really don't care that much.

After returning to my grandparents' house, everyone went to sleep. I went back and forth through being asleep and being awake throughout the night because of random late-night conversations and texts with friends. The next morning, my parents and I made some rounds to different relatives' houses to say goodbye. We said bye to my grandparents, an uncle, an aunt, another uncle who wasn't at home but at my grandparents', my grandparents again, my aunt's mom who isn't my grandma, then finally left! It was a long ordeal that spanned across 3 hours.

The best moments of being in Sacramento were when we were sitting around the table at my grandparents'. I don't have much to contribute to the family gossip, and I'm glad I don't have to get involved with that bullshit, but when the subject changed to something other than drama, I felt happy to just sit there and listen. I chimed in now and then, but I was happy listening to my grandparents. My grandma is still healthy mentally though it's hard for her to do much physically; my grandpa seems a lot healthier. He stopped talking after he moved to Sacramento and whenever he did talk, he was always distressed about something. This weekend, he was able to even joke a little. When I was saying bye to him, he started to get upset like he usually does, and I tried to hug him, but he didn't want me to and mumbled something about being a burden and wanting to die early. It sounds pretty dramatic, and hearing it isn't great, but he does that a lot, so we try to just smile and laugh it off, saying, "Don't be ridiculous." He continued to mumble and told me, "You know I love you, right?" I don't know, I just felt sad. I think it's because all of my life, I've never really been able to express to my grandparents how much I appreciated them other than through elementary Vietnamese phrases, hugs and kisses, and stupid smiles. I think it was sad that he had to say that, as if I didn't know already.

When I got home yesterday, I made Antoine a flan cake in memory of the days we used to be close and when he made one for my birthday and gave it to him last night. I forgot his mom was vegan, so I brought it to his house and she was like, "Ohh.. we'll take it from your heart, but we don't eat it." Antoine isn't a vegetarian, but his mom doesn't know. I felt really stupid for forgetting. Epic fail. We still ate some in his room though. It was my first attempt at making flan cake. It was pretty good, but I think I had too much caramel, so each bite got closer to sickeningly sweet. We only managed to eat half, and flan cake isn't even filling, so that wasn't much. We watched Taken and Vicky Cristina Barcelona on his 30something inch LCD. I've seen most of Taken already since it's actually a somewhat old movie, but I wanted to see the whole thing on a big screen (I suggested seeing it in theatres, but he wanted to just watch it at his house). I really liked it; it was so badass. VCB was a little awkward to watch cuz of all the sensual scenes, but I got over it by the 3rd one. We also tried watching some TV shows and part of Chocolate, but it quickly became 6:30AM, so he took me home. By the way, sorry Larry for not being able to talk to you on the phone!

The end of my weekend is going to suck though. School work. Chemistry lab report time.