It's official. I am now a quarter century old, as of April 21, 2005. As usual, it feels the same as being 24, which felt the same as 23. Funny thing is, I’ve felt like I’m 23 since I turned that age. Weird eh? Am I going to be stuck in the 23-year old mindset for the next 3 years?

I celebrated my bday week mostly by going out for dinner with friends and family.

Banquet Dinner
To kick it off, I had a Chinese banquet dinner with 9 other friends. It was a great deal: $200 for 10 ppl includes a 10-course Chinese dinner, 10 pops, taxes and tip. Cash only of course. What a great deal. The food was good, except that we did "splurge" by getting some bowls of rice. Examples of food were Peking duck, Tofu sheets with baby bok choy, stir fried fillet of sole, crispy silver fish and chicken and of course noodles. Not bad eh?

After the dinner we went downtown to Andy Poolhall’s to hang out for a few drinks and play some pool. It’s a small little trendy place, with a diverse older 28-32 crowd there. Some of the ladies had a some questionable outfits, unless you think matching hot pink bra, knee high pink leather boots, gloves and hula skirts is “in”!!

I was celebrating the bday dinner with another friend of mine who's bday was 2 weeks before mine. It was very hard to combine both groups of friends, espeically at a bar downtown and that they're from the 'burbs and don't come down often. It was a typical going out kind of night but for the other group it was very foreign and uncomfortable vs. their suburban home/local bar. Downtown toronto is pretty fast paced and can be very trendy at times. All my toronto friends (incl. myself) enjoyed themselves (probably b/c it was their usual environment), so that's a good thing at least. Ah well. I know for next time not to integrate disparate groups all at once for my bday celebration! Luckily my queer set of friends didn't come out to this one, or else we'd have 3 worlds colliding! :).

Vegetarian Hippiness

On Monday my friend took me downtown to Le Commensal, a buffet-style fine vegetarian restaurant. Among us was Moby, sitting right beside us, which added to the experience. The food was great and it was amazing to have all the foods labeled VERY clearly for you, so you what you can and can’t eat.

After the dinner we went to a mysterious place (well, mystery to me), which turned out to be ANI DiFRANCO live @ the Hummingbird Centre. It was INCREDIBLE. I have known that Ani is a great performer, songwriter, activist and all around musician, but I never could imagine how breathtaking her show was. The mainstream public views her as “man-eating lesbian music,” which I find appalling. Let’s see:

1) She’s not a lesbian.
2) She’s not man-eating.

She is actually bisexual, and for those naïve and sheltered individuals out there, it’s different from begin lesbian because you are attracted to BOTH sexes. And by default, since she is attracted to males, then would she be man-eating? Would she have a male stand-up bass player with her at the show (btw, it was just her and Todd for the entire show)? And even if she was lesbian, why would it matter?

Sure, she’s an activist and fights for women’s rights. She IS against the male-dominated patriarchal system that governs our society. She did sing cursing a guy she as going out with, cheating on her with another woman and pretending like nothing was wrong. But how many emo/screamo/alt-rock songs sung by pop-punky looking guys yelling about how their heart has been stomped on and ripped apart by a girl he was dating? Are they woman-eating misogynist assholes or just whiners?

Anyway, so many people are missing out of incredible music because of their close-minded conditioning. I bet no one knows anything about her except the “man-eating lesbian” part – I did not feel threatening at all during the entire show as a male in the audience. And if you’re thinking “but he’s gay, it doesn’t count!” you need much more education than from this little blog!

Back to the show. It was just Ani and Todd playing an acoustic show. It was so amazing to see a female guitar player who was REALLY playing serious guitar. She is a great player! Wow! And she even performed some spoken word that was actually REAL spoken word… NOT the kind you’d see from open mics @ your local university grad pub. Her delivery was rhythmic, definitive and driving, captivating the audience from the get go. Amazing show.

Fressen
On my actual birthday I went to FRESSEN, a downtown vegetarian/vegan fine dining restaurant with my family. This was an experience to say the least, since my parents are really only used to eating at Chinese restaurants. They asked where I wanted to go, and after refusing my answer for the usual, I caved and said that I did want to go to FRESSEN.

Overall it was a bit of a disaster b/c my sister got a serious allergic reaction (plus other family members claimed “tingling in the tongue”), my dad purposely ate before hand and did not order anything (he did nibble though), and my aunt’s response to the dinner was “Let’s go for Chinese next time ok!!” Ah well. SBF told me that it is OK to expect skepticism because it is a new experience for them. As with anyone, when you’re in a foreign environment you can feel a timid and on guard. But in this case, some of the comments did go a bit overboard and got tiring at the end. BUT the silver lining in all of this was that my other aunt LOVED it and of all things I didn’t get sick from the food!

I really have to hang out with my Aunt more – she’s really cool and up for eating at funky vege restaurants. I’ll definitely give her a call sometime to go out just with her somewhere.

Monsoon
The next dinner was with SBF. A one-on-one surprise dinner at Monsoon. I’ve wanted to go there for sometime. It’s a very trendy a la mode Asian fusion restaurant in the club district downtown. Boy was it nice! It reminded me of the sushi place I went to in Chicago with my company. The atmosphere was very Zen, using wood with black and transparent overlay accents. The food was incredible (of course). Highlights were the taro chips, dim sum for 2 appetizer (see picture 1), tofu fries and pan seared tuna (second picture). I was very impressed. I would just go down for some tofu fries anyday!


Joons
Finally the last 2 friends (they were sick the weekend of Andy Poolhall) too me out for dinner on Saturday. They asked me where I wanted to go and I replied with Korean. Not the trendy grill houses, as I’ve done that before and it being overly beef/pork centric, but a restaurant in the heart of Korean town.

The dinner was totally Korean, with kimchee and spicy chicken dishes to match. The food had a home-cooked feel. On the chicken dish (cooked in front of you on a burner), they poured the noodles that you’d get from Japanese instant noodle packs! My one friend LOVED that :)! He couldn’t eat enough!

So that was my bday week. It had it’s up and downs, and over all it was great. What made it better was that I got a call back from a non-profit on a marketing job! Woo hoo! The interview is this week. I need to brush up on my behavourial based interview skills. I should have some new stories to fill in the “give me a time when…” from my current job!

Take care,

RE

“eat drink and be merry”