Have Yourself a Very Chinese Xmas

With my dad gone for Xmas, Tim and I took my mom out on Friday night for dinner at Daniel's Broiler and a movie.

Dinner was good, and we went to see "Memoirs of a Geisha" at Pacific Place.

The director pretty much used the same cast from "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." I guess he figured moviegoers wouldn't notice that all the Chinese cast from "Crouching Tiger" all of a sudden became Japanese, and just as suddenly acquired the matching Japanese accent that made them said "pRease" (instead of "please") and "rife" (instead of "life"). I genuinely understand that the director wanted to make the movie more "real" by doing that, but the damn accent made it hard to understand what the characters were saying. I think he should have either done it all in Japanese with subtitles for authenticity's sake (which I know would be impossible in this case, since the cast was, as I mentioned above, Chinese, NOT Japanese) or in English, so that people could actually understand the dialog.

Overall, I liked the movie, despite the fact that it got horrible reviews. It was a bit slow at times, but the cinematography was amazing, and the the plot, which for the most part follows the best-selling book (according to Tim) was good. After the movie was over and the credits started rolling, I realized that the solo cello pieces were played by Yo Yo Ma. I concluded that they pretty much rounded up all the famous Asians they found to make this movie.

My mom was going to spend the night at my place, and as we were walking back to the apartment, we saw this cute, small Chinese girl screaming at what we think was her boyfriend. She was obviously mad and didn't care that we were spectators and she was the spectacle. Since my mom was there, we asked her to translate whatever threat the seemingly sweet, but obviously crazy and mad girl was yelling to the poor boyfriend. It was: "If you do this again, you will DIE an UGLY DEATH!" We thought that was pretty funny and Tim was thankful that despite being Asian, I am not a bitchy Asian. He is a lucky guy indeed.

It was hard to sleep at night, as my mom is a much worse snoorer than I remember. Not only that, like all old people, she gets up at the crack of dawn. That morning was no different. She got up at around 5am, and tiptoed to the bathroom, laptop under her arm, lest she would wake me up (I live in a studio). At 8am, I wake up to find her sitting on the toilet in my bathroom, playing MAH JONG on Yahoo! Games.