little. yellow. different. A weblog by Ernie Hsiung

Observations on being back in my place in Fremont, after having my father live here for three months

• Things that are in my living room that weren’t before: Chinese newspapers. Money magazine. Golf magazine. Chinese money golf magazine. A stack of tissues and paper towels and napkins, because my dad has allergies. A LOT of yogurt.
• When I turned on my flat-screen television it wasn’t Conan O’Brien or G4TV or The Food Network or Logo, but a variety show on CCTV, where they are showing off seven year old salsa dancers. Seven year old salsa dancers from the Peoples Republic of China - just imagine those Chinese ice skaters you see at the Winter Olympics, except with more hip action. I briefly envision little girls from the countryside being sent to “Salsa Camp,” a giant industrial warehouse where a mural of Chairman Mao watches over them trying to gyrate to the music.
• My father taped a photo of my prom date from 11th grade, Christine Kamphaus, on my bathroom mirror. Presumably he did this so I would wake up one morning, brush my teeth, glance at her photo holding a bunch of balloons and become heterosexual. I would take the time to tell him that she’s married and has three kids, but then he would just curse me under his breath and mutter why those tiny white children weren’t part of his genetic make-up.
• As I typed this, one of the palm fronds on the potted plant that my dad never watered fell over. Kind of weirdly appropriate.
• This place doesn’t feel like home anymore.

Loving the comeback, Ernie. Thanks for writing again!

Still love your blog. So glad you’re back to it. Love how you blogged this.

I’m sorry to hear it doesn’t feel like home anymore. This might explain why any room my mother sleeps in at my house feels like the Twilight Zone.

It’s strange to try and think of it now… but there’ll be a day you look back on all this and laugh. This day won’t come for quite a while, but it will come.

Keep writing. =)

The taping of the photo is oddly endearing though I imagine that for you it would be mildly annoying. My mother does things like that all the time and while I’m smack in the middle of the action I just grit my teeth and try not to do anything that would get me twenty to life but when I can take a HUGE step back, I can see it’s all done out of love and concern. Still, mildly annoying, definitely.

Hope you find home soon.

This just means you need to have *another* house warming party. Either that, or hire out one of those Feng Shui guys to shoo out all the bad mojo.

Loving your blog! Insightful and damned funny

Well…actually…if he had only paid for dinner for your 12th grade prom, THAT might have “converted” you!

ah, the little things that aren’t so little. i’ve never had anything taped up, but i have had previously taped up things ripped down. i miss my indigo girls poster. : (

When I return to my parents house (I’m 21 and in university, go back for Xmas) it doesn’t feel like home anymore. Dad put down my cat, “he wasn’t a good pet,” he knocked out a wall of my bedroom to make his home-theater room that much bigger, and mom “donated” (got rid) of all the clothes I left in my dresser drawers. but hey- I’m a visitor to THEIR home now, at least I’m not a visitor in my own home… even though my “home” is a 300 sq foot dorm!

Then there was the time in grade 10… My old bedroom used to be a storage room- unfinished drywall, concrete floor, rafters in the ceiling. I built a closet to hide the hot water tank, redrywalled and plastered, installed a new light and tiled the ceiling. I painted two walls blue and two walls red, and decorated it as only a 15 year old knows how. I went away for a week in spring break and they said they’d put in hardwood floors for me… so I get back, and the room is painted BABY PRINCESS PINK with a PINK CARPET! None of my decorations could be “saved” either. It was all, just, gone, trashed. And to add insult to injury, they hadn’t even moved any furniture back in yet, it was just a big, empty, pink room. I walked in, shocked, sank to my knees and started bawling- the cries echoed off the shiny finish of the paint. I had never felt so betrayed in my life… all my hard work, my pride, gone down the drain. Sigh. makes me sad thinking of it!

my mother used to send me socially acceptable prompts through the post - job ads, pics of suitably appropriate old girlfriends etc. She stopped when I came home one summer with some wildly inappropriate scratches on my back that I forgot to hide from view when shaving. She was deeply shocked and tried to grill me on them. That was the end of maternal influence. Her visit to Paris the following year confirmed her opinion of me.
I think wer she alive she’d be happy enough of my progress in life now. Just keep hoeing the row Ernie.

you changed the look! I’ve been away from civilization for a bit …

I myself have recently made my internet come-back. Welcome “home”, Ernie!

welcome home.

now go burn some sage…