Lights and Mirrors

Imagine walking into a pitch black room seeing nothing but floating lights. You know there are walls so you blindly reach out with your hands to feel for some sort of boundary but you look around and all you see is an infinite span of colorful lights. What you know in your head is fooled by the illusion of your surroundings. This game between your mind and your sight is the experience of Yayoi Kusama's "You Who are Getting Obliterated in the Dancing Swarm of Fireflies". It's a popular exhibit in the Phoenix Art Museum that fills you with mixed emotions of discomfort and wonder! Visiting this room is like immersing yourself in a Koan that you could see and touch but even with your senses, you could not fully comprehend your surroundings.

An Oriental Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is now 10 days away and I have to admit, it's probably my favorite holiday of the year. It beats Christmas, New Year's, and even my birthday. There's no distraction of presents or fireworks, its a day simply of feast and thanks. What else do you need in a single day? I don't really know how my family began celebrating Thanksgiving, since we came here never having heard of the holiday before. But who could pass up a day of food and thanks?! 

I stumbled upon a photo of my family's thanksgiving meal two years ago. Traditionally, Thanksgiving is celebrated with turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, corn, and pumpkin pies. But not in my family.You can see on the table we've laid out a honeybaked ham, eggrolls, gravy, banana sauce, creme brulee, noodles (similar to chow mein), relleno (stuffed fish), a tripe dish, and of course, rice! Nothing like your traditional Thanksgiving meal. We've tried the whole turkey tradition, but it didn't work out very well (we cooked it too dry). I say as long as there's food on the table and things to be thankful for, it's a Thanksgiving meal.

One thing people don't realize is Thanksgiving doesn't exist in any other nation. It started when the pilgrims feasted with the native americans, this event didn't occur anywhere else. Thanksgiving is unique to America. But I believe everyone, regardless of race or situation, needs to establish a day to just be thankful for everything they have.This holiday is one of the reasons I'm so thankful to have been raised in America. 

We can get tropical in AZ too!!

I found a coconut in the desert today. I walked into a Vietnamese restaurant for some pho and discovered that they sell young coconut among their exotic drinks! When I ordered it my friend was surprised, she thought I was kidding when I said I want to drink out of a coconut. But why drink out of a bottle when you can drink the juice from the real fruit?! 

This coconut reminds me of one of my earliest childhood memories. Before my family left the Philippines, we made a trip to my father's family farm which was covered with coconut trees. He climbed to the top of a tree and brought down fresh coconuts for us to share amongst each other. He cracked it open and we drank from the coconuts the old fashioned way. Sipping from a coconut again makes me wonder if we're a little weird for drinking out of cans and bottles.

Just a scroll

I found a scroll hanging upon the walls in the Vietnamese restaurant Saigon Pho. The calligraphy was illegible, so illegible that I could't tell if it was in asian characters or the ordinary american alphabet writing. The translation for the first scroll says this:

People can go to many places,

But there is only one place

That can come back. 

It's home

I assume it must be some sort of Vietnamese script. Whatever form the writing is, you can tell that the writer infused art with each stroke of the brush. But to be honest, this scroll is very confusing. Besides the style of the characters, you can't tell whether the direction of the writing follows the horizontal form of the Western tradition or the vertical approach of the the Eastern tradition. Although the meaning of the words are very clear, the artistic aspect of the scroll is very puzzling.

A bite of multiple cultures

I had such a positive experience trying out the pho at Miss Saigon, I  decided I should stop by the pho restaurant just 3 minutes away from my dorm. Tonight I decided to try out Saigon Pho.

Although my initial intention was to have some more pho, I noticed a wall of the restaurant covered completely with baguette sandwiches. This was really confusing. Here I was, walking into a vietnamese restaurant, that looked very authentic with ornate chinese lanterns covering the cielings and bamboo covering the windows, but the on the wall were sandwiches, not just your everyday sandwich, but french sandwiches... baguettes! 

Apparently these sandwiches are traditional Vietnamese dishes known as Banh Mi. The Banh Mi bread is very similar to the french baguette but it is more airy with a thinner crust. The Vietnamese fill it with carrots, white radish, cucumbers, some jalapeno peppers (without the spicy seeds), cilantro, and a meat, in my case it was filled with barbecue pork. The dish struck me as so odd when I first walked in that I had to give it a try. Below is a photo of the wall of Banh Mi as well as a photo of my meal. It's another clash of western and eastern cultures!

Stumbling upon a piece of history

I went home to phoenix for the weekend and when I was shopping with my sister I found an empty asian restaurant getting ready for opening. I peered through the windows and found this amazing display of samurai armor and weaponry. I took a quick shot from my phone and since I was looking through two panes of glass there was a lot of glare. But from what I was able to capture you can see the intricate design in the armor of samurai warriors. It's very different from European armor. I've never seen a display of samurai armor but this one looked very authentic. One can only imagine the history behind it...

Shaolin Warriors

This sunday I went to see a performance of the Shaolin Warriors at Centennial Hall. The performance was a two hour immersion into the Buddhist martial arts of the Shaolin monks. There was a beautiful rhythm to the way these men moved their bodies. Each fluid motion of this martial arts gave an elegant illusion that contradicted the deadly power of each limb. There was a balance of push and pull between man and his surrounding. A fascinating demonstration of this mastery of control existed in the way one man balanced upon the point of knives hovering over the heads of other men.

Although this martial arts is said to originate from a Buddhist temple tucked in the ancient forests of China, there was a clear fusion of taoism within this performance. Elements of Taoism were present in the background music which imitated sounds of nature such as the flow of water and the drum of wood. Animal movements were also incorporated into the motions of the shaolin warriors. One man crouched on the ground over his hands with one foot on the ground and another in the air curved over his head to imitate the stinger of a scorpion. Another warrior jumped around stage to imitate the erratic movements of a monkey. One of the most fascinating things for me was the performance of two young boys who progressed through the stages of mastering the Shaolin martial arts. They too represented the Taoist balance of yin and yang: one boy wore the cool shade of blue while the other wore the warm shade of orange.

The Shaolin Warrior performance provided a fascinating look into the one of the dignified martial arts of Asia. I hold a great regard for these men who keep this Shaolin tradition alive.