Preparing Dumplings and Strange Dreams

26th of March, Monday

I came to school with Lawrence originally intending to have a regular chat with Laoshi (wait, haven't I said that before?) but somehow, we got dragged down to the teachers' dining room to wrap some dumplings 包餃子.

Here's how things started. First, I found He, Ye and Lu laoshi and we began walking. Then He laoshi had to go to a meeting in the grade school, and Ye and Lu laoshi were headed to the infirmary where Wang laoshi (no, the other one. No, the other one! Hahahaha! Wang MeiRen... Cathy Ching) was, since she fell and twisted her ankle. Then Lu laoshi informs me that it's her birthday. Wow... what a gift.

So we get the infirmary, watch her get treated, then go up to find Lawrence. When I do find Lawrence, we first go to Mr. Reyes' and sneak into the ITC with him, talking about Enneagram. Then later, Ye, Lu and Wang laoshi arrive and we all go up for a while, then go back down and are ushered off to wrap dumplings.

We thought it'd be strange, but eventually, when we got there, I thought it'd be a lot of fun! Still, the room reeked of cram (it was raw pork with some other veggies) and I was getting lightheaded. First, laoshi sent us to the guard at Gate 1 to get some package for Ms. Yolly Reyes, so we did. Ika nga ni Lawrence, "Ginawa kaming alipin."

We went back and it turned out to be black vinegar 醋 (the kind they use for thick soups in Chinese restaurants) and garlic 蒜.

So as the Chinese teachers in there began to increase (by the exponent, by the minute), and they began setting up the necessary paraphernalia, we (Lawrence, myself, and the other teachers who didn't know how to whip up cram) were sent to peel the garlic. Then Lawrence begins to mock my lack of kitchen expertise (because I didn't know how to peel garlic. Yes, it happened to be garlic and not the gazillions of other things that I know how to peel in the kitchen) and rambles about how he wrapped dumplings in Xiamen, and how he was really good at it.

I ramble in Hokkien with Ms. Maria Go. Then she starts asking Lawrence these really personal questions, and eventually, she is enlightened about... things.

Lawrence was even going, "Parang ang dramatic." and when I ask him, "Do you think maybe you're the one who sees it as dramatic?" and he thinks and replies, "Yeah, baka, I dunno." along with that uniquely Lawrence-y look.

And the personal questions STILL don't stop! Oh well... maybe it's the Chinese way.

So then Ye laoshi sweeps by and sees how much we've peeled already, and tells us we've done enough, so we just finish up the current ... I just realized, I don't know the classifier noun for garlic. Clump? Tube?

I HAVE IT!!!! CLOVE!!!!!! A CLOVE OF GARLIC!!! HAHA! BOW TO THE GOD OF VOCABULARY!!! I am so arrogant tonight. I swear, it's the evening getting to me. I've been telling Kenn how good he is at giving orgasms for the last ten minutes over YM. Yes, I know how that sounds. And you're wrong. So you can lysol whatever sick image you've got in your heads right now off your mind, pick your minds out of the gutter, and somehow trust that there is a reasonable explanation for all of this.

Yep.

So anywhooo... we peel the remaining cloves of garlic and I head towards the side of the room where we're preparing rolls of that thing that people make noodles from (麵). First, they're long logs. Then they're cut up into circular blobs that Lawrence and I were tasked to correct them into circular shapes (圓) and then slightly press down (按) to form flat shapes which would then be the wrappers (皮) of the dumplings.

(on a side note: I have now achieved my dream of entering the teachers' cafeteria)

When we had done a fair share of the thing, we moved on to the next step, which would be the stuffing and wrapping. There were trays where one could arrange the wrappers, and a large bowl (碗) filled with the cram. The cram (a.k.a. "stuffing"/"filling" 餡 but I wanna use "cram") was composed of raw pork meat and some strange green vegetable that had been cut to fingernail-wide strips. Lu laoshi then taught me how to wrap. (SAYANG TALAGA I DIDN'T GET TO BRING MY CAMERA!!!! ANG OK SANA KUNG NAKUNAN KO YUN!!!! TAKTI!!!) First you just get the wrapper, place it in the center of your palm. Then you fit some cram (from the bowl, which had chopsticks to the side) into the center. Then you fold it up (折) and pinch (捏) at the center of the semi-circle you've made so that the two halves have a pinched area that sticks em together.

Then you the sides inward (this is the part I can't explain) until the entire thing is folded to the center, before you fold the two opposite ends inward and voila, you have a dumpling (餃).

I do this for some time, until we run out of wrappers and I walk over to the other table to ask for some when I see... Bro. Ang! In fact, the entire Grade School and High School Chinese Faculty all seem to be here. So I ask, "Do you guys have some more wrapper thingies?" And Bro. Ang chuckles, " 'Wrapper thingies'." Haha! I agree... it was funny. So he hands me some, I thank him and I go back. Continue.

Eventually, the teachers at our table increased, so I moved over to the one where Lawrence and Yelaoshi were working at. Ye laoshi then asks me to fold one for her, and she sees that the style Lu laoshi taught me was "different" so she taught me how she did it. This one involved everything up til pinching the center, then instead of folding the parts in, you pinch out a different part and continue doing so and then just push in the remaining parts at the back (don't try to make sense of that, I'm only putting it there to remind myself. You really won't get it. It must be shown with pictures). So I do so, and all of a sudden, someone (I think Ms. Lydia Uy) taps me on the shoulder and tells me, in Hokkien, "Eat some dumplings." Now, I'd chatted up some of the Hokkien teachers, but a lot more Mandarin was being used to reply, so you can just imagine my pleasant surprise when, after I asked, in Hokkien, "Are there already cooked ones?", one of the older teachers who I think I knew by face back in Grade School, replies, "There are. Just get some from that pan over there." Hokkien galore!

So then we start eating, and then wrap a few more with the new cram, which is completely vegetarian.

(Another side note: When I asked, Ms. Lydia Uy replied that the new veggie cram indeed had peanuts, similar or identical to the cram used in lumpia (潤餅). I then asked how to say "peanut" in Hokkien. It was then that I learned that "peanut" is called "tho tau" (土豆), which is the informal word for "potato" in Mandarin. This apparently isn't a southern dialect thing, as in Cantonese, peanut is "faa saang" (花生), with the same characters as in Mandarin.)

That was the viand, so the beverage was some tasteless (淡) lugaw. There wasn't any sugar either. Waaah! It sucked. No better drink than water. But the dumplings were good. 4 stars out of 5. See, prior to the actual cooking of the dumplings, we were discussing on whether to boil (熬), steam (蒸) or fry (炒) them. It turns out, there's this completely new technique that I'd never heard of called "steam-frying" which involves this teflon-pan and minimal amonts of oil, plus a large glass cover, provided by Yu zhuren.

Now, see, the dumplings were hot, and soft--two things I do not like in my dumplings. Call it my Cantonese instincts taking over, but honestly, I love my dumplings deep-friend to crisp, golden perfection. Not squishy, soggy and semi-translucent. Oh well, I suppose it's healthier.

Eventually, we finished and He laoshi began to speak with us. It was interesting, but she finally explained to me why I should follow my heart when it comes to taking a course. It was cool. I left later on.


27th - 28th of March, Tuesday to Wednesday

Today, I had quite a strange dream. It was first this year's Seniors' graduation, and there was some kind of commotion that I couldn't understand or see. I don't know why I was there. It also wasn't happening on the stage in the Sports Center. Rather, it was happening in a place that looked like a mix of between this open strip of land near the airport at Vancouver airport with the potted plants with lights wrapped around it and the strip of ground (vocab is sucking now) near the exit of the Sports Center proper, which leads to stairs. A mix of those two.

Then cut scene and it's my graduation. Dad did not attend (hmm... interesting because I was just talking about how I didn't feel he was there enough for me when I was a kid with Mom and 'Drew recently) and Mom was beside me but texting the entire time (another pet peeve of mine). We're seated at tables in that "narrow strip" and given food. The stage is right across me and it's evening. Then I stand and one of my friends (I can't remember who, although I think it was either Kenn or Martin V.) stood with me and accompanied me to the hallway in my dream that we were provided access to by that opening in the existing strip at the Sports Center.

We walk down a dimly-lit flight of stairs (not too deep, just about 8 or 9 steps) where there's this metal grating that allows me to see into the room in the right, which is really big, but also poorly lit. However, the lighting is done in a way that appeals to me, so I take out my camera (which for some reason, I have) and proceed to take a picture.

But in that room, there're several teens with one parent each who is helping them accomplish a sort of Science competition. Then one of them (who bears strange resemblance, although I think it's only cos I attempted to analogize his face with someone I knew and ended up merging their faces together, to one of the guys in DUWA. The main three guys in the "auditions" for FX? The one to the left most.) waves at me with an annoyed face, as if to say "Don't! Go away!"

I made a dismissive hand gesture, meaning to say "I'm not taking a pic of you!"

I suppose he misunderstood, because he stood up and walked up to me through the opening in the middle of the grates and said, strangely, in really gay sounding Mandarin,
"我看拍照還是有點兒不好意思." (Now, this phrase got me thinking of the times when I'd heard someone use "不好意思" to mean something other than "Oh, my, I'm sorry, my mistake." such as "I'm sorry, you can't do that." or something.) Then I replied, "
不是啦。。。 我剛纔 *does the dismissive hand gesture* 不是說 “我不管你。” 我是說 “我不拍你。” 啦." He replies, "Oh..." then let's me take the picture.

My friend and I go back outside to the ceremony's venue and we bump into... Jackie and Enrico (Fresnoza). Not sure if they know each other, but anyway... Oh! And he was wearing a brown wig. The wig's strands looked like that of an anime characters' (i.e. the "strands" looked more like meaty tentacles than fine strands).

Jackie does the "I don't really wanna do this but I'm being dragged into it" look, and Enrico elbows her and goes "Do it na." while looking at me.

Then he enters the area we were just in and leaves Jackie with me. Before she can say anything, I say, "Bye Jackie." and grab my friend and begin to turn.

Then she looks at me, and asks, "You're going?" And I say, "Yeah." Then as we walk further and further away... she yells from behind me, "The clock is ticking!"

Then Alex wakes me up.

Strange dream.