Turkey Lurkey Time

In my family, Thanksgiving is a time for patriotism and having lobster and crabs.

Growing up, my family had traditional American Thanksgiving exactly one time. My dad had bought a ham home one year (from work) and after some pestering on my part (naturally), my sisters and my mom finally used our oven. In Asian households, ovens are used for storage.

So my sisters and my mom prepared everything the way I always imagined it, the honey-glazed ham, the mashed potatoes and gravy, the fall vegetables (a medley of corn, sweet potatoes, carrots - orange and yellows). And we also had an Vietnamese vegetable soup as a palette cleanser. The ultimate fusion.

Then after, the clean-up was so heinous that my family has never prepared Thanksgiving dinner in quite this way since. This year, my family back in California went out for seafood, a yearly tradition.

Now, drunk off of turkey and too many glasses of champagne, it's allowed me to be a bit introspective about the holiday, the first time I'm away from home. Yet I'm still able to have a real Thanksgiving, courtesy of my sister and my brother-in-law, and some in-law relatives who live in the Hamptons.

I helped prepare my first turkey today.

Theater Review: "Promises, Promises," or How I Met Kristin Chenoweth

When I told my older sister, Thao, that I was coming to Syracuse, NY for graduate school, naturally her first question was, "When are you coming to visit?" Thao lives in New York City, midtown, with her husband, and her being there gives me a reason to come to the city. Then again, why should you need a reason to go to New York, it's New York!

I've been to New York twice at this point, both times when Thao was there, and I've naturally done all of the touristy things (Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty, corny photo ops). This time, my goal was to see a Broadway musical (though that mutated into Broadway + Fringe).
But not just any musical: the "Promises, Promises" revival, starring my favorite Broadway actress Kristin Chenoweth (who I had previously written an obituary for in the news writing class).

And if I am honest, I saw the musical just so I can watch her perform, having previously only seen her through a television and computer screen. I had the fantasies of finally meeting her, maybe it would go something like, "Hi Kristin, I'm Diep and I'm a journalist, I interviewed Joshua Bell who knows you and he said that you are just a darling person. Oh, and look at that! We're the same height! People make fun of me too. Did I tell you that I'm also a soprano?" She would laugh, I would laugh, and our natural chemistry would just take over from there.

But first, I had to see the show...