Trick or Treat

Spent the weekend in Houston celebrating my Mom's upcoming birthday. Peking duck Saturday night and dim sum for Sunday brunch. Excellent! The hostess at the dim sum place doesn't speak Taiwanese or English, and I don't speak Mandarin, but she still managed to carry on a 5 minute conversation with me. I admire people who can do that. I believe she was trying to tell me that she couldn't seat us until our compete party was there. I think...

Speaking of party - also on the agenda for Saturday night was a stop by the Volcano for a Halloween party hosted by some of my former co-workers from Kellogg. Ron's chica was working that night, so he tagged along. Volcano = frozen screwdrivers = very refreshing (ahem). Anyway, I decided to attend the party at the last minute, so I didn't have much time to prepare a costume. I ended up going as Clark Kent, Superman's mild mannered alter ego. Ron went as the world's tallest caveman. His costume is always a hit with the ladies.

It was really good to see my old friend Jess and his wife Sandra (the hunchback and bride of Frankenstein). I met Jess when he and I were working in Bintulu, East Malaysia about 15 years ago. He likes to remind me of the time we took a trip to Sibu on the Northern coast of Borneo where we were run out of 10 bars in one night and ended up at a gay cowboy karaoke bar. We didn't know it was a gay bar, but in hindsight the satin cowboy shirts should have been a clue. Jess was newly divorced, so he was trying to strike up conversations with these women in the bars we went to, but they wanted nothing to do with Americans. Unfortunately, I wasn't much of a wingman. I looked a little more like a local than Jess, but as soon as I opened my mouth, it was pretty clear I was an American also. So we would drink our beers, never get offerred a second one, and leave. Repeat that 10 times, and that was our evening. Well, except for that last bar. Jess also swears I ate rat on a stick that night, but I'm pretty sure it was chicken. Besides, it was dark, and I really couldn't understand the street vender. Whatever, it tasted like chicken.