(no subject)

Holy shit! My old college roommate's first film just got pantsed in the Onion! Not by anyone I know personally, but I still feel that the link between my old crowd and my new one has been closed somehow.

I'm not sure how to characterise my reaction. It's been so long--almost a decade--since we had any contact, that it's not like I feel close to Cacho (adding insult, Keith misspelled the poor guy's name) and his achievements anymore. We shared a lot of thoughts, feelings, and experiences during our first year of college, but we belonged to different crowds even back then. If I hadn't completely learned the lesson in high school that a lot of friendships are opportunistic and situational, then it was definitely brought home to me after college graduation, when my group of friends drifted away--including the ones in Chicago, and the World's Whitest Cuban was mostly out of town on consulting assignments. He could've looked me up when he was here filming or showed up at our most recent reunion and asked about me, but he didn't, so this says to me that he and I are basically on the same page. We've moved on.

It's a story as old and trite as his movie, apparently.

Minor mystery solved

Nha trang is a resort town, Vietnam's Phuket. From an unvetted source on the 'Net:

The name Nha trang is a Vietnamese pronunciation of a Cham word Eatran or Yjatan. Ea or Yja means river, and tran means reed.

I can only verify the first part of the etymology: /ia/, in the Chamic dialects spoken near Nha trang, means "fresh water". (I know /ia/ and nha look nothing like each other, but--trust me--in Da World, this is very close match.) So the explanation is not implausible.

On the other end, the restaurant had a certain cheap-ass cabana-style decor that would suggest the seaside. (I mean, sooner than the alpaca throw rugs hanging on the walls of the Peruvian restaurant would.) I suppose the only way to find out for sure is to eat there, though I'm always a bit leary of places with signs advertising "chop suey" in the window. It just screams "DUMBED DOWN ASIAN FOOD FOR CLUELESS ROUND EYES". It likely is, but that doesn't necessarily means it's bad

(no subject)

I haven't mentioned mollpeartree in like a whole month in this journal, so here goes:

Mollpeartree mollpeartree mollpeartree mollpeartree mollpeartree!

Ah, much better. Her most recent entry reminds me of two things:

1. An incredibly mortifying childhood incident in which I was the one holding the leash.
   
2. My lifelong love affair with vinca minor.

I was charmed to see that she also calls the latter "myrtle", which is the first name I knew it by. Later, when I'd got some book larnin' in me and discovered this plant wasn't a true myrtle (the EB calls it "creeping" or "running" myrtle), I began to call it "periwinkle". The GWO was the first one I knew to call it by the genus name, vinca.

Of course, the species he knew best is the greater periwinkle, vinca major, which looks basically the same except the flowers are HUGE. It seems to be the preferred variety in CA. All the familiar flowers looked bigger there. I'm not sure if they're all related species or if the lack of a harsh winter just does lovely things for their complexions. My first stroll through Golden Gate Park was like wandering into a faerie forest. Everything was like it is in the real world only bigger, brighter, and more beautiful.

welcomerain mentioned to me during our tour of the grounds that she'd like to plant some periwinkle. Unfortunately, the previous owners lacked her exquisite taste and stuck in a big border of hostia. There's no point in pulling it up when so much of the garden needs work, since it's in excellent shape and covers a part of the lawn that you can't really see unless you're in the neighbour's yard. And there's nothing really wrong with hostia; I mean, it could be worse: It could be spurge.

There's a lot of potential locked in her property. The gravel bed with the twisty oriental pine by the sunroom is simply crying out for a harmonious Chinese- or Japanese-style garden with funny rocks. On the other side, there's an odd-shaped corner dominated by a silver maple that could become a spring oasis with the planting of clumps of woodland wildflowers. The front lawn needs some vigourous plants on the bank to halt erosion and there's room for large planters in the rear courtyard or on the front porch. It's the kind of place I'd love to have if I wanted to spend tons of time maintaining a big old house, which I don't really want to do but can be fooled into thinking I do, if only for a little while.