Do Ga Ni Tang Part Two

I realize that there is no Do Ga Ni Tang Part One, it's really Sul Long Tang revisited, but whatever; Sun Nong Dan has become a near weekly ritual; though not always the same day of the week.

Today I arrive at 10:30 just in time to get the breakfast special price. By the time I order, every other patron has left, and the waitress shuts off the music. This reinforces the idea that the music is designed more to be an irritant than to provide ambiance; they want you to eat and get out!

The relative silence suits me as I go through the ritual of tasting and flavoring my soup.. It's as if circumstances have all contrived to create my own little oasis. The universe revolves around me for a few seconds, before I renounce my narcissistic tendencies. I suppose everyone displays narcissistic behavior at times, but there are those who consistently reframe situations to make it about themselves in some way.

Narcissism perpetuates itself; narcissistic parents produce narcissistic children - kids get neglected when the parent makes everything about themselves and resort to the same behavior to get the attention they didn't receive as children. It's even more challenging because narcissists can't/won't be told anything - their narcissism won't allow them to accept an idea unless they believe it was their own idea to begin with.

I used to enjoy watching the sitcoms "Everybody Loves Raymond" and "Two and a Half Men". It took me a while to recognize that a common link was the narcissistic mother in the family and seeing the consequences of that in the behavior of their sons. I resonated with that even though my mother doesn't act like either of the mothers' characters in those shows and it took me a while to accept the idea that my mother's behavior fit the category of the behavior of narcissists n part because it was camouflaged by shame based values of Asian culture and in part because I then had to deal with the consequences of that behavior. In short, my mother defined being a good mother by doing certain things that she thought a good mother should do, which usually wasn't what I needed at the time. My not getting the attention I needed at the time prompted me to seek getting that attention elsewhere.

We all exhibit behavior like this at some level when we make it more about appeasing our own anxieties about a situation. I imagine that each of us has thought something along the lines of: "I couldn't forgive myself if I let you ________", the point being that we make it more about our sense of guilt instead of the other person's well being.

An irony I have found is that one can behave exactly the same way in certain situations but be motivated entirely by the joy to be found - and when everyone finds it, it does become about you - but not to the exclusion of everyone else. The bottom line, we still end up doing good sometimes even when the motives are less than pure.

Sul Long Tang Revisited

I haven't yet decided if this is going to become a weekly ritual, but I'm back at Sun Nong Dan for their breakfast special. Today I'm going with the Do Ga Ni Tang. Same milky-white broth, but with noodles and ox-knees. We're talking sizable chunks of tendon and all things gelatinous. I love the range of textures;  it can be cooked so that it dissolves on the tongue, it can be spongy,  it can be chewy, almost like an al dente pasta. It occurs to me that tendon covers the range of textures of  many western comfort foods: macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes, yet many westerners find the idea of eating tendon just too odd for them. To each their own.

I consider the container of ground black pepper among the condiments. I normally use kimchi juice to spice up my soup but today I add a heaping spoonful of that pepper into my bowl, with only soup spoon full of kimchi juice, and I notice an appreciable depth to the sense of spiciness. It's a lot like the kind of sound you get from a nine foot grand piano.

The soup has come to the table still simmering in the bowl. As I retrieve bits of meat and tendon from my bowl and leave them in the small bowl of dipping sauce, it occurs to me that the dipping sauce is as much about cooling down the meat as it is a flavoring agent. Either way, I'm grateful.

There's been a general murmur of sorts from the other patrons that I've blocked out, but I suddenly note that I'm hearing the Mandarin dialect of Chinese being spoken. OK, I'm in the SGV; the Chinese demographic is being targeted by the new Japanese/Korean restaurants. I take a quick look around trying to identify the speakers, and I'm in for a surprise; the people speaking Mandarin are the staff - and they're speaking among themselves. As the person who's been waiting on my table passes by, I wave her down and I mention that I notice that she's been speaking in Mandarin. She seems surprised that I'm able to identify the Mandarin dialect and asks me if I speak Mandarin. After I tell her yes, she explains that the owners want the staff to be able to speak Mandarin since they get so many Chinese customers. This serves to support my supposition that the Chinese demographic *is* being targeted.

The black pepper that I added has settled at the bottom of bowl and that amount has not changed while the volume of soup is now less than half of the original, and the soup is now noticeably spicier, and I find myself perspiring quite freely and I ask the waitress for a few extra napkins. I choose to forego the remainder of the bowl and I ask for the check. I'm done in only forty five minutes today. But it's all good even though today is noticeably overcast compared to the week before.

Sul Long Tang

One of the things I love about living in Los Angeles is the level of cultural & ethnic diversity, particularly when it comes to food. I happen to live in the San Gabriel Valley, known for being home to what is arguably the most diverse selection of authentic regional Chinese cuisines outside of China. If you want good authentic Chinese cuisine, you drive to the SGV. Similarly, if you want good authentic Korean food, you typically drive to Koreatown (or to a small enclave in Orange County). That's changing for residents of the SGV, as both new Japanese and Korean restaurants have been moving/expanding into the SGV. And that's a good thing. Case in point, Sun Nong Dan opened two branches in the SGV. The mother ship in K-town is known for the Galbi Jim (rib stew) but also for their Sul Long Tang (ox bone soup). And they offer a $6.99 breakfast special from 7-10:30am every morning.

Sul Long Tang is comfort food; broth, milky white from hours of simmering ox/beef bones. It's a deceptively yet still deeply personal experience; each person seasons their bowl to taste, adding sea salt, scallions, pepper, and in some cases, kimchi. I place my order and am served rice, 2 types of kimchi and a dipping sauce flavored with slices of jalapeno and white onion. I have been told by a Korean friend that the dipping sauce is for the meat in the soup.

I might be the only person eating alone, prompting the waitress to seat me at a table while everyone else gets seated in one of the booths, but I submit that the lack of distraction allows me to enjoy my meal more fully than the rest. It's not a quiet place, but I'm able to shut that out and nibble on my kimchi and little bits of rice while I wait for my bowl of soup.








When my soup arrives, I slowly add salt from the bowl on the table, stirring and tasting until I find the balance that suits me. Ditto for the minced green onion also to be found in a bowl on the table. I eschew the ground black pepper for a few slices of the cabbage kimchi. I also slowly kimchi liquid to my soup until I reach my personal equilibrium of flavors. The slightly tangy, slightly sweet, slightly spicy sauce provides a nice foil to the soup, kimchi and rice. The rice; you are given a choice of white or brown (purple) rice, but asking for white rice would be like ordering your pastrami on a croissant - it might actually be good, but you just don't. The slightly nuttiness/sweetness of the brown rice adds more notes and overtones.  And because I am alone, I can devote my full attention to the symphony of flavors and textures. It's almost a surprise to discover that almost an hour has passed before I begin to contemplate the bottom of my bowl.

The colors outside look a little brighter and I feel more assured that today is going to be a good day. I am grateful that Sun Nong Dan has moved to the SGV.

Asian American Male Angst

“I am an Oriental. And being an Oriental, I could never be completely a man.”

This line comes from David Henry Hwang's M Butterfly and that line rings true for many asian american males today. I penned lyrics for a blues song entitled: Asian American Actor

First I played a grocer
Cast as a lab tech
I hope to be a ninja
It's the only role that's left for

the Asian American actor.
I'm an Asian American actor.I'm an Asian American actor.and I'm singing the Asian American actor blues.
as an outlet for the observation that when it comes to American mainstream media those seem to be the only roles where you see asian-american males.

Then there's the huge imbalance in which hot asian women are cast as the love interest of white males while asian men often don't even get asian women, much less non-asian women. There's a network show that started this summer called Salvation. The ratings make it seem likely that the series won't survive, but I find it noteworthy that the show's plot includes an asian male (half, actually, but the son cast in the show is clearly full-blooded asian) in a sexual relationship with a major cast member (Jennifer Finnigan). It turns out that this male character has had a liason with at least one other female cast member (this one happens to be black). Personally, I kinda like the show, but I suspect that I'd still support the show just because of the fact that asian males are depicted as being capable of having relationships with (hot) non-asian women.

I've lived in southern California for almost 30 years, and the diversity makes this less of an issue on a day to day basis; the majority of the women I've dated have been non-asian, but I'm very aware that certain stereotypes remain embedded in the minds of mainstream America, and that awareness has made me hesitant when I could have been much more assertive.

Not Again

Someone ran into, well, backed into would be more accurate, my car last night. The car in front of me discovered too late that he had gotten into the left turn lane too late and backed up to try and change lanes, not knowing I was there. It's hard to see in the pic below, but there's divot in the middle of the front of my car, and it's now not possible to open my hood.


This is the second accident involving my car in 3 months. *sigh*

Ambivalence

I have spent most of the day (when I wasn't dozing off) watching youtube videos of Jacob Collier talk about music theory or listening to his arrangements. I have not been so excited about a topic for as long as I can remember. While I'm excited, there's also a degree of  "I could have been studying this for the last 15 years" that I need to work through.

Yesterday Was A Good Day.

I got complimented for my singing voice by a female sitting next to me at church.

I made the extra effort to go to a dance in Santa Monica in the early evening and got compliments from two of the women I met for the first time.

I got in a lot of fun dances while the band played, including one person I'd never met before. Got some more compliments on my music selection as well, But the best part of the night came at the end when someone came in and I danced about 7-8 slow dances in a row with her. She asked for some feedback on her partnering skills so I gave her some pointers on gathering her feet on weight shifts. We kept dancing until the place closed after 2am.

I'm trying to recall the last time I had that much positive interaction with so many different women in a single day.