Just west of Spadina and College, at the foot of Chinatown and on a street that has gradually turned into a computer supply store village, is Peter’s Chung King. You wouldn’t notice it passing by; old white drapes obstruct any view inside, although a signed 1980’s photograph of Sharon, Louise and Bram proves their endorsement. Inside is not more noteworthy. I believe it has mostly blank dull walls, interrupted only by some foreign money taped up and those weird Asian landscape paintings (are they plastic?) that only appear in Chinese restaurants. Truth be told, I don’t remember much more about the interior, as my family always ordered it to take out.
To call it our favourite Szechwan restaurant would be incorrect: it IS our restaurant. My parents were first introduced to it years before I was born when it was at another location. Its second place on College Street was conveniently just below my elementary school and five minutes from our house on Brunswick. The story is that they found it so delicious they licked their plates. Actually, many myths surround Peter’s. Most evocative are the stories of picking up Peter’s on our way to our cottage and driving the other passengers crazy with the delicious smells on the boat ride across to our island. Even if this only happened once, it caught on as a family tale because it sums up a wonderful experience of living in Southern Ontario: you could actually pick up really good Szechwan food and enjoy it on a dock beside a lake within an hour. How lucky are we?
Over the years different dishes were added or subtracted to our take out list (it is always Mom’s job to phone, always Dad and mine to go pick it up, and smiling Peter would occasionally come out and greet Dad as I waited in the car), but it was mostly the old favourites: spring rolls, Muchu Pork (later switched to the vegetarian Muchu), ginger chilli shrimp, garlic broccoli and, last but not least, Spiced Chicken, which because of a typo on the original menu (another legend) all of us call “spice-ces chicken”. This last dish of chicken, peppers and peanuts in a smooth, spicy brown sauce is so popular around the table that, as my brother and I got bigger, we had to start ordering two dishes of in order to prevent family fights.
It is our special occasion dinner, a good thing to have with visitors, but also good on a gloomy day when no one feels like cooking. When my first boyfriend was invited to have Peter’s with us for the first time, even at that early stage in the relationship, he recognized the honour of being included in my family’s important tradition. Peter’s was one of the things I missed most when I travelled throughout Europe last year, made worse by a lunch I had in a Parisian Chinese restaurant one Sunday afternoon when a dish that looked surprisingly like Spice-ces Chicken was given to me and got my hopes up only to end up tasting NOTHING like it. On my first evening home, when I told stories to my parents for three non-stop hours (drive from the airport, drive to pick up food, sitting down at dinner), we of course had Peter’s. And I realize now I had already subconsciously chosen Peter’s as my first dinner when I return to Toronto.
My Dad called me on skype yesterday as I was dressing for work. Before chatting for that long Dad said, “So did you hear about the terrible thing that happened on Granda’s birthday?” Even without any more information, in my gut I already knew. In reaction to my pained expression by Dad said, “Well, it’s not THAT bad...”
But it was.
“We had our order all ready and Mom phoned and a woman answered the phone and said, ‘Oh, didn’t you know? Peter decided to retire and the restaurant is closed. Next month I’m opening a sushi restaurant.’ So yeah,” Dad said, trailing of. “Thirty years, and it’s gone.”
Now, I was feeling pretty tired and lonely and a bit homesick already. Tears starting coming to my eyes, but I suppressed them. I can’t remember what I said, perhaps just nodded, and Dad said, “Well, he deserves to retire. Peter had been running it for a long time.”
In my head I said, ‘I don’t care! His kids should run it or something!’ Mom, in her housecoat and carrying her coffee, joined us.
“You know what, sweetie, don’t upset yourself about it. All this means is that we’ll have fun trying different places to find a new restaurant.”
Again in my head, I reacted with a modified cliché of the petulant child who has just lost his first pet: ‘But I don’t want another restaurant! I want Peter’s back! Now!’
“My only consolation,” I managed to say finally, “is that I’m not missing the final meal. But shouldn’t he have told us or prepared us? Thirty years...”
“Yeah, Mom and I were joking that we should hire Peter for around the house.”
If only. But of course, it wouldn’t be the same.
Then I had to go to work. As I walked in the bright early afternoon sunlight, tears streamed down my face. At first I berated myself; ‘You ARE NOT crying about a Chinese restaurant!’ But it’s about so much more than a restaurant or food or eating, although of course I will miss those dishes to no end and good Szechwan has completely spoiled me for the crap that is often called ‘Chinese food’ which tastes alright on the way down but revisits you all night. No, it’s not just the food. It’s the role it played for my family. It’s the beloved tradition that has been snapped unexpectedly from us. And now I can’t even remember the last time we ate it. But I am so glad I shared Peter’s with some of my new UofT friends this past year.
I was already upset about some of my favourite places in Toronto shutting down (mostly bookstores, like Mirvish Books and Pages on Queen Street). But Peter’s closing took me completely off guard. Restaurants come and go, and big cities are always changing. I will eat good Szechwan again and, more importantly, the warmth and fun of our family dinners (which made the Peter’s tradition special in the first place) will continue. But the two together, along with the ritualized drive down to College street, the parking in little-visited Snow’s Flowers across the street, the sitting with the warm plastic bag on my lap and the arrival home to a table set with plates and bowls and little pink tea cups from Chinatown and plastic chopsticks whose red and green markings have long since faded in the dish washer... these things will never be the same.
And recognizing that you can’t, as much as you’d like, stop time in its tracks, that sometimes things just have to change, is a part of growing up.
Peter’s, I will deeply miss you.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Friday, August 14, 2009
Ireland vs. The Netherlands, Round 1
Or; Vomiting up the Lord
Okay, stay with me.
So I’ve been reading Frank McCourt’s ‘Angela’s Ashes’ because it’s famous and he just died and it’s a good thing to read in Ireland, even if working at the Starbucks at Dundrum shopping centre gives me a VERY different experience of Ireland than McCourt and his brother having to pick pieces of coal off the cobblestone streets. Whatever. It’s brilliant. McCourt really managed to capture the voice of a child. I’ve been reading it on and off though, because there’s only so much of the tragedy you can take. (In between, I’ve picked up Rupert Everett’s memoir of a much different kind of life.)
One of my favourite parts of ‘Ashes’ was about little Francis’s first communion, which was a BIG DEAL in Limerick in the 1930s. The children became official Catholics then (one of his peers, because he couldn’t physically bring himself to swallow the Communion wafer, for his entire life never thought of himself as part of the Church), but more importantly, it meant they could big out on sweets and go see a James Cagney film at the cinema! Unfortunately, had the sweets and food made little Francis sick and he threw up in his grandmother’s back garden. Because it was the day of his first communion, in which one swallows, via a wafer, the body of Christ, grandma became furious that Christ was now splashed around her backyard. She sends Francis back to the Church, having only done his first confession earlier that day, to confess for this new sin and ask the Father what she should wash away Christ with. When Francis reports back that the priest replied water, grandma sends him a third time to ask if he meant Holy Water or regular water.
“Forgive me, Father, I have sinned. It has been five minutes since my last confession.”
“Were you the boy who just visited me?”
“Yes, Father. My Grandma wants to know if you meant Holy Water or regular water.”
“Regular water will do, son, and tell your grandma to not send you back again.”
I thought that whole situation was hilarious, especially capped off by the frustration of the priest. Who cares if it really happened to McCourt or not; stranger things have happened.
For instance, in preparation for my trip to Amsterdam I have been reading a Lonely Planet book on the city for inspiration. Rembrandt and sex shops, what’s not to love? On one page a little box is titled ‘Vomiting the Host’:
“The Miracle of Amsterdam had a rather unappetising start. In 1345 the final sacrament was administered to a dying man, but he was unable to keep down the Host (communion wafer) and—there’s no way to put this delicately—vomited it up. Here’s the miracle part: when the vomit was thrown in the fire, the Host would not burn. Shortly thereafter, a chapel was built on the site and it soon became a pilgrimage area...”
It goes on to described how “the Host” was kept in a wooden box, and allegedly sick orphans would be cured if they sat on it.
So there you go. When confronted with Holy vomit, the practical Dutch turn it into a miracle while the superstitious Irish are more concerned with cleaning it up. Okay, that’s not far; the Dutch people in the story are Medieval versus 20th century Irish, but still, you don’t hear stories like that every day.
UPDATE: After finishing this, I went back to Rupert Everett's autobiography. He is at Catholic prep school and, mostly because he figured out he was gay, ended up in the theatre club. He didn't think he could act, but cast as Titania, Queen of the Fairies, in 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', he pulled out a campy, burlesque performace that brought down the house. His second major role was Mary Stuart in the play of the same title. When she is being administered her final communion before being executed, the man who was supposed to sign her death warrant couldn't find his plume and used a ballpoint pen instead, which made all the actors break character and laugh. Then this happened,
"I managed to stop myself giggling but as the priest put the host in my mouth, the image of Wadham signing my death warrant with the biro flashed upon me, and I sputtered with suppressed laughter. The Host shot out of my mouth onto the floor. There was a huge collective gasp. None of us knew whether to pick it up or what, because, remember, in the Catholic Church the host IS Jesus' body and there are all sorts of rules concerning it, and one is that you are not allowed to touch it under any circumstances. Only with your tongue, which raised the question: would Mary lick it up off the ground at this point? Our audience was well versed in Catholic ritual, so they understood my dilema and started to laugh. I was literally crying. My false eyelashes were halfway down my cheeks on a river of mascara and I'm afraid to say that Mary went to her death on the wave of a huge round of applause."
No vomiting, but still! Incredible!
Okay, stay with me.
So I’ve been reading Frank McCourt’s ‘Angela’s Ashes’ because it’s famous and he just died and it’s a good thing to read in Ireland, even if working at the Starbucks at Dundrum shopping centre gives me a VERY different experience of Ireland than McCourt and his brother having to pick pieces of coal off the cobblestone streets. Whatever. It’s brilliant. McCourt really managed to capture the voice of a child. I’ve been reading it on and off though, because there’s only so much of the tragedy you can take. (In between, I’ve picked up Rupert Everett’s memoir of a much different kind of life.)
One of my favourite parts of ‘Ashes’ was about little Francis’s first communion, which was a BIG DEAL in Limerick in the 1930s. The children became official Catholics then (one of his peers, because he couldn’t physically bring himself to swallow the Communion wafer, for his entire life never thought of himself as part of the Church), but more importantly, it meant they could big out on sweets and go see a James Cagney film at the cinema! Unfortunately, had the sweets and food made little Francis sick and he threw up in his grandmother’s back garden. Because it was the day of his first communion, in which one swallows, via a wafer, the body of Christ, grandma became furious that Christ was now splashed around her backyard. She sends Francis back to the Church, having only done his first confession earlier that day, to confess for this new sin and ask the Father what she should wash away Christ with. When Francis reports back that the priest replied water, grandma sends him a third time to ask if he meant Holy Water or regular water.
“Forgive me, Father, I have sinned. It has been five minutes since my last confession.”
“Were you the boy who just visited me?”
“Yes, Father. My Grandma wants to know if you meant Holy Water or regular water.”
“Regular water will do, son, and tell your grandma to not send you back again.”
I thought that whole situation was hilarious, especially capped off by the frustration of the priest. Who cares if it really happened to McCourt or not; stranger things have happened.
For instance, in preparation for my trip to Amsterdam I have been reading a Lonely Planet book on the city for inspiration. Rembrandt and sex shops, what’s not to love? On one page a little box is titled ‘Vomiting the Host’:
“The Miracle of Amsterdam had a rather unappetising start. In 1345 the final sacrament was administered to a dying man, but he was unable to keep down the Host (communion wafer) and—there’s no way to put this delicately—vomited it up. Here’s the miracle part: when the vomit was thrown in the fire, the Host would not burn. Shortly thereafter, a chapel was built on the site and it soon became a pilgrimage area...”
It goes on to described how “the Host” was kept in a wooden box, and allegedly sick orphans would be cured if they sat on it.
So there you go. When confronted with Holy vomit, the practical Dutch turn it into a miracle while the superstitious Irish are more concerned with cleaning it up. Okay, that’s not far; the Dutch people in the story are Medieval versus 20th century Irish, but still, you don’t hear stories like that every day.
UPDATE: After finishing this, I went back to Rupert Everett's autobiography. He is at Catholic prep school and, mostly because he figured out he was gay, ended up in the theatre club. He didn't think he could act, but cast as Titania, Queen of the Fairies, in 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', he pulled out a campy, burlesque performace that brought down the house. His second major role was Mary Stuart in the play of the same title. When she is being administered her final communion before being executed, the man who was supposed to sign her death warrant couldn't find his plume and used a ballpoint pen instead, which made all the actors break character and laugh. Then this happened,
"I managed to stop myself giggling but as the priest put the host in my mouth, the image of Wadham signing my death warrant with the biro flashed upon me, and I sputtered with suppressed laughter. The Host shot out of my mouth onto the floor. There was a huge collective gasp. None of us knew whether to pick it up or what, because, remember, in the Catholic Church the host IS Jesus' body and there are all sorts of rules concerning it, and one is that you are not allowed to touch it under any circumstances. Only with your tongue, which raised the question: would Mary lick it up off the ground at this point? Our audience was well versed in Catholic ritual, so they understood my dilema and started to laugh. I was literally crying. My false eyelashes were halfway down my cheeks on a river of mascara and I'm afraid to say that Mary went to her death on the wave of a huge round of applause."
No vomiting, but still! Incredible!
Thursday, August 13, 2009
French Tests, Sandra Bullock and Dreams of Amsterdam
So the French test is done. I had to go all the way out to Blackrock on the Dublin bus, which always manages to make me sea sick. For Toronto people, that’d be like UofT getting you to go to their Scarborough campus to write a test... at 10 am. But I did see a bit of the ocean for the first time here, so that’s something. The UCD Business School campus felt like a country estate (it may have been at one time) and I wandered around, having characteristically (even when I don’t know where I’m going!) arrived an hour early, realizing that this test was one of the most important I will have ever written; if I pass, my Masters is completed and I can move on with my life. If I ‘fail’ a third time, I am definitely not returning to UofT (at least in the fall) to spend seven thousand more dollars on the privilege of writing it again, and I don’t know what I’ll do with my life. Either way, I don’t know what I’m doing with my life, so that’s just how it is I guess. The test went fine. I wrote it in a giant exam room with two other students writing their own things, and at the very beginning I heard the girl behind me burst into tears. It sounds bitchy, but I honestly thought ‘At least that’s not me!’
I paid my tutor for her troubles the day before. This is how inconvenient my finances have been this week; I get paid on Friday, but my rent is due Thursday (to come out of my Irish bank account automatically). I knew that the one would come before the other, although not how maddeningly close they would get, so I deliberately saved my rent money for this month for the last four weeks, and scrimped and saved wherever I could (I have ate A LOT of Starbucks Paninis, which I get four three euro at work). Then, the day before I went to write the test, UCD emails me to tell me I have to pay them with a bank draft, when I had thought I could just bring my credit card. They love bank drafts over here. Correct if I’m wrong, but I had barely heard of them back in Canada. I got my parents to put money in my Canadian bank account so I could pay my tutor on our last session, and then I planned to go to my Irish bank, get a bank draft, and transfer some money from my Canadian account to my Irish one so the landlords can get the proper amount of money.
Getting back to my room, I couldn’t find my Scotia bank card. It wasn’t anywhere in my wallet or my bag and I started to shake out all my pairs of pants. The last place I had seen it was when I used it that very morning to take out money for the bank machine to pay my tutor. I couldn’t have been stupid enough to leave it in the machine... could I? I ran back to the bank and asked them if anyone had retrieved it. Of course not. The only other place it could be would be if I had dropped it at the cafe I met my tutor at, so I quickly walked to the Moda, which is half an hour from my house. They hadn’t seen it either. I phoned my Dad long distance on my mobile on the walk home. How could I be so scatter brained to lose my Canadian debit card on exactly the week that I needed it! I am not a grown up yet!
I tore apart my room again when I got home. Finally, gave up and phoned the Scotia bank hotline (they had just opened, as it was just 9.00am in Canada), cancelled my card and asked them to send my parents a new one, which would probably take a week. If that wasn’t enough, all the time on hold to Canada used up all my mobile minutes and my phone ran out of credit. So I had to wait around until my parents came on skype. Just as I went to call them, I inadvertently nudged my mouse pad a little and saw a bit of bright red poking out from under it. The skype was ‘ringing’ as I lifted up the mouse pad: NO. I. DID. NOT. As my Mom said hi, I lifted up my ‘lost’ Scotia bank card.
“I don’t understand! I do not remember taking it out or holding it at my desk this morning at all!”
“At least you found it!”
“Too late, though! It’s too late now! I’m such a dumbass.”
After I wrote the test, I treated myself to some fish and chips and sat by the canal for awhile, then went back and had a deep nap. There had been plans to go to a party with Siobhan, but that fell through, so instead I bought a book about Amsterdam (I couldn’t find one for awhile, as I was looking under ‘H’ for Holland, not ‘N’ for the Netherlands) and sat beside the Liffey by O’Connel bridge reading it. I’m trying to get excited for a new city, but fears about the French test kept creeping in. The worst moment, having been disappointed before, will be opening that email which holds my fate. But nothing to do about it now.
I felt the need for some escapism, so I went to see ‘The Proposal’ with Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds. I love how romantic comedies have gotten to the point where they are so clichés of themselves but still unconsciously so. Mr. Reynolds is dreamy though, and I almost clapped in the theatre when I discovered Betty White played his grandmother. Still, took the Luas home feeling a bit depressed. Really, I should be spending celebratory nights of freedom with friends. I am really regretting not having a group here yet, and I don’t know how to acquire one. Now that the French test is out of the way I will have free time, but I still don’t know how. For the moment, though, I will concern myself with learning about Amsterdam, figuring out what museums slash gay bars to go to, and a location to meet up with Jen and Stu the first time that we all can find without getting lost.
I paid my tutor for her troubles the day before. This is how inconvenient my finances have been this week; I get paid on Friday, but my rent is due Thursday (to come out of my Irish bank account automatically). I knew that the one would come before the other, although not how maddeningly close they would get, so I deliberately saved my rent money for this month for the last four weeks, and scrimped and saved wherever I could (I have ate A LOT of Starbucks Paninis, which I get four three euro at work). Then, the day before I went to write the test, UCD emails me to tell me I have to pay them with a bank draft, when I had thought I could just bring my credit card. They love bank drafts over here. Correct if I’m wrong, but I had barely heard of them back in Canada. I got my parents to put money in my Canadian bank account so I could pay my tutor on our last session, and then I planned to go to my Irish bank, get a bank draft, and transfer some money from my Canadian account to my Irish one so the landlords can get the proper amount of money.
Getting back to my room, I couldn’t find my Scotia bank card. It wasn’t anywhere in my wallet or my bag and I started to shake out all my pairs of pants. The last place I had seen it was when I used it that very morning to take out money for the bank machine to pay my tutor. I couldn’t have been stupid enough to leave it in the machine... could I? I ran back to the bank and asked them if anyone had retrieved it. Of course not. The only other place it could be would be if I had dropped it at the cafe I met my tutor at, so I quickly walked to the Moda, which is half an hour from my house. They hadn’t seen it either. I phoned my Dad long distance on my mobile on the walk home. How could I be so scatter brained to lose my Canadian debit card on exactly the week that I needed it! I am not a grown up yet!
I tore apart my room again when I got home. Finally, gave up and phoned the Scotia bank hotline (they had just opened, as it was just 9.00am in Canada), cancelled my card and asked them to send my parents a new one, which would probably take a week. If that wasn’t enough, all the time on hold to Canada used up all my mobile minutes and my phone ran out of credit. So I had to wait around until my parents came on skype. Just as I went to call them, I inadvertently nudged my mouse pad a little and saw a bit of bright red poking out from under it. The skype was ‘ringing’ as I lifted up the mouse pad: NO. I. DID. NOT. As my Mom said hi, I lifted up my ‘lost’ Scotia bank card.
“I don’t understand! I do not remember taking it out or holding it at my desk this morning at all!”
“At least you found it!”
“Too late, though! It’s too late now! I’m such a dumbass.”
After I wrote the test, I treated myself to some fish and chips and sat by the canal for awhile, then went back and had a deep nap. There had been plans to go to a party with Siobhan, but that fell through, so instead I bought a book about Amsterdam (I couldn’t find one for awhile, as I was looking under ‘H’ for Holland, not ‘N’ for the Netherlands) and sat beside the Liffey by O’Connel bridge reading it. I’m trying to get excited for a new city, but fears about the French test kept creeping in. The worst moment, having been disappointed before, will be opening that email which holds my fate. But nothing to do about it now.
I felt the need for some escapism, so I went to see ‘The Proposal’ with Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds. I love how romantic comedies have gotten to the point where they are so clichés of themselves but still unconsciously so. Mr. Reynolds is dreamy though, and I almost clapped in the theatre when I discovered Betty White played his grandmother. Still, took the Luas home feeling a bit depressed. Really, I should be spending celebratory nights of freedom with friends. I am really regretting not having a group here yet, and I don’t know how to acquire one. Now that the French test is out of the way I will have free time, but I still don’t know how. For the moment, though, I will concern myself with learning about Amsterdam, figuring out what museums slash gay bars to go to, and a location to meet up with Jen and Stu the first time that we all can find without getting lost.
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