Pimp Of The Nation

Just fin­ished lunch and a movie. I think I’ll write another post, then maybe take a nap before going to the St. John’s Play­time project. Try­ing to stay up didn’t work, so maybe if I sleep as much as pos­si­ble, things will get normal.

Finally, it’s time for the big day… Sat­ur­day, the wed­ding! I jerked awake at around 8:30. Had yet another strange dream. I’m not sure what it is about Min­nesota or maybe my even weirder sleep­ing habits over there, but I remem­ber my dreams more over there. Any­ways, I don’t remem­ber the whole thing any­more, but I do remem­ber just feel­ing a gen­er­al­ized para­noia the whole time, and it ended with me on the edge of a sky­scraper and jump­ing off. If you guys know the feel­ing when you’re on a ride like Drop Zone when the ride’s seat has dropped but you haven’t quite fol­lowed yet, and you’re just hang­ing in the air for a sec­ond before grav­ity tugs at you… I felt that, and woke up.

So of course no one else is up yet. We had eight peo­ple shar­ing four beds (two in each room in con­nected rooms), and since I was the first one to go to sleep, I didn’t even know who I was shar­ing a bed with. But he was moan­ing qui­etly. And occa­sion­ally twitch­ing. Plus there was some­one snor­ing in the room, and three peo­ple snor­ing in the other room, so it was impos­si­ble for me to go back to sleep. Lay there until Cau Thuong got a call from Cau Dung, who was mak­ing sure we weren’t wan­der­ing naked in the wilder­ness after los­ing all our money.

Every­one woke up after that, and we checked out by 11. Went down­stairs, and we all hit up the buf­fet. It was not par­tic­u­larly good (chewiest prime rib I’ve had in my life), but it was fill­ing. Then some of the uncles hit the black­jack tables again, and some hit the slots. I watched two of them play video poker.

Every­one got sick of los­ing their money except for Cau Thuong, who was try­ing to win the C6 on dis­play at a cer­tain video poker bank. But then I pointed at that not only did you have to get a royal flush to win that baby, it had to be at max bet with the cards in order from left to right. If I did my math right, there’s a 1/23,990,400 chance of that hap­pen­ing. And at $1.25 a play, that means you’d prob­a­bly have to spend $29,988,000 to win one. Even fully decked out, it shouldn’t cost more than $60,000 for me to buy one. Which is why I don’t like gambling.

Drove over to the “offi­cial” wed­ding hotel. (It’s only an exit down from Bearpath Coun­try Club, where the cer­e­mony and recep­tion would be.) Checked in, and we all got gussied up. Headed over to Bearpath, and the first thing we noticed was of course Cau Nam’s bright yel­low NSX parked in front. Went inside and took pic­tures with the bride and groom, and assorted fam­ily pic­tures. Helped Dong Ha set up the pro­jec­tor for her Pow­er­Point. Took a seat out­side for the cer­e­mony. Di Hai cried even before it started, because the back of the wed­ding pro­gram really touched her. (It was a quote about how the bride and groom’s par­ents par­ents have guided them to hap­pi­ness. And it men­tioned Duong Hai, Chi Hai’s father, who passed away a few years ago.)

For the cer­e­mony itself… it was pretty good for a non­de­nom­i­na­tional one. I didn’t like how they kinda took the “seeds of love” part of the speech lit­er­ally and actu­ally planted some seeds in a pot. Not to jinx any­thing, but I hope their love lasts long after those flow­ers have wilted. Oh, and after Chi Hai and Nick planted them, the priest went on about they had planted daisies, which like sun­flow­ers (they are in the same fam­ily), have seeds which grow in a spi­ral in the Fibonacci sequence, and the magic of the Golden Ratio, and I couldn’t help think­ing, “This guy might as well be read­ing us some Dan Brown.”

Then for the recep­tion… the food was… typ­i­cally ban­quet food. Not as much or as good as you’d like. Except for the cake, which the aunts made. That thing was sweet. It wasn’t open bar like at Di Yen’s wed­ding, but the keg of Miller Light was free, so I was pound­ing cups of that down all night. (It was either that, or pay $3 for each cup of soda!)

Dong Ha was the cen­ter of atten­tion the whole time, prac­ti­cally… she, Gio Linh, and Bich Nha sang a song before the food was served. Then after the food, they went up and per­formed a dif­fer­ent song. And then right before the dance por­tion, she got to show her slideshow. Oh wait, I take that back… Di Loan was the cen­ter of atten­tion. she went around the room and went “bot­toms up!” at every table at least twice. She even walked up to Nick while he was mak­ing a speech and went “bot­toms up!” with him. And she danced non-​stop. Includ­ing on her table after the serv­ing staff had cleared it.

Notice how I said Chi Hai wasn’t the cen­ter of atten­tion? She and Nick didn’t even make the rounds to every table like a bride and groom are sup­posed to. Although I think that was due to Di Loan chas­ing after them with a never-​ending bot­tle of mer­lot. She did look very nice in both her wed­ding dress and her red áo dài (tra­di­tional Viet dress), though. Nick was sup­posed to have a blue áo dài, too, but he never changed into it. I think it was an empty threat Di Hai was hold­ing over him.

The songs the DJ played dur­ing the first part dance por­tion were pretty good, and made me a bit… wishy-​washy. Which is why I accepted when Chi Ba’s friend Linh offered me a shot from her giant flask. I thought it was vodka, but it was actu­ally warm Mal­ibu, and almost made me yak. I dunno if it was her, but some­one also gave Michael Lu a cof­fee cup full of Mal­ibu, and got him drunk. That got me pretty ticked off. Kinda sat around when the DJ switched to hip-​hop. Luck­ily I didn’t have to wait too long before Cau Luan wanted to go back to the hotel, so we were off.

On the way back, we got lost, but it worked out in our favor, because we were able to stop at McDonald’s for some grub. When we actu­ally got the hotel, stripped off the for­mal wear and crashed in Cau Dung’s place, because he had gone home a lit­tle ear­lier than us and stopped at a liquor store to pick up some stuff. The fam­ily pol­ished off a bot­tle of Grand Marnier, which didn’t sit well with me. I sipped beers after that. Quote of the night goes to our “respon­si­ble” con­ver­sa­tion while drink­ing. Anh Bi and Chi Be needed to get dropped off at the air­port very early in the morn­ing to go home to Mon­tréal, so John, Chi Be’s friend, vol­un­teered to take them for Cau Luan. (Di Loan and Duong Lan had asked Cau Luan to do it.)

How can you argue with that?

We also wan­dered over to the “offi­cial” after-​wedding party, which was at another room on our floor. They had some Grey Goose and a bath­tub full of beers and “frou frou” drinks for the girls. Oh, and no one had a bottle-​opener, so I impressed some folks with the trick David showed me where you open one beer with another. But then Cau Tuan one-​upped me by just using his teeth and bit­ing the caps off like a sav­age! Gave Anh Bi a hard time for stick­ing around the offi­cial party and try­ing to mack on one of the brides­maids. The rest of us went back to Cau Dung’s room and kept drink­ing with fam­ily. I think Linh deserves a sec­ond quote.

Man, and she didn’t even drink in between all that. She kept call­ing us out, and not tak­ing her shot with us, but she was act­ing the drunk­est of all of us.

Yeah… she’s crazy. And can’t hold her liquor.

After that, peo­ple started pass­ing out. Cau Tuan, Linh, and I headed down to the hot tub and chilled for a while. I expected the alco­hol to hit me harder because of that, but I actu­ally felt refreshed. At least, I did until the chlo­rine started sting­ing. They bleach their tub a lit­tle strong in that hotel. I went upstairs to take a shower, and by the time I was done, every­one except Cau Tuan and Linh were, so I stayed in the room and gave them some pri­vacy downstairs.

They came back up before I man­aged to fall asleep, and Cau Tuan told me to move from the floor onto Cau Luan’s bed. And then I heard some things I don’t think I was sup­posed to hear. That was awk­ward. I just tried to fall asleep as soon as possible.

Tags: Chi Ba, Chi Be, Chi Hai, David S, Dong Ha, Family, Food, fresh, Gio Linh, Pictures, Viet, Work