we ordered the usual: 擔擔麵 (spicy sichuan style noodles, but served somewhat sweet and nutty at this restaurant), 牛肉麵 (spicy beef noodle soup), 小籠包 (xiao long bao, aka, shanghai pork soup dumplings), 牛肉夹饼 (beef with pickled veggies wrapped in sesame bread), and 甜豆漿 (sweet soy milk). so tasty! the food at shanghai bun rarely disappoints.
after lunch, we went back to the house completely stuffed from lunch, and my mom basically force fed us her homemade 酒酿 (jiu niang, a sweet soup-like dish made from fermenting glutinous rice). i love jiu niang!!! my mom had made a stock pot portion of jiu niang and prepared the soup by diluting it in water over the stove and throwing an egg in there, and even though we were full from lunch, our dessert stomachs had room.
from there on out, we spent the next hour or so hosting an apple iphone - ipad combo q&a session for my parents around their kitchen table. as software engineers and programmers, my parents are quite technologically proficient, but were familiar with the windows pc logic rather than the apple interfaces. therefore, we showed them how to create folders for sorting purposes, move and delete apps, reset their fingerprints for the unlocking function, and lastly, enabled their phones for the zooming function, which is buried deep under the accessibility section in the settings. my dad wanted to join instagram so kevin set him up and also watched some youtube chinese magic shows on the side. LOL.
it's easy to take for granted how natural the apple interface feels and how useful the different functions can be, but it's not necessarily so for our parents' generation. im glad we were able to help explain some of the functions and capabilities of their apple products though. i should probably spend more time with kevin's mom to get her up to speed as well.
in the evening, we made a quick stop at ikea to pick up loads of child-proof dishware - lots of friends with kids and babies these days - and we spotted this mess of snow+ice+shopping carts. it looked so destructive, it was emitting emotions, and felt symbolic of sorts.
best: sitting across from my parents at lunch and having individual one-on-one conversations. while my mom and i chatted about my brother's burgeoning programming career in dc, my dad and kevin were chatting about mortgage bond valuation. my dad has always been a sponge and was just soaking it in ...
worst: ikea. on. a. saturday.
smile: i noticed that my mom's iphone's data usage was 5.5 gb last month while the rest of us were closer to 1-1.5 gb, and when i asked her why, she turned red grinned and sheepishly explained to use that she plays videos on her iphone that over time allow her to accumulate points, which over time, amount to little sums of money. LOL. how adorable!!!
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