I love L.A.!

How can you not agree with Randy Newman!?

I spent Easter weekend in L.A., to catch up with friends and family. Luckily, I got to enjoy it with a few rays of warm sunshine and clear blue skies, so I could drive around with the top down. In the passenger seat, my happy-friend Angie said, "this is the LIFE!"

I stayed with two hospitable and charming hosts at the "Happy House." They have a very sweet 3-legged cat and a loving transexual cat. Despite my cat allergies, they keep their ultra-stylish apartment immaculate (thanks partly to a Dyson vacuum cleaner), so I can sleep there without a runny nose and itchy eyes.

Pete, our favorite Brit, is getting deported to his homeland, so his best buddies from college couldn't send him off without a proper party, complete with humiliating costumed impersonations of him and poking fun at his yellow fever. If that doesn't convince our lovable Pete to return, I'm sure we can just find another cute Asian-American girl to marry him. (It can't be that hard! He's like a witty and boyish Jude Law, who speaks French! He graduated at the top of our Design class! Come on!)

It was a wonderful excuse for a reunion of old college buddies from Design school. I know a few were getting wistful and sad over the end of an era; people were moving away from longtime roommates to their next stages with new roommates, jobs, girlfriends. But I was delighted to see everyone still having fun and looking wonderful after all these years. It's a remarkable group of smart, talented, unique and interesting friends, and I'm so happy we are able to stay close in touch, despite whatever new adventures we are going through.

On Saturday, (aside from the party,) I caught up with old roomies, me@co and Steph at a little boba (pearl) drink cafe called Cafe Paradiso (previously known as Relaxstation). Then I mainly shopped through the rest of the Sawtelle neighborhood, which is like a mini-little-Tokyo. I enjoyed a little shopping fix, including stops at a Japanese outlet (a Tare Panda tea set for $6! hello kitty tissue packets! peach-smelling car wipes!), Giant Robot (apparently i don't have enough cute stickers or Adrian Tomine merchandise), and a cute clothing boutique called Happy Six (where I found a t-shirt with Hello Kitty in a fro).

On Easter, my relatives and I paid our respects to my late mother's ashes, inside a Buddhist Columnarium, nestled in the hills of a very pretty, rose-filled memorial park. It was actually a beautiful site to visit on a sunny day, and I am glad my mother's ashes were resting in such a peaceful place.

Apparently the monks/nuns were telling us that the Chinese tradition is to visit family burial sites annually on "Cheng-meng", which is 4/4 (in Chinese, "four" is a synonym for "dead"). This is the first I had ever heard of such a tradition. (I think by being the youngest of my generation and having a bit of a language barrier, many of my relatives have a tendency to forget to tell me certain things, so unfortunately I have to find them out from other people.) Then we went to the largest Buddhist temple in the U.S., Hsi Lai Temple, at Hacienda Heights for some prayers.

I'm not crazy about religious rituals, but I'm all for paying respects and prayer, which I value as an opportunity to remember and consider priorities and the people we care most about.

Of course, I always end up eating well when I travel; on Sunday I had some dim sum at V.I.P. Seafood, and for dinner I had my favorite udon at Taiko in Brentwood. On Easter, I went with my Buddhist relatives to enjoy an extravagant 12-course Chinese vegetarian banquet (including imitation chicken, duck, abalone, squid, etc.), which was a most unique, delicious, and insanely filling gastronomical experience. And like every Chinese family, they couldn't let me leave without a bagful of food for the road. If I had an icebox, they would have sent me off with all the leftover banquet food. Also it was nice to finally see my older brother treat the relatives to a meal, especially because usually he is the one mooching food off from them. :)

Now I have to prep for another going-away event, a dinner for dshih, before he takes off on his adventures to nyc and Asia. People will be sad, but I'm happy for him, because he is brave enough to follow his heart.