Don't Watch Dragon Boats, Raise Some Little Chickens Instead

Sunday, August 14, 2005

The title of this blog entry comes from the Cantonese children's song, Tum Tum Chuen, meaning "Turn Round and Round". Like most children's songs, the phrase doesn't mean much, or maybe it means something that I just fail to grasp.

Every year before, my son's birthday party falls on the same weekend as the dragon boat race in Flushing Meadows Lake. This year the race was moved a week later so we finally got to go see it. The lake is big enough and the race takes place way out there, so everyone can see the whole action, albeit from far away, but visible to see who's who. But it was too hot a day to be outdoor. I didn't do well under the relentless sun. My sweat came down in rivulets and I looked like I just took a shower. Near the end of the outing, I found a bathroom and doused myself with cold water. It felt great!

For lunch we went to the Flushing area. Flushing Mall was our first stop but it was a major disappointment. Only the stores had air conditioning and the food court was hot. Maybe the A/C servicing the hallways was out of service, maybe it's a money-saving measure, or maybe it's a way to discourage non-buying dawdlers from staying, whatever it was it was a bad experience for us shoppers. We ended up eating somewhere else nice and cool. We did come back to the Mall since our cars were nearby. When it was time to leave, I discovered another disservice the Mall has for its customers - no pickup lanes. There's a bus line running through the front entrance's street and the street is narrow. I felt it would certainly happen that when I stopped to pick up my passengers, surely there would be a bus behind me which wouldn't be able to pass. There would be much honking from the bus or other vehicles behind it. With my type of bad luck, there would be a ticket agent, uh, a DOT foot soldier nearby, who would come right over to ticket me. Luckily, I happened to notice a back entrance, which besides not having a bus line, also has a little room. When I double-parked, since the other side of the street was an entrance to some other parking lot, vehicles behind me could still pass me. It's a shame that Mall management couldn't get a pickup lane created in the first place.