You know you're in an Asian home when...

So I went to Plano last weekend for my kid brother's college graduation (I don't know why I keep calling him that. He's not a kid anymore. He's 25. SO WEIRD), and my parents kindly let me shack up in my old childhood bedroom for the one night that I was there. Amid all the hubbub, I got to hang out at the house for a bit and just kind of wander around, familiarizing myself with all the new shit they bought since the last time I was there. I love my parents. Really I do. But God bless 'em, they buy a lot of shit. My secret nickname for them is the Upgrades. New refrigerator, new computer, new TV, new couch, new you-name-it.

It made me think of the Sims and how the whole point of the game (to me) was to earn as many simoleons as possible so that you can continually upgrade all of the shit in your Sim's house while trying your best NOT to accidentally kill your Sim somehow along the way. That game is the devil, but I was so addicted to it. I used to play it so much that I started to imagine that I had status bars floating around my head. I couldn't even eat a sandwich without envisioning my energy bar filling up with green. It frightened me in a really "Exorcism of Emily Rose" kind of way, so I quit playing. I'm still a little scared of that game.

Anyhoo. As I wandered around checking out all the upgrades, I started to notice that my parents have a lot of weird stuff in their house too. Not weird in a bad way. Weird in a foreign way. Which is actually not too weird at all because my mom is from Vietnam. So I suppose for her, the stuff around their house is totally normal and legit. And the funny thing is that most of this stuff was there when I was a kid and lived there, but I guess it took living on my own for 9 years for me to realize that a lot of the stuff they have lying around is NOT YOUR TYPICAL SHIT.

Consider, for example, exhibit A:



Tiger Balm and Dragon Oil. They are really just the Asian version of Ben-gay or Icy Hot, even though they sound like they belong in some cauldron being stirred by witches on the night of a full moon. Nope, just your average analgesic ointments.

Oh and then there was this:



Just your typical wall art. Who needs photos of the family when you can have gigantor framed pictures of strange fruit? Not me!

And you can never have too many of these:



You guessed it. Mangoes. (Honest hour: I do so love mangoes and actually do not think I could ever have enough. I am drooling a little just looking at the above picture. I am my mother's child, after all.)

THIS SHIT, however, is a total mystery to me:



It's obviously some sort of bed. With about a million wires and a remote control attached to it. It was in what used to be my brother's bedroom but is now a spare guestroom. I was hesitant to try it out because I have a tendency to break shit, so I just snapped a picture and backed away slowly. I still have no idea what the hell kind of purpose it serves. Some things are better left unexplained.

Ha. My dad is going to read this and be all, "Why are you posting pictures of your mother's stuff for the whole world to see?!"

Hi, Dad! Love you! And all the upgrades too ;)