Every so often in our calendar year, we get to celebrate birth day of our friends and kin. And if you haven't heard yet, birthday's at CCSP are a big deal. It usually means that staff members here show no or little regard for the budget categories that we've been given (which we usually show no or little regard for anyway) So basically, when it comes to celebrations, we have the liberty to "imagine" up all kinds of events and participatory endeavors, and we occasionally break the bank (more on that later.)Kevin Saiki, Student Life Coordinator and all around staff mystic was thinking probably, that his 24th birthday celebration would be held in quiet and humble regard. Not so.
Kevin loves sushi. His dad and him have a sushi roll named after them. "The Saiki Roll" they call it. People in Bakersfield, CA are still enjoying it to this day. Kevin is half Japanese, and we decided that to kick off his big day celebration, we would call up our dear friend Natsuko Miki (or more affectionately called by us, "Miki") to honor his Japanese heritage and his love for sushi. Miki won our hearts right away as she taught the CCSP program (in very few English words) how to make sushi rolls of all types and shapes.
I met Miki a few years ago, when I was a student here and she taught our group to do the same. She has a wonderful way with relating to people and is as sassy in her 90 year old body as she was in her 25 year old frame that entertained Japanese soldiers as a jazz musician and singer. Kevin certainly reaped Miki's musical talent as she sung a soaring rendition of Happy Birthday in very broken English, it was awesome. She had no shame telling Christy that her roll was sloppy as she promptly turned around to tell me that my beard was itchy (but she liked Brett's and Nate's!)
The break the bank part I mentioned before was that I bought WAY too much rice (I even sprung for the organic sushi rice, so it was a little more heavy on my purse, and I thought it'd be a nice treat - IT WAS FOR KEVIN OK!) We certainly ate our fill and got loaded up with energy for the remainder of Kevin's big day.
Sara, Jess, and Jules had prepared a heavy Wine Cake for "saik dawg" and as we ate it together in the failing evening light, we began to drop cryptic hints to Kevin, for what was in store for him later that night.
Kevin, an avid fan of the "X-files" a late -nineties sci-fi television series - would be later abducted by his fellow collegues and friends, greeted by "the smoking man" (nate) and ushered into a dark room under all kinds of poking and probing stressors, and eventually as a cohesive group, we would all watch the Xfiles movie that we rented in honor of our good friend, Kevin.So, there you have it. Just another day at CCSP? No, I don't think so.
So as I ready myself to walk over to dinner, I see the clouds moving fast to the west and a fantail flitting itself around as if it were dancing for me and I know that somewhere, "the truth is out there"
Happy Birthday Kev!
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