The restaurant is empty, I've come to regard that as business as usual here. How they manage to stay open is a mystery to me. Since I arrived five minutes late I'm the first from the group to arrive. I politely ask for four seats. No need for menus - our orders are practically cooking before we arrive; we come so often. For me it's orange chicken with egg drop soup. It's the best anywhere in my opinion. More often than not, the host seats us at the one booth in the entire restaurant that squeaks. What we did to him in our past lives eludes me. He dyes his hair red for some odd reason. Normally I wouldn't notice the color of a waiter's hair, but red hair looks strange on an Asian man to me. The restaurant itself is small, average in every way. Oriental paintings dot the wall, and local sports heroes adorn the bar scene. Soon I'm sitting, careful not to touch the table and unleash it's dreaded squeak. My favorite worker walks over to ask where my friends are. She's incredibly nice and often protects us from grumpy waiters with red hair. I talk to her for a while about school before they finally show up, late due to invisible traffic, presumably.
She asks our orders and we inevitably reply the usual, despite vowing to try something new this time. The group has time for greetings and we all rip off a few immature jokes like pros before our soup and wontons arrive. Most of us don't finish before the lunch is ready. Steamy, hot, delicious lunch. An occasional story or joke is babbled out by someone, but food is the priority here. Refills can be sparse but today the pitcher of water is left with us. We're moving up in the world now. One by one we finish our plate or throw in the white napkin and ask for a box.
After a meal at Abacus Inn is a favorite time of mine, where tea time rules and shits are simply not given. Our conversations range wildly here. Anywhere in the nerddom kingdom they may roam. My personal favorite is the classic, "What if Pokemon were real?" However, most of the time everyone picks on the favorite "superhero" of a friend, Batman. We only pick on him because we love him, of course, that and he can't defend himself well from jests. The receipt is placed on the table to stop his pain. With fortune cookies! Oh, the glorious reverence we possess for these bringers of future occurrences! Also we enjoy to know how to say "cook" in Chinese - it's zuo cai.
Once the bill is payed with our ten percent off members-only-super-deluxe-happy-time cards, our adventure at this Inn called Abacus draws to a close. We settle for one more immature joke, and part ways. Abacus Inn waits for us for another day.
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