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World Burps and bamboo.

I have become aware of a phenomenon known as a world echo. This is when you have a conversation with someone about an occurrence or subject and then later that day it's on the 6 o'clock news or salon.com. The thing you think YOU stumbled upon is suddenly being discussed by everyone. Some people call it coincidence. I call it a World Burp.

A recent World Burp began when I was eating at the Spring Roll in Toronto. The restaurant had a nice asian decor that I have always admired. Along the counter they displayed bunches of bamboo, bound together and sprouting from shallow dishes of water. Now I have a love/hate relationship with flora. I have grown cherry tomatoes on my balcony, forced bulbs, harvested moss and fretted over dying succulents. Cacti have been my most successful attempts at greenery. These bamboo looked very appealing. Plus bamboo is a good word. Bambooooooo.

I wondered where I could get one. My dad grows bamboo at the end of the driveway back home and I toyed with the idea of calling him and asking him to go whack off a few pieces for me.

The next day as I was strolling through Target (pronounced Tar-shay), what did I spy with my little eye, but pots of bamboo. I was ready to snatch one up with glee, 'til I saw that they were somewhat cemented into the pots with tiny pieces of gravel. They were not the free growing stalks with a few river stones like I had seen before. I left them behind in disgust.

That evening I watched Tampopo with Aaron and then we went to Ming's noodle for dinner because that is what you do after you watch Tampopo. Guess what they had on the counter next to the cash register? Bamboo! I prodded Aaron in the side until he asked the nice lady where they got it. "Chinatown USA" she replied. Oh.

Aaron and I were discussing the decor of the noodle shop and he mentioned that he had flipped through a Feng Shui book and a lot of the items on the counter were part of Feng Shuei. Wednesday at lunch Andy, Millie, Natalie and I grabbed take out from the Bankok and they had a lot of the same things by their cash register.

Curious, (not that I base my life on where my trashcan is) I did a search on the web. Lo and behold I found that Feng Shuei makes use of bamboo. The little displays I have been seeing are called Lucky Bamboo. They had even been featured in Mademoiselle magazine.

I must have one.

What's the plural of bamboo? Bambi?