KF invited me to join his family for a Christmas dinner. We drove to his uncle’s place in New Jersey and they had already prepared a hotpot to welcome us. The way their family ate was quite interesting because they didn’t have one person doing all the work, they each dipped stuff in themselves using their own chopsticks and spoons. All the ingredients were super fresh and unique – I especially enjoyed their fishcake, lobster, and fried tofu skin! The family made jokes in Cantonese, talked about British power unit, and shared about work and businesses. Although I didn’t understand most of the conversations, I enjoyed the atmosphere and was happy to see everyone being so close to each other.
Then, we also tried out the new karaoke system brought over by KF’s dad. It had Cantonese, mainland Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, English, and Japanese music. Really, anything common Asian language that you could think of. There was only one problem: only 1 microphone out of 2 worked. KF and I tried to reset and turn them on and off many times; additionally, we looked up some threads on Google, but nothing changed. In desperation, I went on Youtube and typed in some keywords. Then, I saw a very promising video in Cantonese, which I showed to KF. He followed the same steps and it WORKED!! The uncles sang some songs together and when they started cleaning, the young people jumped in and sang many songs together. I also picked some; unfortunately, they were all too high for me, so I ended up just screaming my lungs out. Anyway, I really had a blast with his family!
Trang "Tee" Nguyen 