我的年終總結

My past one year has been quite Eventful. Yes, Full of Events. Certainly not all were joyful, but each had a funny side, if you look from a certain angle.

1. A bloody-showoff moment turned into a diplomatic disaster 

I had saved a bottle of the famous1996 GreatWall Red from my trip to Guangdong in 1997. I was introduced to it at a dinner hosted by the governor of the province and was amazed by how good it tasted. Our other hosts were generous enough to let me take one bottle back, which I had been saving for a special occasion. 

 That special occasion turned out to be a family dinner at a nice Italian restaurant in San Francisco, with my husband’s entire family including Mr. Daubtfire (my sister’s Italian father-in-law), who is a wine maker himself and is famous for having a big cellar with at least 500 wines. 

Things might be less embarrassing for me, and for my country, if I hadn’t bragged all around that I was bringing the best wine from China.  Mr. Daubtfire took one sip at it before rendering the verdict, quite emotionlessly, that “there is no way this wine is more than 2 years old.”

I have to admit that it did not taste the same to me either, as it did in 1997.  My best guess has been that the governor served the real 1996 GreatWall Red in Guangdong, and my dear colleagues in China bought me a fake one to take back to the US.

2. The crazy family vacation

My entire family – 姐姐姐夫，公公婆婆，我和老公 – took our vacation together in June.

Wherever we went, the six of us constantly drew attention from other people –With me and my mother-in-law always chatted and laughed in our loudest voice, my father-in-law looked flat-out clueless, my husband and his sister were forever annoyed by their mother, and my white brother-in-law had to shout at everyone to stop blocking the traffic, we looked like an international circus!

But that is not the highlight of the trip.

 My mother-in-law blamed my father-in-law for everything that went wrong. So at one point the rest of us decided to teach her a lesson.  My brother-in-law pulled out a “character test”, and we started to decide the personality of each one of us in this trip.

Things went hilarious when it came to one character trait – control freak.

我們聚在一起研究什麽是“control freak” – 姐姐大聲地念出 control freak 的定義，我婆婆沒反應。於是 姐姐開始做自我批評：“我覺得自己真是有點 control freak。” 姐夫馬上表示讚同。 我當仁不讓地批判老公：“他才是典型的 control freak” 我老公點頭承認。

"Well, it must run in the family then." 洋鬼子姐夫補充說。

All according to plan.

輪到我婆婆了。她老人家研究了一下 control freak 的定義，斬釘截鐵地說：你們爸爸沒有 control freak 的跡象。然後宣布測驗結束。

We were speechless, but had to move on to the next topic. 

半個小時以後，我婆婆突然福至心靈起來：啊，我知道誰是 control freak 了:

We were all waiting with hope:

“就是香港的那個張柏芝啊！“

She offered no explanation, so it remained a myth to all of us why she could not see that the definition fits herself squarely?

Even more mysterious – why in heaven’s sake did張柏芝 come to her mind???

 

3. 婆婆遇上媽

那以後不久，我公公婆婆突然訪問紐約。

雖然隻給了我們3天的準備時間，我還是決定，almost subconsciously，to show them the best of our life. 

從機場將公婆接回家，我一路上大肆渲染我們周圍的自然環境： “我們現在路過的這一片居民區，是長島最富的地方。。。不，我們不住在這裏，從這裏出去，再開20分鍾就到我們家了，不太遠。。。快看這片海灘，多美啊!！這個就在我們家附近，您早晨或是傍晚散步就可以到這裏，您可以坐下來享受海天一色的美景，還有海鷗在身邊飛舞。。。你們現在來長島最好了，因為秋天是我們這裏最美麗的季節啊！。。。”

那天的晚餐在家裏吃，我們烹飪之外，還從外麵叫了新鮮的 clam chowder 和 New　York Cheese Cake（both my mother-in-law’s favorite），準備了上好的紅酒和香檳。桌子上鋪著我們最漂亮的桌布，我和老公在飯桌邊上演了已經停演N年之久的相敬如賓和舉案齊眉。那天晚上我們家母慈子孝，其樂融融。

演過了。

第二天早上，我婆婆就撥通了北京的電話：“Z老師啊，你趕快過來吧！寧寧他們的生活好極了！他們住在富人區  ---  的邊上啊，他們家不遠處就是一片海灘，你早晨或是傍晚散步都可以到那裏，你可以坐下來享受海天一色的美景，還有海鷗在身邊飛舞。。。你要抓緊過來啊，因為秋天是他們這裏最美麗的季節啊！。。。”

我聽見我媽在電話的那頭大聲叫著：“哎呀那太好啦！我就喜歡海啊，我最喜歡和海鷗作伴啦！我馬上讓寧寧給我訂機票，下個月我就過去！“

就這樣，在沒有征求我們意見的情況下，我婆婆把我媽給邀請來了。

As you can all guess, from that point on, the rest of the year 2011 was a tragedy, and is TO BE CONTINUED.  

The rest of the story婆婆遇上媽, will be an article by itself and will be published sometime in 2012.