Conversations

There were quite interesting conversations around our table at Chad and Ada's wedding reception.

To my right were two of Ada's mom's friends. They were both from mainland China and were in the US on research grants. They had an interesting observation on the one-child policy in China. Since most families now have one child, the next generation are losing many extended-family terms from their vocabulary. For instance, I call my 1st aunt, 2nd aunt, 1st uncle, 2nd uncle, and so on for my mom's side by particular Chinese terms and I call my 1st uncle and 3rd uncle on my dad's side by another set of Chinese terms. With only one child, the following generations will have no aunts or uncles. Even the current generation do not call their cousins "cousin," but end up calling the male cousin "big brother."

To my left were Chad's attending from his medical fellowship and his wife. They both grew up in Puerto Rico. They told us that Puerto Ricans in Puerto Rico could not vote on presidential elections, but if they were in the States, they could. They also have a representative from Puerto Rico in the House. He can voice his opinions, but he could not vote. Hey, how come I didn't learn about this in US Government in high school? Up till now, I thought all the representatives were from the States.

Chad's attending also loves wine tasting. We had Chilean red wine at our table, which was bottled 1 year ago. We were told at our wine tasting trip to Temecula that it is best to drink red wine 2 years or more after the time it was bottled. However, when we tasted the Chilean red wine, there was no bitter aftertaste. Chad's attending explained that this particular vineyard in Chile let their grapes ripen on the vine longer than the vineyards in the US. Thus, customers could drink their red wines as early as 1 year after bottling.