我的年终总结
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
That special occasion turned out to be a family dinner at a nice Italian restaurant in
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
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
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.
我们聚在一起研究什么是“control freak” – 姐姐大声地念出 control freak 的定义，我婆婆没反应。于是 姐姐开始做自我批评：“我觉得自己真是有点 control freak。” 姐夫马上表示赞同。 我当仁不让地批判老公：“他才是典型的 control freak” 我老公点头承认。
"Well, it must run in the family then." 洋鬼子姐夫补充说。
All according to plan.
轮到我婆婆了。她老人家研究了一下 control freak 的定义，斩钉截铁地说：你们爸爸没有 control freak 的迹象。然后宣布测验结束。
We were speechless, but had to move on to the next topic.
半个小时以后，我婆婆突然福至心灵起来：啊，我知道谁是 control freak 了:
We were all waiting with hope:
“就是香港的那个张柏芝啊！“
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张柏芝 come to her mind???
3. 婆婆遇上妈
那以后不久，我公公婆婆突然访问纽约。
虽然只给了我们3天的准备时间，我还是决定，almost subconsciously，to show them the best of our life.
从机场将公婆接回家，我一路上大肆渲染我们周围的自然环境： “我们现在路过的这一片居民区，是长岛最富的地方。。。不，我们不住在这里，从这里出去，再开20分钟就到我们家了，不太远。。。快看这片海滩，多美啊!！这个就在我们家附近，您早晨或是傍晚散步就可以到这里，您可以坐下来享受海天一色的美景，还有海鸥在身边飞舞。。。你们现在来长岛最好了，因为秋天是我们这里最美丽的季节啊！。。。”
那天的晚餐在家里吃，我们烹饪之外，还从外面叫了新鲜的 clam chowder 和 New York Cheese Cake（both my mother-in-law’s favorite），准备了上好的红酒和香槟。桌子上铺着我们最漂亮的桌布，我和老公在饭桌边上演了已经停演N年之久的相敬如宾和举案齐眉。那天晚上我们家母慈子孝，其乐融融。
演过了。
第二天早上，我婆婆就拨通了北京的电话：“Z老师啊，你赶快过来吧！宁宁他们的生活好极了！他们住在富人区 --- 的边上啊，他们家不远处就是一片海滩，你早晨或是傍晚散步都可以到那里，你可以坐下来享受海天一色的美景，还有海鸥在身边飞舞。。。你要抓紧过来啊，因为秋天是他们这里最美丽的季节啊！。。。”
我听见我妈在电话的那头大声叫着：“哎呀那太好啦！我就喜欢海啊，我最喜欢和海鸥作伴啦！我马上让宁宁给我订机票，下个月我就过去！“
就这样，在没有征求我们意见的情况下，我婆婆把我妈给邀请来了。
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婆婆遇上妈, will be an article by itself and will be published sometime in 2012.
