I love Halloween. Always have. As a kid I loved playing dress-up and spent most of my free time in some imaginary world inside my head anyway, so Halloween was the holiday that allowed me to do all that without feeling…

I read a blog post written by a woman who lost her mother four years ago. In the post, she thanks her mother for the lessons she taught. This inspired me to take stock of the lessons my parents have taught me. My fami…

In my family, no pretense is made about which child is loved more. It's pretty obvious that I'm my dad's favorite and my brother is my mom's. My dad has an explanation for his preference: I humor him more and treat him…

My mother tells me this morning that my Uncle Gerard wants to set me up with someone. Apparently, Uncle Gerard knows a guy who has been working as a post-doc or temporary lecturer at UC Berkeley. The guy got an offer f…

After my parents got to meet Mr. New Year over a casual lunch on Sunday, my mom said, as a favorable estimation, that he seemed very "zeng geng," which is a Cantonese phrase meaning something along the lines of "serious"…