Weekend Update – Jenny and I had Passover Seder dinner at Sharone’s place on Saturday. As usual, Sharone’s house was a veritable United Nations with people from Italy, Greece, China, Syria, Philippines, Costa Rica, Iraq, Germany, Romania and the United States present. Dinner was potluck and did not disappoint. The highlights were roast leg of lamb (Greece), risotto (Italy), cherry meatballs (Syria) and salmon with oyster sauce (China). Some of guests forgot about keeping kosher for Passover so they brought over quiche (the crust ain’t kosher) and a lamb casserole topped with bread crumbs (also not kosher). That didn’t seem to be a problem with Sharone, who admits to having moo shu pork every now and then. The biggest surprise of the evening came when Sharone’s main squeeze Freddie the Fireman gave me a copy of Reagan, In His Own Hand. It was my best birthday present ever.

On Sunday, we went to Banana Island again for Jenny’s parents’ birthday. Everyone was speaking Chinese (Cantonese) so I had no idea what anyone was talking about. I did, however, get to speak with 13-year-old Justin, whose mom used to work with Jenny’s mom at LeeMAH Electronics. He’s a good kid who is going to Washington High School in San Francisco next fall. Even though Justin was born in the US, he speaks with a very strong accent that makes him sound foreign-born. This is not unusual though, given the fact that neither of this parents speak English and his classmates at Roosevelt Middle School are 88% minority (70% Asian).

I’m going to keep my eye on Justin when dragon boat season starts. He’s going to join the Washington H.S. dragon boat team, and wants me to coach them. I coached them in 1999 and 2000, but not last year. Is that OK, Jenny?