Confessions of a Cat-holic (114)

At the family union dinner, we were seated around a big table that seated all 15 of us inside Peking Garden Restaurant. I was sitting next to Linda and her husband, Michael. So naturally, I got to know about them better. Tina and Lori were sitting on the other side with Granduncle Ben and his wife. Oh, her name was Margaret. What a brain, I could not even recall my relatives' names. You could imagine how big my family must have been. I needed to google their names up.

Granduncle Ben got his suits tailor-made in the touristy areas of Tsim Sha Tsui and his daughter, Tina, was fascinated by a bamboo bird cage she saw in Stanley Market. My mother was there when she was shopping around, therefore, out of courtesy, my mom paid for it and handed it to her as a gift. And my mother was talking about Taiwanese dramas with Margaret the entire time. Obviously, they would not be talking about chick flicks or pop comedies because they were too old for them. They were reminiscing the past through watching documentaries and war movies in the last century. I only wanted to see the Meteor Garden because everyone was talking about it. But sadly, I was too occupied with tutoring and studying to rent any foreign dramas. I didn't even have time for the local dramas by TVB.

I wanted to tell them that the real Hong Kong locals never had their shirts or suits made by a tailor. We normally went to G200, if not Giordano Ladies for work outfit and Bossini or Baleno for casual wear. The local brands were good enough for the fit anyways. But I would just let the tourists do the touristy stuff. Apparently many tourists found it fun to buy a knock off rolex watch in ladies market, even though they usually regretted it the morning after. Maybe I would love to visit the Statue of Liberty and Empire State Building too if I ever had the chance to visit New York, even though in reality the real New Yorkers were too cool for that and would only hang out at the local hotspots.

Linda told me that she, like all of her siblings, went to UIUC because her dad was a professor there. I knew for a fact that students of staff got to attend college for free without any loans. She and her husband were the only family members residing outside the state of Illinois. I, too, had a few relatives in Chicago on my dad's side. (Yes, Felicia again.) But I didn't want to tell them, because I had never met my second cousins in person. So, the fact that I had met the Kuo's family once, and in Asia too, already made us closer than the rest of my second cousins in my family.

At the time, Linda and Michael lived in New York's White Plains in Westchester and she worked in Manhattan, New York as a yoga instructor and photographer. But they had already recently moved to Pound Ridge, New York. Linda was a professional model and I had seen her ads for Clairol and Loreal hair dyes more than a dozen times in different locations. Her products were sold everywhere in drug stores in New York, and in Hong Kong too.

Linda was the prettiest among all of her siblings in the family and maybe among all of my relatives too, including the Leung's family. There could be a modeling gene running on my mother's family. Well, not including myself. I often considered myself too smart for a modeling role. Would ya gimme that classic blue steel of Zoolander? Really, honestly speaking, the thought of trying out for models and Miss Hong Kong never came across in my mind, not even when I was at my skinniest and prettiest.

Linda was tall and skinny with a slightly tanned face. Obviously, she looked younger than her age. Even though she was my "aunt", she looked more like my cousin, if we didn't make a fuss about our relationship. I noticed the way she ate. She ate a lot of stuff, almost as much as I did. I was kind of a glutton so I was pretty amazed by her petite size. I asked her how she managed her physique and weight. She said she just ate whatver and worked out. She was a vegetarian and a yoga instructor, not sure if that helped her maintain her shape.