A Very Chinese Weekend

I felt lucky Friday night, lucky enough the snab the 2 round-trip tickets from Southwest at the Asian Employee Association's Scholarship Fundraising dinner. I wasn't that lucky, but I did win something from the raffle: "Martin Yang's Chinatown Cooking" and a Chinese placemat/napkin/chopsticks set. Unfortunately, Mr. Yang does not cover sizzling rice soup in his cookbook.

Volunteers gathered at the Lincoln Neighborhood Center Saturday morning to participate in the Great American Cleanup, this year showcasing Oakland's Chinatown. After lion dancers flirted with the crowd, Keep Oakland Beautiful presented an award to Tzu Chi (a Taiwanese Buddhist Association) members, who clean the streets every weekend. I did not leave empty-handed either. Glad was a sponsor of the event, and provided a mountain of boxes filled with Glad trash bags. As we could not possibly use all the bags, I got permission to take home two boxes for my move.

The event went along smoothly for one planned so hastily; the only faux-pas was the lunch: the Buddhists--and hence vegetarians--could not eat the supplied supreme pizzas.