Happy Brunch

On Saturday evening, I went shopping with my daughter Mary. Among many other things, a quilt, a pair of shoes for Mary, and groceries etc., we bought a DIY (do-it-yourself) dining table. On Sunday morning, I got up and asked Mary if she wanted to assemble the table with me. As always, she happily said ‘yes’.

We opened the package, and laid all the bits and pieces of the ‘table’ parts out on the floor, and examined the instructions and illustrations carefully. We then started putting the pieces together. The only thing that prevented us from getting satisfactory progress was that we didn’t have a Philips screwdriver. I was ‘driven’ a bit mad after I searched the whole flat without finding anything that could even be used ‘as’ a screwdriver. However, in the end, to my relief, I did find a miniature screwdriver, and it was a Philips one, although it didn’t work for assembling the table!

I then asked Mary to come downstairs with me to buy a Philips screwdriver or, if possible, to borrow one from the security guard downstairs. At the ground floor, Mary and I greeted the security guard in Cantonese: ‘Morning!’, and explained to her in Mandarin Chinese with a bit of newly acquired Cantonese accent, that we wanted to borrow a Philips screwdriver. With the help of the miniature one in hand, we got our intentions across quite easily! However, the security guard only had a slotted screwdriver. Being in a hurry, or more precisely, being excited to complete the DIY job as soon as possible, we borrowed it, and decided to give it a go.

It turned out that the slotted screwdriver worked well. With Mary as a great helper, we assembled the table in about an hour. Mary had an eye for details and for perfections, whereas I mainly looked at the bigger structure, or where all the different parts should be going. At times Mary warned me that one or two screws were not tight enough, whereas I told her nothing could be perfect. She didn’t quite agree with me, saying, ‘Mr. Daw[見注釋1] can always make things perfect. Or at least if you were with Mr. Daw, you could make things better!’ I didn’t say anything, but smiled at her.

At one or two moments during the process of the assembling, I felt a bit frustrated, as I couldn’t quite follow the instructions. I said a little prayer to the Heavenly Father, and with Mary there pointing out to me what she thought could be the right way, we managed to have assembled the table. What a great sense of accomplishment we had!

With the newly assembled table standing there, our next agenda was to fix some breakfast, or ‘brunch’ to be more exact, as we were both feeling hungry after the DIY excitement. Well, with yesterday evening’s shopping, we did have plenty of choices for our brunch. Mary wanted to have a toast, while I would go for some noodles.

At the breakfast, Mary said to me, ‘This is the best breakfast I’ve ever had, Dad. I mean it’s not just the food, but we have the best table to have our breakfast with!’ I agreed with her. With her favorite toast, and blueberry milkshake, Mary became a bit more talkative, and we were both sort of inspired by the different food we were having, especially where they were from.

Mary had ‘Garden’ brand ‘Double Vitamins + Folic Acid’ Life Bread from Hong Kong; ‘Laughing Cows’ brand ‘Party Cubes: La vache qui rit’ Cheese Spread from France; ‘Four Seas’ brand Crackers with Japanese characters on the package but locally made; cheese sausages and duck breast meat also locally made. Mary also had a glass (made in China) of milkshake, freshly made from ‘imported-from-Australia’ Masters® PURA (99.9% Fat Free) milk with ‘Delica’ brand ‘New Zealand’ Blueberries! What’s more, the milkshake was blended with a ‘BrAun’ brand ‘Multiquick’ blender that we bought yesterday evening, and it was made in Spain!

As for me, I had a toast with a slice of Chesdale cheese (product of New Zealand); a bowl of ‘Sau Tao’ (meaning ‘longevity peach’) Beijing Noodles (one of Hong Kong’s top brands) with a pair of chopsticks made of Australian Jarrah wood and given to me as a present from Mr. and Mrs. Daw in Australia. I also put some ‘Ning Chi’ Brand ‘Premium Fresh Chili’ sauce made in Taiwan in the noodles. It turned out that the Taiwan sauce went very well with Beijing noodles, regardless of how the current politics across the ‘Straight’ were heading. Even Mary, who enjoyed her Western toasts, said the Chinese noodles tasted nice.

Hong Kong is an international place, and our brunch cannot be indicating this more vividly. I read a newspaper article, which says that Hong Kong is like a satellite city, with working adults frequently flying all over the world on their business trips. It has been so much so that a survey in the newspaper shows that one of the top 10 things Hong Kong children want to do is to have breakfasts with their parents at home! Well, taking all these into consideration, Mary and I certainly had a very ‘happy brunch’ together on this sunny and pleasant Sunday morning in Hong Kong.

[注釋1] Mr. Daw is our neighbor in Australia. He is 86 years old, and very fit, as he works in his backyard shed almost everyday. He has literally thousands and thousands of tools for woodwork, and all sorts of other home improvement projects. He used to be a bee keeper and a tree surgeon. He still keeps bees and goes fishing as hobbies, and above all, he is a legend.

備註: 這是一年前我從澳洲接女兒Mary來香港後的第一個週末寫的. 一年過去了, 我們一起吃過無數的早餐. 幸福依然.