Birthday bash

The entire reason I'm in Hong Kong is to celebrate my grandmother's birthday. There's no consensus on how old she's turning. It's either 90 or 88, but no one seems to know for sure.

We got all dolled up and headed to a big Chinese dinner banquet where tables were set up for partygoers to play mah jong and there was a television hooked up to two microphones for painful Chinese karaoke.

We endured a full two hours of family photos, each with my grandmother at the center. The photographer, an amateur, didn't really seem to know what to do while five people yelled art direction at him. It was like all these Chinese Jay Manuels were posing a gaggle of difficult and disappointing model contestants.

Finally, we enjoyed several courses of Chinese meal, each course more extravagant and exotic than the one before. My favorite was this mashed potato/crab/cheese/mushroom concoction that was molded into a crab shell and baked to perfection. I ate two.

Several cousins got trashed. Others cried. It was a lovely and loud dinner and afterward, I was wiped out. I went back to the hotel to crash, but thanks to my jet laggy, I was up at 5:30am.

Overall though, grandma seemed very happy to have everyone around her. She also seems a bit overwhelmed, and at times, she seemed annoyed that we were pulling her away from her mah jong game to take photos.