talk 704

A Bona Fide Senior Citizen

by
Pat Wong

Thanks to Dr. Martin Luther King, I can enjoy however vicariously, a National holiday as my birthday. Only a few Lighters are yet to qualify as senior citizen. Amongst them, so far as I know, are Desmond Wang, Shirley Lam Lee, and Harold Soo. I was one of them until yesterday. Now that I have become a bona fide senior citizen, I intend to claim all the discounts due me hereafter!

I received a very special birthday present from Michael, my eldest son, which is a blog entry of appreciation of his dad on the front page of his web-site! I lost count since when my son’s praise becomes treasurable, it used to be the other way around. I am sure fellow Lighters feel the same way.

To set the stage, the Bay Area Lighters organized a morning hike on the Shoreline Park in Mountain View last Sunday. Thanks to Karen Kao’s suggestion, Jai Yee’s email coordination to get us together. We were happy that an out of town Lighter, Peter Tong, who was visiting his in-laws, could joint us. The weather was cooperating with a beautiful sunshine. We saw a lot of shore birds, ducks and even burrowing owls. There was this inside slough where the surface ripple stopped beyond an imaginary line and not even the ducks would venture across it. Such an artificial divide puzzled us until Michael tossed a pebble onto a bouncing sheet of ice!

Thanks for Christina, who is Tina’s high school buddy in their Taiwan days, and the guest of our group, played such a difficult role in the conversation that cemented the bond between a father and a son. When you visit Michael’s web-site, you will also see a small picture of our group on the trail.

Reference: Michael’s web-site: < http://giardiacorp.com/mikewong/chapter/2007A.shtml#MLK/>