Family Ties

Last night I was in the middle of service (around 8.30, about the busiest point of the evening) when the duty manager came to speak to me.

“Wendy, apparently you have some relatives downstairs at Ming Court [the Chinese restaurant that my sister runs] who you haven’t seen in 20 years. Your sister called to ask if you could go down to see them.”

WTF? She's in "the business"; she knows I can’t leave my section at 8.30.

The DM manages to convince my sister to bring the Long Lost Relatives up the Tower [notice I always capitalise Tower, like it’s God or something. Eep.] instead of me going down.

DM comes up to me again a little while later.

“Want to hear the good news?”

“Err. What?”

“Apparently there’s about 10 of them.”

Argh.

My brother and sister come up to the restaurant and inform me that the LLRs are on the main observation level. My hands are covered in the remains of someone’s dessert. Gross. I can’t meet people like this after 20 years (although I can imagine when I was 2, or 4, or whatever, I was a bit of a mess as well). So I run and wash my hands. I’m just in a hurry to get this over and done with so I can get back to running my section.

Turns out this lady came over to NZ with my aunt and my grandmother back in the day (late 70s/early 80s). I don’t think she is an actual relative. Also, it was (unsurprisingly) at my mother's insistence that my sister call and drag me down. She is lucky I was having a slow night.

We take the stairs down since the lifts are full. I meet two women and three girls, who I assume are daughters of one of the women. 10 people was a bit of an exaggeration. They don’t speak English. I don’t speak Cantonese. Un. Comfortable. I do thank them for giving me money though (a Chinese tradition which I obviously appreciate). I’m not an ingrate.

So we spend another couple of minutes establishing the fact that my brother and I don’t speak Chinese (this is always so embarassing), and then I escape back up to the restaurant.

When I get there, one of the hosts is all mock-disappointed. “I thought you were going to introduce me to your mother.”

Fat chance.