Boston Tea and Tennis Party

Boston Tea and Tennis Party, September 2009

It has almost become a yearly ritual for this tennis nut to make a pilgrimage to New York for the US Open during late August and early September. We usually went earlier to watch the qualifying matches because we could see the players up close and the qualities of tennis were quite high. The best part for watching the qualifying rounds, however, was that they were free of charge! Another attraction for attending the US Open is the authentic Chinese foods which are sorely missed in Nashville but can easily be accessed in Flushing, which is only one subway stop away from the tournament site. Of course we also took advantage of the fact that Melvin would usually be out west participating in the music festival at Angel Fire, New Mexico, thus we could stay in his flat in Manhattan without paying exorbitant amount of hotel fees in the city.

However, we did not go for the qualifying rounds this year because a high school friend of mine, Gary, volunteered to take us to Boston to play tennis with his wife’s uncle, Ken, whom I met in a military boot camp in Taiwan nearly half a century ago. In Taiwan, all male college students must undergo 2-year compulsory military services upon graduation unless you were lucky enough to get a waiver. Fortunately I was awarded an exemption because of my severe myopia; still I was required to go through four-month long military boot camp training before being allowed to study abroad for advanced degrees. At the camp I had the good fortune of acquainting with a stiff-upper lipped gentleman (not of the British kind but of the Japanese Samurai type!). This guy impressed me greatly with his occasional browsing of the Time magazine during his leisure hours. He had been to the States twice and had a Master’s degree in meteorology from the University of Michigan. He was then an instructor at the renowned National Taiwan University. At that time my command of the English language was so pitiful that I would have hard time understanding a sentence of that magazine even with the aid of a dictionary. Thus, I idolized him to no end and he was the only one I still had a vivid impression from that camp!

About two years ago during the US Open season, Gary invited us to have dinner in Manhattan with some of his family members. During the meal he chanced to mention that his wife’s uncle used to teach meteorology at the National Taiwan University. So I queried to see if he could be my idol at the boot camp and voila he was the one and only! In this way we got reconnected, thus Ken and I have been emailing back and forth since and I found out he also plays tennis. One day in July a snarl mail from Gary arrived in our mailbox and in it he suggested that if I would attend the US Open this year he would take us to Boston on September the 4th to see Ken and to play tennis with him there. I jumped at the idea because I would then have an excuse to visit my niece Joyce and her husband BY near Boston and to stay in their luxurious house in Lincoln! And this was how the Boston tea and tennis party came about.

9/2/2009: Arrival in the Big Apple, supper with Milo and Karin.
The flight from Nashville to La Guardia was uneventful and we arrived in New York ahead of schedule, quite an unusual feat these days. We then took a taxi to Melvin’s flat and had a simple lunch nearby before settling down to watch on wide-screen TV some US Open matches which were already well into the second round. We were also anxiously waiting for the arrival of our sweet grandson Milo and his mom from West Point. This would be our only chance to see him because Karin’s school had already started. They came around 6 and we rode the subway together to the restaurant recommended by Karin but when we got there we found it to be no longer in business. We walked back along the street to find another restaurant called ‘Saigon Grille’ which was about ten blocks away. Milo had boundless amount of energy, he would keep running from behind to touch and scare me. By the time we got to the restaurant he was tired, hungry, and ready to eat. We had a decent meal and when I was about to sign the bill with my credit card he said he wanted to do it. I told him he couldn’t because he didn’t have a credit card. To my infinite surprise he responded matter-of-factly that he could use his mother’s! He was only 2 and ½ years old and my advice to his parents would be ‘watch out!’ Afterwards Karin took Milo to stay at her parents’ house in New Jersey, and we went back to the flat to watch more tennis matches.

9/3/09: A day at the Open.
Since this would be the only day we could devote our full measure at the US Open, we woke up early in the morning and were at the subway stop around 9 a.m. Armed with the Metro day passes which allow unlimited subway rides, we took the #1 train to Time Square and then transferred to the #7 train. Instead of getting off at the USTA tennis center, the site of the US Open, we went one stop further to Flushing to have our Chinese-style breakfast. After the bellies were full, we purchased some take-outs for our lunch because the food-stands at the US Open site were unreasonably expensive. At the box office of the Open I had to decide whether I should only purchase the ground pass ($60) or adding Arthur Ashe Stadium which is an extra $15 that day. Cognizant of the fact that the first match at the Stadium was the ever-so-consistent #4-seeded Dementieva against a 17-year old American teenager who got in by a wild card privilege; I made the fatal blunder of not spending the extra $30 for the Stadium seats thinking it would be a washout. Upon entering the site and at the American Express booth we picked up free radios which allow one to clip on one’s ear and listen to matches at several other courts. While strolling around the ground watching matches at various outside courts, my ear was tuned to the play-by-play action in the Stadium. It turned out the match was not only exciting but appeared to be a gigantic upset in the making. Unfortunately all gates to the Stadium were guarded and I had no way of gaining entrance to witness the biggest upset of the tournament. So the take home lesson for me: Do not underestimate anyone and don’t be too stingy or you might miss something huge and come to regret for the rest of your life!

The American teenager subsequently defeated the million-dollar screaming baby Sharapova and Amazon-like Petrova, whom were all seeded players. Along with her first Russian victim in the first round, the American teenager Melanie Oudin had suddenly become the giant killer, downing four Russian ladies in a row! Unfortunately the Cinderella story was eventually ended at the quarter final level by a 19-year old Dane Wozniake who reached the final but was defeated by Clijsters, the mother of an 18-month old baby girl! These and the profanity-laced outburst to a line judge by Serena and the lost of Roger to Del Potro in the men’s final were some of the highlights of this year’s US Open.

In the evening, we were back to Flushing again but this time was to have dinner with my cousin Kathy and her husband. This was to make amends for the invitation mishap to Irwin’s wedding, I phoned and told her about it but somehow Irwin forgot to send out the invitation to her. After the dinner we took the subway back to the apartment and watched the night sessions of the Open on TV before hitting the hays.

9/04/09: On Road to Boston and a get-together dinner.
Gary and his wife Su came to the apartment to pick us up around 10 a.m. and we were on our way to Boston! Su brought along stuffed rice balls and drinks, so we had a lunch picnic at a rest area on one of the highways. We had a very pleasant drive mainly on parkways which were lined with soothing green trees. We reminisced about family stories of Ken, Gary, and some mutual friends, and before you knew it we were in the Boston area! We managed to find Joyce’s house without a GPS, quite an accomplishment indeed! We were welcomed into her impressive house and had some watermelons before Gary and Su headed for Ken’s house in Lexington which was only about a 10-minute drive.

In the evening Joyce and BY drove us to the “Bernard’s Chinese Restaurant” which was located inside an upscale shopping mall in the suburb of Boston. We were later joined by Gary, Su, Ken and his wife to have dinner there. I was the host of this get-together dinner because I wanted to express my appreciation to Ken and his wife for their invitation to come to Boston for a tennis party, to Gary and Su for their red-carpet door-to-door car services, and to Joyce and BY for providing us with free room and board during our tenure in the Boston area. We had a nice dinner with dishes especially selected for us by the manager whom BY knew quite well, as he dined and wined his firm’s clients there quite often. Despite the restaurant’s name the dishes turned out to be quite authentically Chinese! So the Boston Tea Party got to a belly-filling start.

9/5/09: Tennis in an air force base and a Taiwanese dinner feast.
After a nice breakfast prepared by both Joyce and BY, they dropped us off at Ken’s house. We then packed into Ken’s van along with his tennis-playing Taiwanese neighbor Dr. Lee and headed for the tennis courts. The reason we had to get into Ken’s van was because we needed his ID/credential to get into the restricted base where Ken had devoted his lifetime doing weather research for the air force since receiving his doctorate from the University of Michigan. This airfield had been used in landing the presidential jets for various historical occasions in Boston, such as Obama’s attendance at the recent Edward Kennedy’s funeral services. Later we also found out that Dr. Lee’s sister was a classmate of Katherine in college and they are related to the now retired head of the National Academy of Sciences in Taiwan who was known for his considerable prowess in tennis. We played some doubles with Ken’s six other old tennis buddies in a bubble which was actually quite nice since the gates could be rolled up to let in fresh air, blending in both indoor and outdoor advantages. After the tennis, Ken took us to have some sushi in a Japanese restaurant for lunch. We then went back to Joyce’s place to have showers and naps

In the evening we all went to Ken’s house for a Taiwanese feast. We started by each attacking a big Maine lobster as an appetizer. While we were enjoying our lobsters outdoor on the deck, mosquitoes were also busy sucking bloods from the ladies with tender skins and higher body temperatures. So we retreated to inside the house to enjoy the rest of the feast. We sat around a dinner table full of cooked vegetable, meats, shrimps, and crushed peanuts and they were to be placed on thin wrappers with high tensile strength made of a special kind of flour. It’s a Taiwanese delicacy and was quite tasty. We were then treated with some delicious home-made desserts prepared by Ken’s wife, an excellent cook. Would you believe she once demonstrated oriental cooking for Julia Child, the American icon of French cooking?!

9/6/09: Tennis in the park and dinner in a nice Japanese restaurant.
In the morning we along with Ken and BY went to a park to play some tennis. There were ten courts in a very nice setting with generous dose of tree shades. Risking a divorce, Katherine and I teamed up to play against Ken and BY. Katherine stood up quite well to the gentlemen but they soon discovered where the weak link was and exploited it relentlessly. I am ashamed to say I missed most of the balls coming my way and as a consequence lost in a 3-set match, still the morning outing was very enjoyable. After dropping Ken at his house we went back to take showers and rested a bit. Then I recalled a friend of mine during my years in Vancouver, Canada while I was doing post-doctoral research at the University of British Columbia. He was in fact my office mate working with the same professor and he now is residing in the Boston area. I gave him a ring and he was surprised and asked me where I was and ‘Lincoln’ was my reply. He said his office was in Lincoln and he just happened to be on his way to his office to do some work despite its being Sunday. So he came over to BY’s house and we finally met after about 40 years. We had light lunch together at BY’s house and did some more catching up. It turned out he has been working in a research lab inside the air base where we played tennis just the day before. After a couple of hours’ pleasant chats we bade farewell and he went back to the air base to do some work.

Joyce and BY wanted to be the hosts of this evening’s farewell dinner in a nice Japanese restaurant and they invited Gary, Su, Ken and his wife to come to the house earlier around 4 p.m. Upon their arrival I suggested that BY gave the guests a grand tour of his grand house. It turned out BY helped design his own dream house so he was able to explain to us the intricacies of various architectural subtleties of the house. We started with the basement floor which housed the activity rooms including an entertaining center with video projector and a theater-sized screen, a billiard table, a guest bed room, a golf practicing area with a net set, and a professional ballroom studio complete with a wall mirror. Then we moved up to the ground floor which consisted of a grand entrance facing the wedding-style spiral staircases, a large kitchen and eating area, a formal dining room, a TV area with Karaoke facilities, a music room with piano (a baby grand, by the way Joyce is quite an accomplished amateur pianist), and a well-stocked library section which is my favorite. The next floor is the living area which Joyce refused to let the guests walk through (because of tidiness or lack of it?) except for a very nice spacious room above the garage with a big desk, leathered sofa, and some video facilities. The house is quite magnificent in the eyes of this hillbilly from Tennessee, with about 9000 sq. ft. of living space and very elegant decors. Although I was aware of the fact that BY graduated summa cum laude from his university class in electrical engineering, I didn’t realize he is such a multi-faceted talent. He thrives to excel in everything he does, be it academic, business, dancing, singing, golf, or tennis. If there were to be a minor complain from me it would have been his inability to converse in Taiwanese despite his being born and raised in that island. Even this was soon forgiven and forgotten with his wonderful rendition of Taiwanese love songs singing duet with his Taiwanese-speaking partner and outshining her! We had so much fun in the house that two hours had quietly gone by without notice.

At around 6 p.m. we packed into two cars and headed for the Japanese restaurant. The foods were excellent and the waitress friendly, just happened to be another Taiwanese! Ken and Joyce ordered some ice-cold Sake (Japanese rice wine), I thought Sake had to be warm and was also surprised that the mild mannered Joyce could out drink her uncle yours truly! It must be the effect of Sake that Ken started to loosen up and talk more freely, so I follow suit by talking nonsense and kidding him around mercilessly. I imitated his Samurai air while reading Time magazine or playing tennis. I kidded him about his strange courtship of writing love letters to his future wife who was still in Taiwan in English rather than in Chinese or Japanese which they both were well versed. Fortunately Ken was in good spirit and a good sport about it all. So we had a riotous evening together before our return to the Big Apple next morning.


9/7/09: Return trip to the Big Apple and dinner with some high school friends.
At around 8:20 a.m. we got all things packed and ready for Gary and Su to come pick us up at 8:30. Thinking there were still 10 minutes to spare I decided to go to the toilet to do my last bidding: to discharge some of last night’s delicious foods. After a few minutes of struggle I could feel something on the way but before it could see the daylight I heard the chiming of the door bell, so I immediately stopped the process and ran down the stairs to bid farewell to Joyce and BY and headed for NYC.

We took a different route back because Gary wanted us to meet some high school friends living in the New Jersey area for lunch. It took about 4 hours to get to the restaurant and when we arrived we discovered that there were 6 classmates along with their spouses. The foods were too plentiful for a lunch and I volunteered to pay our own shares but they refused. I felt somewhat uneasy because I didn’t know some of the people well enough to feel comfortable having them share the costs of our meal. I felt a certain sense of imposition on them even though I didn’t have such compunction towards my niece Joyce because unlucky for her I am the only A-gu (uncle) she has on her mother’s side! In the evening Irwin and Aya, who was carrying our second grandson due at the month’s end, came all the way from Brooklyn to have dinner with us in a Thai restaurant just across the street from the flat. We were glad to see Aya doing fine and showing no fear of the impending childbirth.

9/8/09: Watching US Open on TV.
We could have gone to the US Open today, but judged from the exponential rise on the ticket price as the final drew closer we decided to stay in the flat to watch the matches in the comfort of sofa and big TV screen. We bought take-outs for lunch as well as supper and spent the whole day in front of the tube. Actually it was quite enjoyable and I was thrilled by some exciting matches. Next day we flew back to Nashville, thus ended the splendid weekend in Boston and resumed my boring daily routines at home! There is, however, one fall-out from this otherwise very nice trip, i.e. the frequent reminder from Katherine about the virtue of a big-screen TV and I have no choice but to practice my selective hearing from time to time!