Te^'t 2004 (Lunar New Year)

Almost every year since Hong and I have lived in New York, we have thrown a party for Te^'t. When we lived at Waverly Place, we would invite everyone we knew and they would all crowd into our little West Village apartment. Pressed up against one another in the wee hallway, we would toast and celebrate the New Year. We never had any Vietnamese friends to invite, it was always all our other friends - people who were happy to come drink with us and ring in Te^'t, but didn't really know what it meant.

This year, for the first time, we actually had Vietnamese friends to invite! At some point in the night Hong and I looked up into a crowd of black haired slanty eyed folk and were astonished. Alot of our friends complemented the new mixture. Cousin May came down from Boston and cousin Richard from the Upper East Side. Many of the artists we had met showed up, Stephen, Khanh and Trong. New friends like Souris and Silvio and Bao's craiglist group joined us too. It was definitely a change from our usual Te^'t parties, but a welcome change.