A Celebration of Friendship
... by Paul Lee
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The genesis of a party to honor SL and Betty came from a urgent message from Rose saying that she wished to do something for them. Since, according to Max, Rose��s wish is our command, I wrote to the Huangs on March 29, 2013:
SL and Betty,
How are you? After the Chinglish and dinner extravaganza (and many such events before that ), we would like to stage something to show our appreciation. One idea was to put up a play by ourselves and invite you as the honored guests. This idea was vetoed because of the universal suffering it will inflict on all concerned, particularly the guests.
So here is an alternative scheme. We, the Meat and Wine members, would like to invite you to a dinner in the San Gabriel area. The main difficulty, of course, is to find a date that you are actually here. Do you have some possible dates in May? One possibility is May 4, Sat. If you can squeeze us in between Antarctica and Timbuktu, that will be great.
Best regards,
Paul
I got a prompt reply from Betty:
Hi Amy and Paul,
S.L. and I will absolutely LOVE it if our group can put together a play/ show/ singing/ karaoke for us......... As we have so many hidden talents within our group! Besides just eat and drink, and chat, it is about time we show that CalTech students are multitalented and full of fun!
I will definitely check with my boss and work on a few dates together to make it work.
Thank you so much for your kind thoughts.
Best,
Betty
We quickly settled on the date of May 5. The response for the dinner has been overwhelming, except for KaBing and Phyllis, who will be out of town, everybody joined in enthusiastically. But we were intrigued by Betty��s challenge of putting up some sort of performance. We quickly recruited Lydia to come up with the libretto and Maria to fashion that into some songs. Maria, gauging the overall musicality of this gang, settled on the ��Happy Birthday�� tune. As an addition test of our latent musical talent, she also chose ��Edelweiss,�� Many e-mails were exchanged to fine-tune Lydia and Maria��s effort before the final masterpieces were finalized.
We sent out the copies to the whole group, fully realizing that our labor of love will be totally ignored. But we felt that we should have at least one rehearsal before our official premiere. This was set on May 4. Maria, Sean, Kevin, Mary, Amy and myself showed up at the rehearsal. We went through the lyrics and libretto and made suitable adjustments for a group of basically tone-deaf aspirants. Since Sean has clearly the best voice, he was made the conductor for the first piece. I was able to beat down the competition for conducting ��Edelweiss�� on the strength that I own an Austrian jacket from Vienna. Amy, the producer, stressed the grave consequence of our performance and made everybody perfectly nervous. Some final touches, like the chime and the opening overtures were added in the course of six hour rehearsal. Amy sent out some final instruction that everybody should be at our house at 3 pm to have a one hour practice before the semper punctualis Huangs get here at 4.
The big day began with a frantic phone call from Kevin that SL were planning to be early. A scheme was worked out thereby Kevin was entrusted to escort SL and Betty so that would arrive after four. With this crisis under control we were ready.
Maria and Sean arrived in good time and the other singers trickled in after three. Now it is some matter of urgency that we get on with the practice. When Rose arrived, she asked to use the wash room but was persuaded that she should start the singing practice instead. After the singing, we rehearsed the stage movements and felt ready for our honored guest.
At 4:15, the Huangs arrived. They saw nothing unusual with the familiar crowd. When Amy gave them tickets for a Matinee performance, they were a little nonplussed. When the chime rung, they were ushered into their orchestra seats and the performers, led by Rose and Max, cha-cha-cha��ed their way in. After Amy brought in SL��s birthday cake, we burst into Act 1 with gusto. The act ended with wild applause from the audience.
After a suitable interlude, the chime sounded once more and the Huang��s were back to their front row seats. After an overture of the ��Sound of Music�� theme, Amy announced the ��Captain Von Paul and the Meat and Wine chorus.�� The troupe marched in with the audience in obvious uncontrollable anticipation. The rendering of our ��Edelweiss�� surpassed our wildest dreams. After some insistent calls for ��Encore�� we sang our signature piece: ��Do Re Me.��
Basking on the glow of a successful performance, we became relaxed. This was made all the easier with cocktail from Lydia. We ate the mango cake in honor of SL��s birthday.
At 6:15, we started for the restaurant ��Mission 261.�� Instead of following the Islamic practice, we drew lot to have our dinner seat. After we were properly seated in the private room, we saw two empty seats. Marie and Hilary were missing. They were not familiar with the area and I immediately regretted that I had not collected their share of dinner beforehand. Luckily they turned up just a little later and we started our banquet.
Ten course and six bottles of wine later we were mellow and happy. SL and then Betty rose to give their thanks and appreciation. They were marvelous and heartfelt speeches. That concluded our historical performance and held promise for greater things to come.
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Click Here to View Pictures from Daniel Kwok
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