Angela Tung Oversharing on the internet since 2005.

While this weekend will be all about Vegas baby!, yesterday was all about my cousin’s baby Mia. (Pictures to come.)

Overall it was a pretty quiet visit. Besides playing with the baby, my cousin HL and I caught up. She, like my parents, think I should stay at my current job forever, find a new husband, buy a house, and settle down, though she’s a bit more understanding about my current itchiness for adventure and change.

HL is just two and a half years older than I am but much more conservative. I could say it’s because she grew up in China, but her husband, who’s American, is the same way.

If you don’t already know the story of HL, it goes something like this: nine years ago I went to China and met her, the daughter of my mother’s first cousin, for the first time. She was married to a professor at the school where I was teaching English – in fact, her husband was the one who got me the job.

J. and R. were the two other American English teachers, and of course we all became friends. After HL’s husband went on sabbatical to Moscow, she became friends with them too. That February, J. and R.’s son S. came to visit, and for him and HL it was basically love at first sight. Eventually she left her first husband, married S., and moved to the States.

For a long time, certain family members looked down at HL, deeming her a gold-digger, wondering how she could leave her poor husband, he was so nice, etc. Turns out he had been cheating on her for a long time. She only told me after I told her my story, several years later. She let everyone think she was an asshole and did her own thing.

Yesterday she was telling me she used to wonder why she married her first husband. They had nothing in common; she didn’t love him. She was only doing what was expected of her. Then she realized why she married him. If she hadn’t, I probably wouldn’t have gotten that job at his school. I wouldn’t have come there, became friends with J. and R., introduced them to HL, connecting her to S.

What’s fated, and what can be controlled?

I’ve always thought HL and I have had these parallel lives, so different up till we met. Now we’re both in the States, both having left bad marriages behind us. She’s lucky in that she met S. Someday maybe for me, only the right person, at the right time.

This is so part 2 of my memoir.

Anyway, we’ll be leaving for our road trip to Vegas in about an hour. It’s warm/hot here, but at least it’s not humid.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 15th, 2007 at 11:46 am and is filed under family, travel. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.