1:35 PM: “Hey, it’s your sister. I’m leaving basically the same message as your mother just left, but basically Mom and Auntie are on their way to Seattle but the car ran into problems – something about spurting flames or something like that. We would like you to go to the airport and pick up uncle…”
Later: So I did end up picking up Mom’s older brother and sister-in-law at the airport after receiving that message, and a bunch of other, more urgent ones from Mom. The relatives were flying in from Taipei, enroute to Vancouver; so there was a rather disturbing period as the plane disembarked and nearly everyone came off wearing surgical masks, including the relatives. (SARS fears, obviously.) I had to specifically tell them to take the things off before boarding Metro transit. When I got home, Mom and her younger sister (Aunt Ling) were there waiting; apparently the reports of flames were somewhat exaggerated, it turned out to be a drive belt which had disintegrated and so they had managed to get the thing fixed by someone. Rather prosaic ending, although Mom’s younger brother (the garage mechanic, aka Barbarian*) is supposedly in a lot of trouble with Aunt Ling for not fixing the van correctly.
*I feel I should make three points here: 1. Barbarian got his epithet from his own father (i.e. my grandfather), not us; 2. Barbarian has been in very hot water with Mom (and us) as well for years, to the point where we don’t speak to him or his family; and 3. I have a pretty strange extended family.
