It's that time of the year again..

Today is the last day of February. It is the last day of rest before normal classes in college starts again. It is also the last day of the Chinese new year festival which also means its "valentines day" for the Chinese. But most importantly, today is the last day to do my blog posting so here i go again.

Seeing as this is the last day of Chinese new year,let me just share with you guys some drama that happened a week ago during a dinner at my grandma's house.

On the sixth day of the new year (today is the fifteenth), My whole extended family met at my grandma's house to celebrate her birthday. To lessen the burden of my grandparents, it was decided between my mother and her siblings that the adults will cook instead of the grandparents. Ideas popped up here and there and in the end it was decided that we should have steamboat for dinner! there was only one problem - Steamboat is nothing without seafood, and my grandparents (plus my youngest uncle)are vegetarians. A quick solution of having two separate steamboats was suggested and everyone was happy. Or so it seemed.

At about dinner time, although not all the guests have arrived yet, the some of the children were starting to feel hungry. So some of the adults decided to start the normal steamboat to let the children eat. When this happened, all those present who were omnivores went out to the porch to eat. This made youngest uncle very unhappy.

To cut the long story short, at the end of that day, I helped to clean up, my cousins helped to clean up, my other relatives helped to clean up, but youngest uncle sulked at a corner eating cake with "annoyed" written all over his face. Sometime after i left, according to my aunts, he stood up, half eaten cake in hand and scolded his remaining sibling about how wrong and disrespectful they were for leaving the elderly (ironically he is included) to eat alone at the dinning table and to contaminate the utensils and cutlery with meat. When he went home, he composed a very fiery email to everyone telling how wrong everything was and firing accusations everywhere.

Now, while this conflict has brought into light that we might have overlooked certain important elements regarding how to treat the elderly since this conflict was sparked based on a clashing of cultures ie beliefs and religion,the way the emails were presented was very accusing. he had placed all the responsibility of what he saw was wrong on us. till this day, many have been proved unreasonable and at first he refused to apologize saying that he was disappointed that we wont change our perception so he wont change his either. He attributed stubbornness and ignorance as a reason for the 'mistakes' he saw.

We have learned that competing style of conflict causes resentment. i can say it is very true especially when used with verbal aggressiveness. Blaming is never a good choice. i can understand where he is coming from but its very very one sided. from his outburst, it can also be said that he has been gunnysacking many 'mistakes' over the past few year. The adults have called a family meeting to address the issues he has pointed out but he has refused to attend claiming that there is no need to discuss anything and just do what he said. I really hope this issue is resolved as i cant have much say in this. this is between the adults. how embarrassing..