I Still Suck At Chauffeuring

today, my mother returned from her vacation to hong kong. my father was quite excited. he seemed almost giddy and anxious to ride with me to pick her up at logan airport. one of the duties of a good son according to ancient chinese tradition is to obey your parents, help them with things, and all that jazz. so, i had no problems with picking my mother up at the airport. unfortunately, i still suck at chauffeuring.

because my dad was a little excited, we left a little early. when we arrived at terminal e of boston's logan airport (for international arrivals), we were not surprised to find that we had some time to kill before my mom had to pick up her luggage and all that. naturally, we thought we could just circle around the airport.

too bad we didn't follow the signs correctly. we ended up exiting the airport altogether, paying the toll, exiting at south boston, looping back to the airport, and back at terminal e (like deja vu). sure, it was a roundabout way. the drive, however, did kill the necessary time as when we arrived the second time, my mom was ready and waiting by the curb for us. (i suppose in retrospect, we probably should have just double-parked our car by the curb, but i felt that was somewhat illegal.)

anyway, i managed to drive my parents back home safely. when we got to my parents' house, my mom gave me my necklace back. (pictured below is the necklace.)



my mom had given me the necklace shortly after i got married. the necklace, however, broke a link and my mom brought it back to hong kong to get it fixed. why she chose to bring it back to hong kong and not somewhere in the united states, i do not know. i assumed it had to do with some family tradition or something.

anyway, for anyone curious (and i know it's hard to tell by the picture), the chinese character on the charm is "fook". according to google answers, fook

"means fortune/luck/happy. The word 'Fook' is often used at Chinese new year, on lucky red packets for giving out gifts of money, on greeting cards, and particulary as a lucky charm where it is appears as a diamond shaped poster stuck on doors upside down.

It is stuck on upside down as a charm, because in Chinese it means 'Fook Do' meaning 'luck is coming' ('Do' in Chinese also means upside down, which is phonetically the same as 'come' hence why it is turned upside down). Anyone displaying their 'Fook' (on a door) the 'correct' way up is actually displaying it wrongly! It is stuck on a door as the door is the way into the house (to allow an entrance for the fortune/happiness to come into the household)"

so yes, the character on my necklace is upside down so that the luck will not run out. and for anyone who is also curious, on the other side of the fook character (the side not pictured) is a tiger, which is the year i was born in based on the chinese zodiac.