2026 Spring Festival

Back after the break

The first meeting after five weeks off — the New Year meeting was cancelled and the Lantern Festival took another Tuesday — so the theme caught up with the calendar. Table Topics ran through the whole New Year checklist: buying New Year goods, the Spring Festival travel rush, the reunion dinner, lucky money, visiting relatives, watching the Spring Festival Gala.

The Word of the Day was “illuminate.”

Prepared speeches

Jason spoke on Beijing (Pathway 2.2). Min gave “Finding my quiet self” (PM 1.2), and the nerves were public: “I still haven’t memorized my script,” she wrote that afternoon, then “I’m totally bombing this.” The reply came in two minutes: “it’s fine, I’ll be right there with you.”

Afterwards she quoted the passage from Su Shi’s Red Cliff Rhapsody that had anchored her speech, on the clear breeze over the river and the bright moon among the hills being there for anyone to take in and never used up, first in English translation, then, when someone asked for it, again in the original classical Chinese. Her summary of why she keeps coming: “I come to SZTM to feel alive, not like a little mouse keeping running.” And a second reason, offered later that night: “public speaking can help stave off dementia, so I’m going to keep speaking.”

Someone else drew the obvious conclusion from all the Su Shi and volunteered a future topic: “next time I could give a speech on how to make Dongpo pork.”