OPINION
Page 6 n THE ASIAN REPORTER
November 7, 2016
Volume 26 Number 21
November 7, 2016
ISSN: 1094-9453
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MY TURN
n Wayne Chan
An electrifying fair
ell, now I’ve done it.
I didn’t think I would. Actually, I was sure
I wouldn’t. I have too much on my plate
already. I wouldn’t be able to do it justice. Even if I
wanted to do it, I just don’t have the time, so no way,
it’s just not gonna happen. I’m ruling it out.
Someone else will have to do it. It’s not happening.
No way, no how.
And yet, for all my naysaying and absolute
rejection of it, I’m doing it.
What am I talking about?
I “volunteered” to be the chairman of the San
Diego Chinese New Year faire.
How on earth did this possibly happen? What
could have occurred to compel me to take on this job?
That’s the thing — I didn’t. In the end, my friends
did me in.
It started simply enough. I was recently asked to
sit on the board of the San Diego Chinese Historical
Museum. I wasn’t really looking to serve on another
board, but after receiving the invitation, I thought it
was for a good cause and a terrific museum. And I
already knew several people on the board. It’s also
important to note that the museum has nothing to
do with the Chinese New Year faire.
I attended the first board meeting and all was
well, nothing really out of the ordinary … until the
very end of the meeting.
Our board chair mentioned the San Diego
Chinese Center was planning to close its doors after
many decades of service and was looking for another
group to continue organizing the one large event
they put on every year. That event? You guessed it
— the San Diego Chinese New Year faire.
Our board chair then looked around the table,
finally setting his eyes on me, and asked, “Wayne,
do you think you could help look at the feasibility of
us taking this on?”
And for reasons I will likely never understand, I
said, “Sure, I’d be happy to help.”
How it went from my agreeing to do a feasibility
study to chairing the whole thing is a story unto
itself, but let’s just say peer pressure can be a very
W
powerful thing.
Deep down inside, I suspect there is a more
meaningful reason why I decided to do it.
It was 1990. I had just moved back to San Diego
after working a few years at my first job following
college graduation when I decided to get involved
with the local Chinese community. I knew the
annual Chinese New Year faire was coming up and
it always needed people, so after attending a few
volunteer meetings, I was assigned to work the
children’s booth, manning the goldfish pond game.
The game entailed setting down a small plastic
pool and filling it with water and goldfish. Floating
on the surface of the water were hundreds of plastic
bowls. The point of the game was to toss ping-pong
balls into the bowls. If the kids were able to land a
ball in one of the bowls, they won a live goldfish.
The only issue with the game was that it was
pouring down rain during the fair. As the rain
cascaded off the top of the booth tent, there was
some kind of short circuit that was causing a light
above me to spark every few minutes. This was a
little disconcerting since I was standing above a pool
handling bags of water with live goldfish in them.
I kept thinking the headline for the next day’s
newspaper would be, “Man electrocuted at
children’s pool … but goldfish are fine.”
So you can see why I might be a little hesitant to
jump back into the whole Chinese New Year faire
thing.
Well, except for one thing.
During the volunteer meetings, I met the
executive director of the San Diego Chinese Center.
I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She was the most
beautiful girl I had ever met. And I couldn’t find the
nerve to even talk to her. But somehow I managed to
ask her out for dinner at some point.
Who was this girl?
Her name was Maya, and we recently celebrated
our 25th wedding anniversary together.
I may have been nearly electrocuted, but that fair
meant the world to me.
So I guess I’m all in.
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