The Jennifer Blogs

Growing up, I remember my friend’s uncle Dennis. Dennis Dennis. First name - Dennis. Last name - Dennis. No kidding. And my high school boyfriend went to school with a girl named Snow White. My mom told us about a girl she knew growing up by the name of Lula Belle Thigpen. That struck us as funny too. But when I took D’Ette to the doctor the other day, I thought to myself, “Now this man literally has a funny name.”

The sign on the door read: Dr. Michael Ha.

I wonder if his parents had considered naming him twice, like Dennis Dennis’s parents did. Then he’d have been Ha Ha. And if he has a son, they could have named him Mini Ha Ha. (A little family joke.)

As you can tell, the magazines at the doctor’s office weren’t that great. I let my mind wander a bit.

The Singaporeans will be celebrating the Moon Festival, or Mid-Autumn Festival, in a couple of weeks. The festival dates back to China’s Zhou Dynasty some three thousand years ago. In Singapore, it’s also called the Lantern Festival or the Mooncake Festival. You see a picture of a mooncake above.

According to WikiPedia, the Mid-Autumn Festival is one of the two most important holidays in the Chinese calendar. (The other is the Chinese Lunar New Year.) It’s the day Chinese families gather together to admire the bright harvest moon and eat moon cakes and pomeloes together. (We’ve already discussed in a previous blog how much I love dem pomeloes!)

To celebrate the Moon Festival like a good little Chinese, you may:
Eat mooncakes outside under the moon
Put pomelo rinds on your head
Carry brightly-lit lanterns
Burn incense to revere the gods
Plan Mid-Autumn trees
Collect and distribute dandelion leaves
Participate in a dragon dance

Since our family is not Chinese we will probably eat mooncakes (cuz who doesn’t love a good cake?), eat pomeloes, put the rinds on Jean-Luc’s head, and maybe get a day off work.