Now That's Entertainment . . . Issue # 6

[[ WARNING: The following piece contains material and/or language that may offend some readers.  Do I care?  No, not really.... but either way, Reader discretion is advised. ]]

"The Fork in the Road"
 
I wrote this for my English 12 class about a week ago, and I thought I'd share this with you now.  It was marked with goverment final exam standards in mind, by my english teacher on a scale of six.  For those of you who know me as "Flawless", it will come to no surprise that I, of course, got six out of six.  *cheers*  Without further ado, may I present, "The Fork in the Road."

I've lived in the city of Vancouver my entire life and have always enjoyed this suburban life.  For as long as I can remember, my uncle Vincent and his son, my cousin, Kenny, have been a staple in my life.  Kenny and I used to do a lot together.  That is until my uncle got offered a high-paying, high prestige job, nay, career in the city of Hong Kong, shortly after the handover back to China.  As it turns out, he accepted the opportunity to work in the business capital of Southeast Asia.

My life has moved on and so has his.  While in Vancouver, he had a job at the hospital with very reasonable pay.  I thought he was happy right where he was.  However, the professor gig in Hong Kong called to him like a long lost friend.  The pay was substantially higher; the university would pay for living expenses; heck, they even got a freaking maid.  So, I figured, he's got to be happy now right?  That is what we want.

Well, they've lived there for a few years now, in their upper-middle class home in Hong Kong.  The maid doing the cooking, the cleaning, and the rest of those monotonous tedios tasks.  The money rolled in, taxes were minimal;  I thought they were happy.

This past summer, my uncle and my cousins, Kenny and Clinton, dropped by for a visit during the holidays.  Without my aunt, who was working for Motorola Inc. in Hong Kong, we had our family dinners and the rest of all that "family" stuff.  It was at a quasi-formal dinner that Vincent let us all know something, something that didn't startle the rest of the table, but it sure shook me up personally.

He was unhappy.  The long hours and the hectic Hong Kong big-city life had started to get to him.  When I asked Kenny about this, when I asked which he liked better, Vancouver or Hong Kong, no clean-cut response was given.  It was painfully clear that he wanted no part of the decision.

There's that word.  Decision.  A word that has plagued the greatest of minds for the longest of times.  Einstein had to decide whether to work on his theorems or get into the beauty industry.  He had to decide whether to come up with E=mc˛ or comb his hair.  Not exactly an important decision, per se, but a decision nonetheless.  The American people, our neighbours to the south, had to choose between declaring independence, or staying as the 13 British colonies.  The American people and our friend Albert both made intelligent, and in my mind, the right decisions.  I can only hope that my uncle will do the same.

However, there's a problem with that.  In this instance, there isn't exactly a right answer nor is there a wrong answer.  Ask one person and he'll say that Vincent should stay in Hong Kong with the dollars.  Ask another random person, and another answer will surface.  I know what I think is the so-called "right" answer.

There are pros and cons to my choice, and whether it is the same as Vincent remains to be seen.  I think that he should pack it up and head on back to the Pacific Northwest, back to the West Coast, back to Vancouver, back...home.  Upon hearing about his displeasure, my uncle's former employer in Vancouver offered him a "better", higher-paying job than that he had previously.  We're talking 100 K here, mind you, the government would take more than their fair share in taxes.  Because of these taxes, his pay in Hong Kong remains substantially more than the job offered to him here.  Yes, they'll have to go through the difficult process and packing everything up, and moving again, but it's worth it.

They'll return to familiar faces.  His old colleagues, his old friends, and most importantly, his family will be waiting with open arms.  Both Kenny and Clinton spent many of their years on this Earth, here in Vancouver.  It's their birthplace, even though they spent a few years living in HK, Vancouver is still their true home, not some overcrowded, uncourteous metropolis called Hong Kong.

Yes, decisions are tough, it's true, there's not doubting that, and this one is no different.  Whatever my uncle decides with his life, the life of his immediate family, and his job situation, he can rest assured that his family here, his extended family here in Vancouver, is behind him.  As our friend Michael Corleone told us, it's all about the family.  With any decisions, there are consequences and reprecussions yes, but remember all of the good things that are attached to a decision too.  What would the United States of America, nay, the world be like today without that fateful day when some patriots decided to dump crates of tea into Boston Harbor?

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© 1999 Michael Kwan.  Reproduction, exhibition or distribution of the preceeding piece without the expressed written consent of the author(s) can result in severe criminal and civil penalties under international agreements.  

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