Hotel Breakfast

My cousin got married last weekend and so a whole clan of us came from all over the world - no, quite literally - to partake in the celebration. At the hotel during breakfast I found my uncle (actually, my father's cousin, which makes him... what does that make him?) who resides in Hong Kong sitting alone, so I joined him, knowing that it would be an interesting breakfast.

He's a chatty one, my uncle, always has something to say about everything, while admitting that the thing he's most well-versed at is BS-ing. Interesting, like I said. Most of the time it's something about some relative of ours (whom I don't know) - since my family is very large. Very. He speaks deliberately, in his British slash Chinese-accented English (work with me here), and always with a twinkle in his eyes like he is about to make you laugh.

"I was talking to my cousin about something I read in the newspaper. His alma mater admitted a 12-yr old Taiwanese boy into a PhD program."

Twelve?

"I wonder, I said to him, why higher education institutions have not, in my living memory, admitted a child prodigy for, say, literature, or history?"

Hmm.. good question.

"His alma mater, by the way, is the Massachussets Institute of Technology."

He does have a dramatic flare about him.

"In my living memory. Not a single one."

He was looking for me to react - I know - but I was more interested in what he was going to say next. Plus I was busy chewing my food. Good breakfast. So he went on.

"We think that it's because a 12-yr old boy cannot know - or know very little of it, to articulate it - the depth of being in love, or being betrayed, or wanting to die for something. Suffering or deep disappointment in the world, no matter how genius he is... and that's the stuff of literature."

He smiled, knowing that I was agreeing with him.