Feeling the Economic Downturn through a Birthday Meal
My family rarely finds itself as a complete whole. With my attending school in Connecticut and London and running all over Asia-Pacific in between , and my father running his own research lab in Shanghai and attending conferences around the world, the family is often split up in three pieces, three countries, and even three continents. Its only so often that we can actually have family meal together, especially on my birthday. The rare coincidence called for a quick visit to the neighborhood Chinese restaurant on the eve of my birthday .
Physically speaking, San Diego and US as a whole certainly has not changed much during my one-and-a-half-year absence. But just by going to a meal in the restaurant, the superficial sameness goes away, and much gloomy changes reveal themselves. Specifically, I can say after a single meal that the general economic conditions in the US, after that financial crisis of 2008 , has not gone back up (as some expected), but pretty much stayed the s