See, yesterday I was told that I'd be going to a barbecue. I was wondering how Uncle Jim would manage a barbecue at the tail end of December. I thought maybe it was one of those joke 'summer in winter' theme party things or something. But no, it was just a hotpot.

Those Chinese things where you set a pot of boiling water on a portable heater on the top of the table, and everyone sits around and tosses raw stuff into it, like thin slices of beef, stuffed fishballs, squid, shrimp, tofu, tofu skin, leafy vegetables, carrots, taro root, and noodles. You can ladle it up again from the water when it's cooked with a little wire net (there are different nets and different chopsticks for the raw and cooked foods). And you put it in your bowl, which is filled with a sauce of some sort, though at some hotpots you can crack an egg into your bowl, so that when you put the hot food into your bowl and stir it into the yolk, it cooks the egg, and you have a sort of batter on your food.

I still like barbecues better. For one thing, hotpots make me feel rather discombobulated hanging out with a bunch of old Chinese people.