To celebrate the moon festival, the company's Chinese-American Association (yeah, we have one of those) had lunch at Hong Fu in Cupertino. It was an endless stream of seafood and vegetable dishes. For dessert, there were red bean moon cakes.

Throughout lunch, I felt a little left out. Most of the conversation at the table was either in Mandarin or Cantonese. My contribution was a lot of smiling, nodding and clueless looks. A, a member of our department's MIS group, noticed my bewildered countenance and was kind enough to translate every so often.

After work, I joined a large group for a full moon hike in the Marin Headlands. Our destination was Tennessee Beach, which is at the end of the popular Tennessee Valley Trail. It's amazing how much longer a hike feels when carrying extra blankets, food, logs or two buckets full of beer-soaked corn. We ate, drank and tried to stay warm as we waited for the moon to rise above the cliffs. It finally did, just as the rangers came by to tell us to extinguish our source of warmth. In the silver glow of moonlight, we enjoyed moon cakes and green tea.