(我以前的一篇舊文，稍微經過修改)
A friend's relatives just came from Taiwan. They will live here for two to three years, so he is helping them out and driving them to places to do some shopping and find an apartment to stay. My roommate called him up for a chat, learned about this and was invited to his house for a hot-pot. I tagged along.
How we ended up in a Cambridge brewery(*) is another story; this sort of thing happens a lot. So, we had a nice dinner. After the dinner, we left the restaurant and walked back to our cars that were parked a short distance away. It was a Saturday night but barely any people were on the street because of the bitter cold, so it was as though the whole street belonged to us—a gang of seven Asians plus one Caucasian.
I was leading the way busy chatting with one of us, and almost didn't see a guy coming my way. At the last moment, he dodged to one side and I shifted to the other without breaking my conversation, so I didn't notice or overheard anything this guy said after he passed me, but my roommate not far behind me heard his remarks.
After we said goodbye to each other, my roommate and I got into the car. He then laughed and said, “Did you hear what the black guy said?”
“Who?”
“The guy you almost ran into.”
“Oh! Him. No. I didn't hear anything.”
“He said, ' Whoa! It's the whole Chinese family!'”
“He did!” I laughed as well, and then he suddenly got alert and pointed to my direction, “Oh no, that's the guy.” I turned my head and through the car window I saw a black guy approaching.
“Let's see what he wants,” my roommate said when that guy knocked the car window.
So I rolled down the window a bit, and immediately the guy started talking very fast, “Please don't be scared. I'm not a criminal. I'm raising funds for fighting AIDS. The office is right over that corner,” he pointed to a direction. We looked. It's not like there was a sign for us to see or anything; besides, it was dark. He kept talking without slowing down, “Everybody knows me around here. I came and immigrated here in '84. I went to law school and should be an attorney by now but didn't pass the bar. I do have a job, so it's not like I do this for a living or anything. You can also check us out at our website. If you want you can give me cash, a check.” I did notice he had a folder with some paper in it. It looked like he did have people pledging money for the cause.
“What's the address?” My roommate asked. The guy was still rambling about the same thing, and said it was to save his village (in Africa I suppose). My roommate repeated his question again. He finally heard and said, “It's AIDSaction dot org. You wanna do it over the web site? That's good too.” After some thank you and stuff, he left. Were we relieved? Maybe. Maybe there wasn't anything to be relieved from the beginning. At the very least, we could finally go home.
Final Note: I just checked this website. It's legitimate.
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(*) A brewery: Short for microbrewery, also called a brewpub, or pub for short. A microbrewery brews its own beer, is smaller than a regular brewery, and is often combined with a restaurant. This type of family pub is quite popular in my area, so we often just call it a brewery, or a pub. The main feature of a brewpub is the huge stainless-steel beer tanks in the restaurant.
A brewing night
