Old habits hard to kick in new land

'Children!" We were in the arrivals hall in Hong Kong. He was two football-field lengths away, yet we could hear him clear as day. Typical teens. My sister and I inwardly and outwardly shrunk from the embarrassment.

My father is a good guy. He takes care of his family, goes out and buys "real" Christmas tree every year, even though the rest of us are entranced by the no-dry-pine-needles-stabbing-in-our feet artificial ones.

But his greatest shortcoming, for teenage girls anyways, was his foghorn volume voice. Yes, this is a man who in normal conversation can be rated in decibels as comparable to a jet fighter breaking Mach 1 or an Ozzy Osbourne concert before he became a vegan. This quality my father possessed was, to me, his signature mark. As I tried to inconspicuously walk back to him, another equally loud voice came up beside me - then another, and another. I suddenly realized that my father wasn't unique. He was just Chinese, and speaking at ear shatteringly levels is something Chinese people do.