I'm at Roy's place for Thanksgiving weekend!! It's in a small town called Cherryville, NC, with a population of around 5,000. I went around town just now with Roy and Felix and the entire town knows one another, it's so cool. And even if they didn't recognise Roy, they'd recognise his surname because all the families knew one another. So he'd just have to say "Upchurch" and everyone would accord him friendship and respect.

And Roy's brother Will is 24 and he is getting married next year and he plans to spend his entire life in this small town tending the family business of a plant/greenhouse store.

This is amazing. This is the life, to just raise a simple family in the American outback, with acres and acres of empty land and farms and forests all around. And with King's Mountain nearby, and in a simple town with absolutely nothing, but one that is peaceful, wholesome and simple.

Roy's family owns 50 acres of land, and it contains this amazing forest, with a large pond right smack on the fringes of it. This is so cool.

I have my own room for the next few days! Complete with a computer with internet access, this is the life man.

Maybe moving to Cherryville, or a similarly small and simple town, is a good idea. True, there'll be so many drawbacks and such, but I think that on the whole it'll be superior to trying to survive in the retarded rat race, that everyone tells us to take part in. I'm a simple person, I think. I don't need money or fame or success to be happy.

Went to a Chinese Restaurant just now for dinner takeouts. The owners come from HK, and they have this little small 9 year old boy who just stared at me the moment I entered the store. He probably doesn't see many of "his kind around" here. So I spoke to him, first in English then in Mandarin then in Cantonese. He probably loves having a Chinese brother around.

And his aunt came out and I asked if they had Chinese tea in Cantonese and she just stared at me and suddenly she was so excited cos I'm probably one of the few fellow Chinese people she'd ever meet the entire year. And she was so friendly and so excited and smiling so widely and asking me so many questions in Cantonese. They'd lived in Cherryville for the past 7 years, and in California for the 8 years before that, and they still miss home and return to HK once a year to visit their family. Race and language really can build bridges rapidly, especially in an area where we are in the minority.

Not to say that the Americans are not nice. Many Southerners I've met have been so hospitable. First Mike's family, with his mom Dwane offering to keep me in her prayers, and now Roy's family as well. I've really been received with amazing open-ness and hospitality, and I am so thankful to God, and to my friends and their family, for that.