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That Friday, my wife and I walked from our Kaka‘ako home to King Restaurant and Bar for the family’s graduation party for my niece Addison Hernandez, who had graduated the previous week with her Class of 2025 classmates at the Moanalua Performing Arts Center. 
 

The grad dinner was hosted by Addi’s maternal grandparents, who I’ve ever only known as Po Po and Gong Gong. Before the meal began with our first course of scallop and mushroom soup, Po Po rose to say a few words, and my sister-in-law followed with a blessing for the meal. 
 

There was something for everyone. At the great table where 20 members of the extended family and close friends sat together, we enjoyed chicken wings and cold ginger chicken, braised tofu and ong choy with garlic, spicy salt and pepper pork chop, roast duck in bao bun, steamed fish fillet, dry fried string beans with minced pork and dried fish, two noodle dishes, a rice course with poached egg, and every now and then conversation about what Addi’s first year at Washington State University might look like, bursts of reminiscing from those of us who’d attended college ourselves, stories about early friendships and venturing out, small kine plans for when the family bursts onto the scene on the Cougar campus, is there anything to do in Pullman, Washington?