About a month ago I got a call from Bernie Wong, the president of the Chinese American Service League. She wanted to invite me to their annual holiday benefit dinner to receive an Outstanding Volunteer Award! That was quite a surprise! I have been doing volunteer work at CASL for about 3 years so it felt good that they were going to give me an award. So the Event was this past December 8th and it was held at a restaurant in China Town. Phun and I arrived early at the restaurant because we had left from home and the traffic is usually heavy on a Friday. We made it there in plenty of time. It was a formal event so I had my suit on and Phun was in a very nice Thai dress. There were about 35 tables there and about 10 chairs at each table. That made me nervous because I had to give a short speech when I accepted my award. The evening started out great with finger food being served. There was a Silent auction going on, so I bit on one object that looked nice. There were young girls walking around selling raffle tickets, so I bought 2. I sat at the table my company had purchased (about $900 a ticket) and talked with the people there. The evening started with the Lion Dance that was performed by some young students from CASL. There was entertainment proved for awhile, and then came the presenting of the award. Besides myself, there were 2 other people receiving Outstanding Volunteer Awards. I was the second to be presented. It was actually fun getting up in front of about 350 to 400 people. Bernie, the president, said a lot of nice things, they presented me with the award and then I spoke very briefly. There were some other speeches and then time for dinner, which was a 10 course meal. The food was excellent and the entertainment was just as excellent. After dinner came time for the main raffle. Each of the main tables, which I was a part of, picked a person to draw a ticket. My table picked me so again I got to get up in front of all the people to reach into the raffle basket and draw a number. I picked a person who was there and they won a very nice and expensive prize! Two other people did the same thing and there were all kinds of pictures being taken. What a great time! The rest of the evening was enjoying food and talking.