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One of the things I like about New York City is that even though the Big Apple has all its various ethnic neighbourhoods, you typically don't have to travel too far uptown, downtown or crosstown to get decent non-American fare. Chinese, Indian, Ethiopian, Thai, Japanese, Pakistani, Mediterranean, Argentinian, whatever -- chances are, whether you're walking down Avenue A or 26th Street, you could pick any of those cuisines and end up in a pretty good place.

But, I think the most intimate study of the country's now-cliched melting pot is standing by baggage carousel 18 at 11.30 on a Monday morning, right after the arrival of two flights -- UA 896 from Singapore (via Hong Kong) and AA 10 from Tokyo.

As the conveyor belt reels into life (crunk crunk), the suitcases and backpacks and duffel bags and crates and boxes and odd-shaped items ski into being from that square hole in the middle of the baggage carousel. Not all of them have arrived at their final destination. There are people travelling on to Orlando and Detroit, but also places that don't contribute as much to the cosmopolitan make-up of the country: Memphis, Grand Rapids, Mich., Some Small Town, N.C., Bloomington, Ill., Nowhere, Ark. So, it's no wonder they're filled with beauty products from Vietnam, mango ice-cream from the Philippines, DVDs from Hong Kong and fake Louis Vuitton purses from Thailand.

Of course, I'll never know for sure, not having X-ray vision. I'm just guessing, because that's what I'd bring if I came from any of those countries. I'll tell you what came from Singapore -- in my Samsonite and duffel bag, I had Chinese New Year snacks, a new pair of adidas running shoes, gifts for Jack and Jessie from my mum and some dirty laundry.

Clack clack clack

I'm proud to be Chinese -- our ancestors were pretty smart. We invented noodles, silk, gunpowder, ping pong, and apparently, we also founded America way before Columbus had his first serving of pasta. And we also invented a card game named mahjong. More than that, we made three-dimensional glass tiles so that you didn't have to hold the cards in hand for a four-hour round. You could eat, drink, gesticulate wildly while telling stories and play, all at the same time. If you had a flair for theatrics, you could also discard tiles with aplomb, stack the deck with style and bang on tiles to showcase a lovely winning hand or disgustedly to knock the bad luck out of a lousy one.

I first learned how to play mahjong from my Singapore Recreational Club softball teammates. We were on a training tour of China and somewhere between Beijing and Shanghai, I stacked my very first deck of tiles, and promptly knocked it over before I refined my game etiquette (there is a lot of this -- rule number one: do NOT be slow). We played softball during the day, played Pictionary at night and travelling between cities when 10 people couldn't crowd around two seats to draw and yell, we played mahjong.

Now, for anyone who's ever played a team game, you'd know how close you can get with your teammates, particularly if your team had a good mojo going. We had a fantastic one. We came from all backgrounds -- college, no college, veteran, rookie, English-speaking families, Chinese-speaking families, had our own set of wheels, took the public bus everyday -- it didn't matter. Over mahjong, we bonded like a perfect double play, like a spot-on centrefield-second base-catcher tag-out assist. We talked softball, then we ate, chatted about our mutual love for travelling, ate again, sassed each other out and joshed about everything else, and when we ran out of things to talk about, we talked more softball. And then we ate.

So I learned how to play mahjong, and I learned about a whole new world outside my prestigious private school education, and I love it. Whenever I'm home, all I have to do is send an email with one word: "Mahjong?" And we'd set a date. For the last 10 years, I've considered my mahjong kahs (legs -- a nickname for partners) some of my closest friends. They say it's not possible to have that many good friends, but it is. There really are that many good people around. You just have to make sure you've got the mahjong chops to go with it.

Doing Dhana

Chinese New Year rolls on... feasting, over-indulgences, mahjong, drinking, lots of fun. But enough about that.

Last Thursday, we did our annual dhana, a Buddhist act of giving. Our family always dhanas at Chinese New Year, to share the joy and abundance of the festival. Having performed it an orphanage and for the construction workers who built our condo in previous years, my parents decided to help out at the Metta School (www.mettaschool.edu.sg) this year.

The Metta School is a charity-funded school for mentally disabled and autistic children. Run by the Metta Buddhist Foundation, it accepts students of all ethnic and religious backgrounds, which is the beauty of it all. Mr. Yong, the principal, is Christian and Mr. Anuwar, the vice-principal, is Muslim. Mr. Anuwar is a guy in love with his job, which in this era of all you need isn't love, says a lot about compassion and dedication. He knows the names of every student skipping by him, knows their medical conditions and family backgrounds, indulges in showing off all of the school's new facilities. These kids, he says, aren't like other kids because they have an IQ of between 50 to 70. But they have something other kids may not -- a lot of heart.

We donated two buffet spreads, Thai and Indonesian cuisine. There were 371 students to feed, the older kids aged 13 to 18 in the morning session, the younger kids aged 7 through 12 in the afternoon. An unusual treat brings out something you don't often see, love and selflessness in their purest and most unadulterated forms. Standing in line with plastic plates in hand, as we piled on curry and satay and fried rice and mee siam and chicken wings, the kids made sure their friends and classmates who hadn't made it to the canteen yet would also receive a platter of plenty before scampering off to tuck in. With 80 to 90 percent of the school coming from families with a monthly income of S$1,000 (US$600) or less, this was a rare -- or new -- treat. The kids wanted more satay, more chicken wings and more fried wontons (no second helping of veggies, please; even kids with special needs are kids, after all) and they got more -- there's no room for Mr. Bumble in dhana. And when they were done and we were facing mountains of leftovers, we packed it all up for them to take home. But they weren't taking it home for a second wind feast -- they picked and chose what they knew their moms and dads and brothers and sisters liked. And because there's never enough reason to grin and beam and laugh, we gave out bags of lu dan (braised eggs). Chinese New Year is always a joyful occasion in my family, even electrifyingly fun, but this is possibly the happiest time of the holiday for my parents.

We tell the whole world that Singapore is a food paradise and that eating is our national past-time, but that's not always the case for everyone. That day, we tried our best to live up to our country's good name, but more importantly, I hope we were able to help some little kids realise they were just like everyone else, deserving and special.