Starting the day on Wednesday, I tweeted jocularly that I didn't know whether to attend a UUP event marking the 15th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement or take the advice of the SDLP leader Alasdair McDonnell by treating the day as a public holiday.
Both my parents were Chinese, but I couldn't understand a word these relatives were saying growing up in California, I was so determined to be American that I refused to attend Chinese language school, and I didn't pick it up from my parents' conversations.