David's birthday!

Today is David's birthday! He is a happy man with everything he gets for his birthday, even for cooking meal for friends on this day. This happens every rare for him as he regards cooking work and effort. I don't quite agree with his belief on cooking, but today he really have put lots of effort into it. It was great fun cooking with him actually especially today he is totally relaxed to do so. We invited two couples to come, one couple knows about David's birthday and the other doesn't. It was in the morning that the couple who has a kid phoned to cancel the dinner together as their kid was having big trouble and just was diagnosed gastritis..., a kind of disease which makes people puke and have diarrhea. The weather has been rather nasty at the moment, humid with low pressure. It often makes me feel uneasy with breath. We were wondering whether that was one of the causes. Anyway, it was a pity that they could not come to the party. As we cooked and appreciated the source we are making, the colourful peeper containing spiced rice with sweet pee, minced beef, cheese and several other ingredient... I asked David to phone the other couple guest and tried to find out where they are now as we didn't want the food too hot or too cold. He phoned and phoned, no one answered the call. In 10 seconds, one beaming light indicated that I got a message. " my girlfriend didn't feel well this afternoon, looked like I have to take her to hospital, very sorry, looks like we are going to miss your dinner." I couldn't believe, we couldn't believe what just happened. A minute ago, we phoned and nobody answered the call, and the next minute, canceled the dinner with a message. David and I felt much offended that they didn't even have decency to phone us back and explain what just happened. Did someone really die or have an accident? Putting aside our feeling, we prepared four to five people's meal and now it will keep us full for the whole next week (a bit exaggeration). Somehow, I feel like been dumped over just a massage, a massage far from convincing. Maybe there is really something urgent happened and we would have no problem of that. This way, only makes me feel that they were lying for their forgetfulness. I took it very personal at least... David didn't seem to care that much but I could tell he felt surprised of what they did. This couldn't just escape from my mind and I would like to try to find out what happened. We didn't call them. David tried to defend for them and said that in Hong Kong when people feel embarrassed, they will do things like this to avoid embarrassment. Does it really save every one's face and avoid the embarrassing moment? I don't understand... is it Hong Kong culture? definitely not Chinese culture that I know of.