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This is about my weekend with my Colombian cousins ... and the Dim Sum drama that nearly turned fatal.

Readers of this blog know that I am half-Colombian (my mother's side). I don't see the cousins from that side of my family nearly enough. Most of them live in Bogota -- a fabulous city - and much safer than Caracas, Cape town, or Cleveland. But Bogota rests at an unacceptably high altitude for me, and I'm all about sea level.

So I was thrilled when I received emails from my aunt Beatriz's sons Ignacio and Esteban: they were coming to New York for the weekend. I dropped everything and speed-dialed my Polish cleaning woman Krakovia. (Readers know about the problems I'd had with Krakovia. Thanks to your advice, all's well on that front.) The apartment was a wreck. Luckily Krakovia used to run the cleaning crew at Gdansk's shipyard so she was more than up to the task.

By Friday night the cousins were settled in. Esteban is a chemist. (No, that's not a euphemism for cartel leader.) Ignacio is a politician. (Yes, that is a euphemism for international playboy.) Believe it or not, they're better looking than I am, and -- get this -- even more charming.

And so commenced a weekend of drinking, eating, drinking, shopping, and drinking. I'd become so rusty (read LAME) at hosting that the sound of a bottle being uncorked in my apartment sent me running for cover. Colombians know how to have a good time and are a good reminder that running oneself ragged with work just isn't worth it. Really, unless you're Jonas Salk, and you're saving a good chunk of humanity, what's the point of not having fun? (If anyone has any Jonas Salk blowing-off-steam stories, please share.)


A hot cocoa break with Ignacio, artily captured by family photog Esteban.

The next day was consumed with consuming: after cutting a swath through Soho, where Ignacio picked up a sweater for a Bolivian baroness he's been romancing, it was on to the Oyster Bar. Next an uptown odyssey to Jonathan Adler's very hip store; Ignacio was looking for something special for a Ukrainian princess paramour he keeps in Kiev. (His support for Free Trade has a strong personal component.) Then at dinner that night he came thisclose to giving the tchocke meant for the Ukrainian to a Minneapolis real estate agent at the next table.

On Sunday morning, I was barely awake when the Colombians began clamoring for Dim Sum. (Ignore clamoring Colombians at your own risk.) Dim Sum, for the unlucky uninitiated, is a selection of Chinese small bites, usually served from carts wheeled by the table. Think tapas. It's the best kind of brunch, especially if like me you hate hollandaise sauce. (The devil's secretion!)

At the Golden Unicorn we were joined by two other visiting Colombian cousins: Paula and her younger brother Jose Gabriel. (At 1pm Sunday they were just ending their Saturday night.) We were having a ball -- Spanish mixing with English, with Chinese carts of dumpling goodness whirling around us. It was ecumenical ecstasy.


Colombians at Dim Sum: Jose Gabriel in foreground, Paula talking to me, and Ignacio on the phone (finding a date for the Madonna concert in Miami).

It is hard to overstate the transfixing power of the dance of dim sum carts. The way they gracefully navigate the narrow spaces between tables, sometimes passing within inches of each other, balletically dispensing beef balls and shrimp toast, is breathtaking. Were the women partnering these carts, these shepherdesses of shu mai, former acrobats with the Peking Circus? I wouldn't be surprised.

And that's when it happened. We were all entranced with the Bean Curd Lady (the Golden Unicorn's Prima Dim Sumista). She had sashayed to the opposite corner of the restaurant and was now headed toward us, in a dramatic Grand Pas. Everyone was looking at her.

But I noticed something errant, something off, in my peripheral vision: the Pork Bun Girl was trundling down a separate aisle. She seemed harried, looking this way, looking that -- distressed that she didn't have more takers for her Buns. (Do they work on commission?) The less attention she was paid, the more skittish she became. And the faster she moved. She was now careening down the aisle, when an adorable AmerAsian toddler scurried from his mother's hold and ... right into the path of Pork Bun Girl.


Dangerously distracted Pork Bun Girl tears down the aisle.

The mother's eyes (she Chinese) and mine met. East and West coming together, setting aside our differences, in this moment of sheer terror. She screamed. I wanted to, but nothing came out. The toddler stood frozen in the aisle.

And the cart kept coming.

To be continued...