The frequency of my posts in recent months is not something I’m proud of, and I don’t know for sure whether it’ll ever pick up.

Many have observed how my family takes photos standing without touching each other (Winni describes it as the “sedia!” (at attention) position), which suggests the kind of family knit-ness in my home.

Family pic 2005, Family pic @ YEF 2005, Family pic 2007

(Hey there’s an improvement over the years, now both older members stand in the “senang diri” (at ease) position)

The two young members may have grown wider but that sure didn’t fill up the space between each other in the most recent family picture.

My father has been the underappreciated family glue all these years, maintaining the household by keeping it functional, and helping the other members stay civil to each other. He always encourages and never puts undue pressure on us for our studies or any other aspect (can’t say the same for my mother); and silently takes in our tempers and never raises his voice just to gain ground (can’t say the same for his wife).

He does what he does for the household uncomplainingly: the laundry, the ironing, the cooking, the cleaning, and even ringing every single button of my brother’s Catholic High School uniform during our conformity days. He prepared breakfast for us every morning before waking us, and even carried me from my bed to the kitchen chair during the good old days when I wasn’t so sizeable. He would then drive us to school, and return home to wake my mother, and placed oranges on the table to remind her to pray whenever it was the first or fifteenth day of the lunar calendar (even though he’s a Christian). Now he even leaves notes to make sure nobody gets locked out of the house by accident.

During those car rides to school, he would fill us up with Chinese proverbs, his philosophies of life, or interesting anecdotes of his life as a police officer. Sometimes he would try to teach us the facts of life but never prodded into our personal lives. Now in the very limited occasions we sit together in the car or over a meal he continues to fill our ignorant minds with current affairs.

My father never probes into my private life, other than to check on the fundamentals such as whether I have enough cholesterol and liver medication to last my semester abroad, hoping my diet agrees with my cholesterol level, and if my bowel movements are normal. He may ask a little here and a bit more there, but stops himself the moment he senses irritation.

We can always count on my father for help. I recall how he would help do my brother’s projects, and makes sure my brother fills the necessary forms for school applications, army, and permits. When he learnt of Reuben’s death, he scanned all related articles and emailed them to me — The Straits Times, The New Paper, lianhe zaobao. He can remember when my antivirus expires, and offers his credit card to renew it. He knows my IC number by heart, so he makes sure I receive my GST Offset Package in time.

Above all that he does for us he takes care of himself, always doing all he can to ensure his cholesterol and blood pressure level is lowered to a healthy level even if that means cooking chinese herbs every night and walking to and fro his work place for an hour every morning and evening. The moment he feels chest pain he rushes himself to the hospital. When my mom complained of his snoring he went to do sleep tests and was a willing experiment for doctors to curb snoring, even if that meant wearing some uncomfortable apparatus to sleep.

You know how sometimes we just have certain vivid memories attached to people? Well, I reminisce the times when my brother and I would wait our turns to let our father hold our ears toward the light and dig the wax with the golden ear digger; how he taught me to cycle by detaching the little wheels one by one; bought me Swenson’s yam ice-cream when he occasionally picked me from Yamaha electone classes; placed me on his neck when my family walked down orchard road to see Christmas lightings; accompanied me to the bathroom on high tide nights ‘coz I was too scared to go alone; carried me across the road every morning to get to PAP kindergarten because he was afraid that if he merely holds me I might let go of his hand…

He will continue to contribute significantly to the household in his silent ungrudging ways, but I won’t go on taking him for granted.

Happy Fathers’ Day!

Tags: family, father, Home

Typing this on my Eeeps (I hereby declare this to be the name of my Asus Eee PC) at Fudan University’s Guanghua building. Supposed to start studying, it’s 3 days before my exams begin, and I thought getting out of any form of accommodation would be more conducive for preparing for the exams. But I guess I have to admit that I have been too 茫 this semester for any last minute Buddha-leg-hugging to work. Haven’t been studying, paying attention in class, nor submitting assignments, and the price to pay now is probably uneasy sleep, if any, for the coming week.

The drama played out in my life for the past couple of months is definitely worth writing about, if I ever get around to doing so. Though maybe I should think twice before disclosure on such a platform.

How do you run away from all the somehow-unknowingly-self-created drama in your life?

Indulge in retail therapy.

So the drama gets more intense, then college stress pays you an extended visit, and you know your indulgence in retail therapy has drastic effects on what you’re going to eat for the rest of the semester, just play with your latest geek gadget toy.

My Asus Eee PC 8GB, black, 7″, 0.92kg, Linux Xandros.

Feels like I haven’t blogged for… quite a while. Pretty quiet in here, huh?

This month completely whisked past me. Remember how I talked about going where the back of the 20RMB note beckons? Then I came back from the super good Yangshuo trip sick — flu/cold, sore throat, throat infection, fever, cough cough cough. Attended classes intermittently due to illness; let my school work pile up; went for a day trip organized by Fudan Foreign Students’ Office and ate self-plucked fresh strawberries; partied every weekend; had good meals; performed 中国话 with close friends in a school singing competition; watched competitors practise for Asia’s X Games; and then now it’s time to welcome the new month by packing off to Fujian!

But of course, before that, Ladies’ Night.

Ahhhh, school life.

Taking a hiatus of sorts.

Currently still suffering from the ills of Spring, where the supposed joy of flowers blossoming is a distraction from the viral attacks, which I have been a victim of by the way, with full-blown flu and throat infection (and I think lung infection?). You can hear me two classrooms away trying to cough my lungs out, but you won’t be able to hear my voice clearly even when you’re just two steps away.

I hope to be back on track soon.

How can I not blog about this: Connie the Crazy Canadian is likely to drop by Singapore this summer. Guess where she might be staying while she explores our sunny island?

The response from the owner of the intended accommodation wrote this in last year’s email when I first asked:

If you are around it would be Ok. But she and you can’t sleep on the same bed. Either one of you have to sleep on the floor. It is very unhealthy for both of you to sleep on a bed meant for one person. Remember this wherever you are. Your friend Sam also should not sleep together with you on your bed. Your bed is too small for two persons.

(Connie, I think I successfully shifted everyone’s attention to my mom’s erm… sense of humour and you’re no longer the star of this post. Hahahaha but yeah that’s the way I am so too bad, banana.

You’d better bring me plenty of Reese’s, maple cookies, some of your banana bread, and quesadilla haha.)

A friend sitting next to me talks about working in the banking industry. The friend sitting opposite gives advice on clinching an internship. Soon, the whole table starts talking about Citibank, Standard Chartered, Barclays, Bank of Tokyo (Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd), JPMorgan, and about this or that friend working in this and that big-name firm.

I still can’t answer the question of what I want to do after I graduate, I don’t even know whether I’ll be in Singapore at that time, but if conversations are going to be like this from now on…

For now, I’m just satisfied with the little steps I make from time to time. I just want to live the remnants of my student life in the way students should be allowed peace and isolation from the world after, even though most college students around me in this era have more or less established where they want to be in life.

Perhaps I refuse to abandon the disillusion that things will somehow work out, with the complacency that they always do.

There’s an increase in the sound of wedding bells, or friends wanting to sound the bells. Talks of marriage, buying houses and whatnot fill dinner tables, and I try to understand their whines that it’s such a pain, when my idea of marriage is everyone having a helluva good time because we all get to fly across the Pacific Ocean for a happy holiday throwing maple leaves at me and (dare I say it) Sam.

But I do feel the pinch of age when thinking of skydiving and bungee jumping gives me the shudders. I admit I’m increasingly afraid of leaving the world too suddenly. Roller-coaster rides don’t possess the appeal they used to, just when not too long ago I could get down from a death-mocking ride and itch for another. I’m more conscientious about health and dental check-ups, and I can’t ignore heart/lung pains anymore. Routine headaches, fevers, diarrhoea, knee pain, and cramps; nightly dosage of medication and daily dosages of supplements all tell me that I’m no longer young and invincible. Looking at the metal brace on one of my molars, I know the possibility of bodily dysfunctions is very real, and very now.

I guess I still want to believe that things will only happen many years later so there’s nothing to worry about. I’m 23 this year and very much expected to be an adult who should know what to do, what’s next. Truth is, I have one foot in school and the other merely tiptoeing nervously beyond.

Almost all my friends are graduating in the next two months while I’m just hoping the next year and a half will whizz by, but yet not slip by without my consciousness.

These days I’m just indulging in brain-degenerating activities like peeling and eating mandarins in class or in between them (and spitting the seeds anywhere and everywhere with bad aim towards the bin), eating mo pi in between eating mandarins, eating popcorn chicken with yam milk tea, basically eating till I’m left with only one pair of pants that fits.

I’m indulging in being a student, albeit not a studious one, sitting at the back of class talking or sleeping or eating mandarins/a banana/nuts/dan bing or all of that; or sitting in the small classroom for English classes waving flying chalk powder away with my hands along with the rest of my classmates (as if it helps); to laughing at all the little things we do to make class time speed by (like doodle in our books); or taking pictures of my friends and I sleeping or being bored in class (see below). We fantasize about life after all these, but never dare to make any concrete plans.

I’m getting at nothing with all this incoherence, and it tells of my impoverished worldliness. Nevertheless, I know I’m enjoying the life of a student’s, having the power to skip classes to get more sleep/to go shopping/to eat crispy-skinned duck/to forge closer bonds with friends. I do feel pressurized to establish some connections beyond the schoolgates, but there’s the rest of my life to be obsessed with that, right? Why not savour my privileges (like having decorum AWOL) now?

I will now fess up. A long-distance relationship is really hard.

And even harder when your girlfriend has to spend all her time planning how to stuff Singaporeans with frozen pork, and who is now losing sleep over her frozen pork galore event at HDB hub this weekend, where thousands of housewives will try to poke and squeeze frozen pork only to complain that it’s hard all over so it can’t be as fresh as fresh pork but must be okay lah, minister say frozen pork nice, cheaper somemore, eat loh.

So after all the news reports show housewives smiling gleefully because they have a chance to be on TV say that they eat frozen pork, their children eat frozen pork, that their dogs eat frozen pork etc and how they all find it a cheaper and just-as-good alternative to the now more expensive fresh pork, the good word will be out on Monday’s papers that Singaporeans will make do with have fallen in love with frozen pork, and they shall have it in their wantons, their gou lou yuk, their prime rib soups, their steamboat shabu shabu etc (but please spare the bak chor mee).

What propaganda won’t tell you is how personal lives are almost wrecked by the pandemonium behind the attempt to convert fresh pork devotees to pay equal worship to frozen pork via a preaching session at HDB hub. That the personal lives of the event planners have been jeopardized is not worthy of mention, for the noble cause of shoving frozen pork into the freezers of every heartlander must be given way to.

No one will think about how a heart is breaking in the land responsible for price hikes in fresh pork because of a certain planner’s obsession with recruiting frozen pork lovers.

I will eat all this damn pork until the day I die.

Some friends chide me for being too trusting, and my ex-boss used to say I get too friendly ‘coz she saw me making friends with security guards and caterers and many other random strangers during our events.

In recent years, from following a house owner to his house alone in Shanghai, to befriending an old man and hitching a ride from him followed by an almost sponsored bi-plane ride in Seattle, and then following two girls in their car from Wreck Beach to downtown on my last day in Vancouver to be treated poutine (fries with sauce and your choice of meat stuff, apparently a Quebec specialty? *shrugs* but they have it at New York Fries, which does not exist in New York btw), I question my sensibility sometimes, but my instincts ain’t too bad, I think?

I had my hair done in a different salon last week, since I couldn’t find my usual hairstylist. After convincing me to do stuff to my hair, somehow I was persuaded to accept a lift from him on his electric bicycle, and I was free to try driving it. Having the experience of riding a motorbike to a tree some years back, I wasn’t particularly thrilled at his offer. But somehow I followed him to the carpark (or more like two-wheel-carpark) and took on his offer, and rode the electric bicycle to my dorm with him lighting his cigarette behind me.

Heh. It was cool.

Riding my first-time-hairstylist’s electric bicycle

The random stranger I met in Seattle who offered me a free ride and company to the out-of-the-way Museum of Flight and an almost sponsored trip on a bi-plane ride

Met 2 Canadians at Wreck Beach and the stranger on the above right pic let me try on her construction site outfit. (Being a construction worker is very respectable in Canada, unlike how we view Singapore’s Banglas)