Anticipating the new house...
Sunday, March 26, 2006
I met the interior designers for my new house earlier this week. Wow, I can't believe it's nearing the end of March and so close to moving again. I mean, I don't fancy moving, I just anticipate the new and bigger house i.e. more room for me. Hmm I haven't decided on the colour scheme yet but when I flipped through the home decor magazines, my heart stopped momentarily at the funky retro pink and purple sofas.
I want retro!I.D.: How would you like your wardrobe? U-shaped or L-shaped? And would you like a door outside?
Me (deep in thought): A walk-in wardrobe!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If my thoughts were read aloud, they would be squealing with excitement. I never had a walk-in wardrobe before. Now I never have to dig through heaps of clothes just to get to that long-forgotten top or crowd outside the wardrobe door just to look at my clothes. I could just stroll inside and pick out clothes and stroll out again.
I.D.: What colour would you like your bookshelves to be?
Me: Er, I haven't thought of that yet.
I just know I wanted bookshelves for my poor books, not forgetting my comics. They have been long cooped up inside that little hole and need a space to breathe in. But bookshelves! Like a whole library of books to collect! At this rate, I will tend to bring more books, oh and clothes too...
On another note about the house, my father wants a tv in every corner of the house, which only maddens my mother more because:
why do we need so many tvs??? We have one in every room, that is like 4, plus another one in the living room, and he wants another one in the family area on the second floor and
almost did put one in the guest room too... until my mother and I protested that a few steps away from the tv wouldn't kill us.
And then my mother declared
all furniture from the old house and from currently will be discarded or given away, even the standing fans. And this time, it was my father's turn to protest:
why can't we use back the dining table and chairs??? They still look new to me. And then it just goes on and on and on... until my mother wins.
2:25 am
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Princess birthday gifts
Saturday, March 18, 2006
To tell the truth, I think I much rather enjoyed this year's birthday celebrations, as compared to last year's, even though one's 21st should be the most memorable one. I liked the cosy dinners and chill-out sessions of this year instead of getting busy worrying about a big party I have to throw and whether people will turn up and if the food is enough etc. I mean, I don't mind throwing parties, as long as I have the time or hire people to organise it for me, because things can get a little frenzy and in the end, I can't enjoy the celebration myself, which is ironic if you think about how the party is thrown for me. So I like surprise parties, not only because of the element of surprise, which I think is both pleasant and sweet of those who throw it for other, but also because I don't have to worry about the organising part. And I like small get-togethers too, because you can actually spend a few hours talking to just a few people and know that you did spend a thorough chat session with them, not just a "Hi, thanks for coming" or "please make yourselves at home," and then call it a meet-up.
That's so much for parties, now let's move on to the presents.
This year's presents were... shall we say... of a certain theme? Yes. Thanks to all those who made my tai tai dream happen, or rather make a small start to it, I love your presents :) Thanks to Kenny, Elaine, Faith, Xiaohui, Dawn, Mandy, Maggi, Marianne, David, Druce, Sherina and Juline for the Christian Dior lipshine and gloss, four pairs of Princess earrings, one jewellery stand and a funky necklace with large chunky beads. Of course just stating it here does no justice to the essence of the gifts, but I love them and want to say so. Thanks also for the time spent to celebrate with me and the SMSes, (alright it's a little mushy down here but...) I feel loved and I feel touched.
I guess as you grow older, you feel that people who remember your birthday get fewer and fewer. And people who actually bother to make time to buy presents and arrange to spend time with you during that time are rare. So I hope I will always be that rare person who cares.
1:30 am
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My mother's father
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Death in a family curiously bonds its members at this crucial time. I did not know my mother's father. I didn't think my mother did too, since she had never mentioned him except while talking to her siblings but even so, she always referred to him as "your father". He was always "your father" or "your grandfather", never "my father". While I recognise that it is a direct translation from Hokkien to English, I can't help but notice the awkwardness of this address.
So to me, my mother's father was only in name: a grandfather I never knew and never saw during Chinese New Year or weddings/funerals. My mother never mentioned him, nor what he did in the past. When probed, she would mumble something in reply and change the subject. But my mother would never mince her words usually. So I always thought she hated her father and wouldn't be affected if he should pass away. Well actually I thought he would just go on living and surpass everybody else since he has been living but has always had a non-existent life, which is theoretically not possible but has since been ingrained in my young mind as a child.
However, on the morning of his death, I woke up to hear my mother telling me in a sniffly voice that: "your grandfather has passed away this morning." I knew then that she had felt something for her father since she had evidently been crying, despite her hatred for him. Perhaps she did not hate him, perhaps I had used the word incorrectly. Perhaps the word should be "disappointed". My grandfather, my mother used to say in the rare times she mentioned him, had been a bad man. And his vices of drinking and smoking were precisely that which killed him. Liver cancer, I heard, the cause of his death was.
I didn't feel anything when I was told of his death, and I didn't feel ashamed because I didn't know how. I also didn't know how to associate shame with him. During the rare times that I actually saw him, I was forbidden to greet him. I was also forbidden to speak to him, not that I would start a conversation as a junior but the fact that my mother forbidded me to was disturbing to me as a child. If I questioned her, she would say various accounts of how he was a bad man who left my grandmother when she was little, so that she had to raise all ten kids by herself. And also that he was a bum who did nothing but smoke and drink all day and hadn't a decent job to support the family. To my mother, that was an important criterion for choosing a husband and that was also why she chose my father. That was also what she had imparted to me as a young girl. She warned me repeatedly of the bad man who lived in the alley, and of the various things he could do to me if I wandered off alone without her.
But all these years, I couldn't help but wonder about my grandfather's side of the story, his account that I imagine might somehow defeat my mother's. I had always secretly hoped that my mother was wrong and I was right so that I could meet my grandfather for real. Then I could ask him why he did those things that my mother said he did in various accounts, and from which I had stringed together a list of possibilities of what he did. Perhaps what I thought I knew wasn't what my mother said at all, perhaps I had imagined it so, perhaps I had taken my mother's bits and pieces and made them whole in the only coherent way that I knew. Yet all these wonderings were futile since I knew that I wouldn't be able to get my grandfather's account, even if he had not died. I knew that ever since I was a small child that asking wouldn't give me any answers, so I kept quiet and observed all the solemnities in silence. I felt that perhaps it wasn't my position to know, like that big secret that only belonged to adults and I was a kid still (at least in their eyes).
If there was anything good to be said about him, it was that he doted on my mother most. I felt it terrible that he should be hated by his favourite child all these years as a child. But now that I am beginning to see from my mother's perspective, I find it even more terrible that my mother should have loved a father who abandoned his wife and his kids, in short abandoned her. Perhaps my mother would have said more in her mother tongue if only I was able to converse in it with her. And although I can't speak in their language, I can still listen. I can still tune in to what the adults are saying about "your father".
11:46 pm
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The little things in life
We had a really nice time, celebrating Druce's birthday with a large dinner followed by a chill-out session chatting like we haven't done for a long time. I would have shoved in a photo here but my phone doesn't seem to be able to connect well with my laptop so I guess that means no photo. Anyway Sherina will supply some on her blog. It just reminds me of how long I haven't actually let my hair down like that, not since school started. It also means I haven't been able to go out peacefully while thinking about work the whole time, which just makes going out terrible because I get so constrained by time.
As my 22nd draws near, I dread to think of the years adding one by one like time counting down, one second by one second, and the fear of growing old eats into me. I know it's not a bad thing to grow old, but it's not a good thing either, not especially when you look back on your life and realise: hey, I actually haven't accomplished that much you know. And then you start calculating how much time you actually have to do what you want to achieve in life and when you put time and achievements together, you discover that they don't exactly correspond. Life is just too short to do all that you want to do.
Faith and I were just lamenting on how for a woman, nothing big really happens up to the age of 20, and suddenly from then on, for a decade or so, everything starts to fall into place: graduation, travel, work, do everything you want to do freely before having to find a potential boyfriend to get married (if you haven't already done so earlier), get engaged, get married and still find enough time to give birth to your first child before your biological clock tick-tocks even faster. How can a woman do all that in a short span of 10 years? What comes after that is even more hectic: women basically have to become super-women, managing their jobs together with children and still have to find time to do their own hobbies (which usually get killed at a certain point in their lives).
11:19 pm
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