11 posts tagged “family”

The Chinese value filial piety greatly. Turning back on your parents is something you go to hell for, and there's some appropriate punishment for it, something like being trapped in an old folks' home for all eternity until you learn to like it. I don't really know, I'm just guessing.

But what's particularly amusing is the supposedly inspirational stories we come up with to convince children to be good to their parents. And I'm telling you, that shit is just evidence that we had really dumb people in China once upon a time.

There's one about this boy who, in order to protect his dad from a swarm of marauding mosquitoes, took off all his clothes and let the little fuckers bite him all over, so that they would be sated on his blood and leave his father alone. Seriously, if I had a kid like that, I'd cry. With sheer disbelief that somehow none of my brain cells made the transition. I suppose it's sweet, but honestly, you couldn't come up with a better idea? Like closing the fucking door?

If that was bad, that's because you haven't heard of the other dude. The one who put on a deer pelt, snuck up to a female deer, and milked her. If your mom had a sudden craving for milk, what would make make you think that molesting deer would be a good way to get her some? What the fuck is wrong with cows? What the fuck is wrong with going out to buy her a quart?

In comparison, this other dude who washed his parents' shit off was a much better show of filial piety. Practical, an act of love and care, with good sense. Of course, this is probably where I find out something truly screwed up, like he did it with his tongue or something. It's not, but my faith is quite shaken right now.

I try to be filial to my parents, I do. Mom told me Dad was home sick today and I bought him a bowl fish noodles for dinner. Unfortunately, like the dumbass kids before me, I demonstrated sheer emotion and absolutely no brains and didn't call home to see if he wanted anything to eat first. I can't make a joke here, I'm worried because he didn't get up to eat it; he was that groggy. Hopefully it's just the medicine.

I've never been a daddy's girl. Our relationship has been, at best, civil. I love him, and I know he loves me, but we will remain stoically silent about it till the end. Ours is not the sort of heart-warming father-daughter relationship with profound moments of emotional closeness. At best, our attempts to convey our affection are almost cavemen-like; he'll present me with some odd trinket, I show up unannounced with fish noodles.

But it doesn't stop me from being worried sick that Dad is not himself. A few months back, he developed this strange habit of falling asleep all around the house. At the coffee table, on the couch, on the toilet bowl, while smoking, while eating peanuts, while reading the papers. It didn't bother us so much because we figured he was just being eccentric, or passive aggressively trying to get Mom to go to bed earlier.

Then he started to act a little weird. He'd wake with a start, see me and ask if I was going out, when I'd come home, showered, and was heading to bed. He fell off the bed when he was sleeping, not just once, but twice. Cracked his head against the cabinet on the way down and bashed his ribs against the wall. Thankfully, he had nothing but some bruises to show for it, but it still scared the crap out of me.

So tonight, seeing him with those sunken, listless eyes, I felt fear. He told me he had run out of the sleeping pills he has to take to sleep and hadn't had any shut eye for the past two weeks, which is why he'd run himself into the ground. It doesn't help that he'd been working full shifts, from 9am to 10pm, everyday for the past two weeks.

I'm praying it's just nothing more than that. That the horrible part of me that knows him all too well is right and that he's just playing things up to get attention. Please let that be it.

So I finally went to watch Money No Enough 2. And the first thing it made me want to do after exiting the crowded cinema hall (no shit, it's been two to three weeks and the hall was still packed. Then again, it might be because everyone waited till Tuesday because it's cheaper to watch a movie) was to look for a job.

And mind you, not just any job, one that paid well.

It brought home the ugly truth that I'm an only child, and while I don't have to fight with anyone for my parents' attention, time and money, it also means I'm the only one who's going to responsible for them in their old age, all the way down to the funeral and beyond. And I don't want to be stuck in a situation where I can't afford to take care of them.

I'm not doubting my parents' financial planning skills; I assume they're investing for the future too. But I don't want to be some useless schmuck who has to end up borrowing money from them instead of being able to let them have a good and happy life in their old age.

It's not too much to ask for, is it?

And so the time has come to bite the bullet, face the music, smell the coffee and come to terms with the fact that passion is all well and good, but money makes the world go round. It's not the acquisition of money that gives me a high; it's the security that comes with a fat bank account and the knowledge that even if my parents should go off in the messiest fashion possible, complete with adult diapers, Alzheimer's and whatnot, I won't have to resort to dumping them in an old folks' home.

Have you SEEN an old folks' home? Have you been IN one before? They're fucking miserable places, where these old people all sit around waiting to die, waiting for their children to come visit, waiting for bloody Godot. They're not the sort of hip retirement villages you see on TV in the States, where all these energetic old people redo high school. Those retirement villages are fine; you go there, you make friends your age, and it feels like a perpetual holiday. But old folks' homes are like living morgues. And I will sooner whore myself in Geylang than let my parents have to go through that.

Yeah, dramatic, I know. But the day I have to admit my parents into an old folks' home will be the lowest day in my life. That is the day I will look at myself in the mirror and say, "You are nothing but a fucking failure", and there will be no inner voice that will protest it, because then, it will be true.

So I am willing to do a job I can tolerate that pays me well. I won't say hate, because if it pays well (and by that I mean like five digits a month), I probably can't get to the level of hate. I'll probably become really fat because I eat when I'm upset, but hey, I'll just pay for lipo to get it all out.

Elton said he came to terms with that fact a while back, that passion and doing what you like got dumped by the wayside around the time when he realized that you work to get money, so just do work that gets you more money. I found that scarily mercenary. I saw the point, but I kept hope alive, wishing for some sort of balance. Hey, J. K. Rowling did what she liked, and now she's one of the richest women around. So did Oprah. I'm not asking to get on Forbes' list, I'm just asking for enough to take care of my loved ones and myself in a comfortable fashion; surely it can't be that difficult?

But it is, my dears. It is. Ugly ugly fact of life. We're stuck on an island that doesn't pay the more frivolous seeming jobs well at all. One episode of The X-Files costs US$1 million and up to produce. One episode of random Channel 8 drama costs a hell of a lot less. And if you've got a bit part, you better bring your own clothes. And your own lunch. Our local actors and actresses make their moolah from endorsement deals, not from acting. Why the heck else do you think they still stay in HDB flats?

We have one broadcasting company that owns all the main TV and radio stations. We have one publishing company that owns all the major newspapers and magazines. They're not going to bother paying you more just because you asked for it. They're going to pay you however much they want to pay you.

And unfortunately, since I suck at ping pong and sports in general, I seem to have run out of options of jobs that I can be good at, will have fun at, and actually pay. Well, there is one more, but I think if I took that option I'll shame my parents even more than if I were shit poor.

Good god, please tell me I don't have to go crawling back to the airlines.

Just after I made my intentions known to Elton that after September (since I did get the very cushy and well paying gig after all) I intend to start work in a bank, Stella MSNed me that her friend asked if she knew anyone interested in getting into banking. Within minutes I'd sent my CV off to some guy I didn't know from some bank in hopes of getting employed.

Unfortunately, I did the Wrong Thing, according to Elton. I should have checked who the CV was going to, which bank was employing, what sort of role, etc, etc, because the last thing I wanted was for some guy at some recruitment agency to machine gun my CV off to many different banks and have bitchy HR people come to the conclusion that I must be desperate for a job and not give me the time of the day after that. Serves me right for being efficient.

How, like that? No brain how to make money? All that hairspray must have bimbo-fied my brain. Perhaps whoring myself is my only feasible option after all.

My parents prided themselves on not pushing me at all. I was probably the only kid in my class who had no tuition, no special classes and no extra-curricular activities. After school, I went home, I did my homework, I watched TV, I read my books, and I went to sleep. They didn't push me, so I didn't push myself. I did the bare minimum, just what was required and no more. I took just six O Levels, just three A Levels, just enough to move on to the next stage, didn't gun for any scholarships, didn't even get top grades with my very light work load. In fact, I always got just the grade after the maximum. If it was an A, I got a B. An A1, I got an A2. An A*, I got an A.

So maybe that's my fate in life. Just enough and no more. Forever more I'll be drawing a salary that ranges from $3,000 to $4,000 (because somehow, EVERYBODY doesn't want to talk about exactly how much money they're getting, you lousy fuckers, you), even when we're all old and the class valedictorian is the editor of the Straits Times and some other random dude owns a freaking golf course and some other overachieving woman I went to kindergarten with is the next Ho Ching. Go on then, fate, make all the random classmates nobody even remembers into starlets (do any of you VJC people even remember Joanne Peh being in Arts?). Keep me down. Just enough and no more. Just pretty enough, but not enough to make money with. FUCK YOU FATE! You CHAO CHEEBYE!

There are days I wish I were dumber, so at least I don't know of a life beyond the one I seem to be unable to get out of. Or that I could be contented, actually believe in the lie that rich people lead sadder lives. But I'm not, and I know better. But not enough to actually become one of them.

Just enough and no more. SMLJ indeed.

I met up with a cousin I'd lost touch with yesterday. Over tea, my shoes, my makeup, and the way I interacted with my parents were weighed and found wanting. Needless to say, meeting up with her again isn't really high on my to do list.

She's a year younger than I, but it felt as though she hasn't matured any since the time when we were kids. It's a mystery the whole clan can't quite solve; how is it that her sister could turn out so normal but she could be so very different? To sum her up in a word, I'd say she's spoiled, of the Super Sweet 16 sort. Except that their family is not rich, so her champagne tastes are quite draining on the family. And for some reason, she's still studying, even though when I was her age, I'd graduated a year ago and had pushed my bank account to five digits, no decimal points.

The reason why it's such a mystery is because everyone knew her parents weren't the sort to spoil their children, evidenced by how their eldest daughter turned out. Mom reckons it's just her personality, and something about her face. Apparently her sister was just simply more lovable as a kid and the family just liked the smiley happy girl a lot more, whereas she didn't quite have the easy charm and ready smile her sister had, and became a little ignored. I'm not certain how true that theory was, since I was barely alive in those formative years and my awareness extended as far as my nose.

I used to be quite close to her when we were in primary school. I'd stay over at her place, we'd go swimming, run havoc around the neighbourhood, play Golden Axe 2 (I was always the panther-man or the woman, she always played the dwarf cos it was stronger), and exchanged letters via snail mail when I wasn't at her place.

We were close was because there were no other cousins around our age and I wanted someone to play with, since my parents didn't have the courtesy to provide me with a homemade companion. That's saying something when you consider the sheer number of cousins I have. Hang on...26. Yup, I have 26 freaking cousins, 16 on my mother's side, 10 on my dad's. And of these 26, not a single one of them had the decency to be born close to me other than this particular one. Let's call her Agnes, since she's really into Agnés B.

But for all that I tried to befriend her, I always felt very uncomfortable around her because we were just so different. She made a point of yelling at her parents, more often her mother, whenever they annoyed her, which was pretty often. She was is a slob. She had the unshakeable belief that she was right and she should be able to do what she wanted to do. She didn't take care of the things she had. She had a very different set of friends and value system that I couldn't begin to understand.

I'm no angel, but I've never had the guts to yell at my parents. Even though Dad's a lot more mellow nowadays, and we don't keep a cane around the house anymore, I just don't do it, out of residual fear and out of simple respect. If nothing else, these two people gave birth to me, took care of me for decades, and I haven't even begun to repay them for everything they'd done for me. The least I could do is to keep my mouth shut and listen. Though I'm not neat enough for my mom's standards, I'm still very much into cleanliness and neatness. I can only take so much before I start to tidy things up. Staying over at her house in the past was akin to going on a rough-and-tumble adventure for me.

And while my parents were never really able to stop me from doing what I wanted, I never flaunted it in their face; I just quietly did stuff and edited the parts that would make them freak out. Really, if it's something that leaves no lasting mark, causes no one any damage and isn't permanent, I didn't see why I had to run it past them. This leaves out smoking, drugs and too much alcohol, by the way. And unprotected sex as well, since coming home with a grandkid might age them prematurely.

It could have been because she was studying at a pretty exclusive school where rich little girls were sent to that her value system was a little warped. Then again, her sister went to the same school too, so that argument doesn't quite make sense. She's very influenced by her rich friends, who shop at the first level of Takashimaya or at Paragon and doesn't know what the inside of Bugis Village looks like. To her, $33 high teas are normal (whereas I experienced eye-stretch when the bill came). She only buys MAC makeup, though she doesn't use most of it (or use it well, for that matter). Her bags are either Longchamp or Agnés B. (Yes, I feel you, people who are indignantly saying that those are just the potato chips of high fashion and nothing more than lousy nylon totes anyone could buy. But at least she's not bankrupting my aunt by getting a new sac de ville chez Louis Vuitton every month, so I shan't say anything.)

Oh ya, and she doesn't believe in cheap shoes.

Except for the one pair, I've never spent more than $50 on a pair of shoes. And the average price is really about $20. It's not a price issue, because two pairs of heels that cost $17 each from some dodgy little stall in Hong Kong's Argyle Centre rank the highest on the comfort list. Walk around the whole day with no blisters. My $90 (on sale too, mind you) pumps from Nine West gave me blisters that took a week to go away after a couple of hours of walking around. My theory is this; whether cheap or expensive, my shoes wear out faster than anything else I own, so I don't bother buying something expensive that ends up in the bin all too quickly. So long they're comfortable and look good, I'm happy. And so long you look at the details, you can get cheap shoes that look expensive and no one would know the difference.

For her, she thinks that cheap equals badly made equals painful to wear. Major logic flaw there. Louboutin once advised women to stand on frozen steaks to numb their feet since wearing his torturously high heels hurt like mad. It's the sheer physics of it all, not the price. If I wanted comfortable and style was no issue, I could get a pair of flip flops for $2 from Daiso. True, expensive heels come with enough padding to save you in a car crash, but walk around enough in them and your feet will still hurt from being contorted the whole day.

But therein lies the difference between us. She thinks money gets you everything. I know you still need some thought processes and just throwing money around doesn't guarantee you what you want. She thinks throwing tantrums will get her what she wants. I know it just leads to people staying away from you, just like how even our family members avoid her. It's as though we ought to be playing the Wicked Witch of the West's entrance theme when she arrives.

I'm not saying I'm better than she is. I'm just sad we're so fundamentally different it's impossible for me to tolerate more than a few hours of her company. And unlike acquaintances you can just choose to ignore, with a relative, you're pretty much stuck with them.

Because of that, I admit I lied. I pretended I had fun during the meeting. Laughed at her jokes, exhibited neutral politeness to things I didn't like, talked about topics tangential to some of the things I didn't agree with. She seemed to have a good time. I am, if nothing else, remarkably good at schmoozing if I feel like it. It was part of my previous job, after all.

I guess this is what it's like if your sibling is nothing like you.

Technically I should be sleeping, because I have to get up in a very short while to go tell a story to a four year old girl on her birthday. But I'm too excited about it, and also wanted to test out my brand new mouse (the better to Photoshop my fat face with, my dear), and so I thought I'd blog. In case I miss an entry and you guys freak out.

This story telling gig is thanks to Eugene (yes, that Eugene), who apparently has a school teaching children creativity. He's paying me peanuts for this and not of the Durai variety (I've already spent more on the story book and props than I'm getting paid), but I'm willing to do it, because the gig is just made for me lah. Little girl, loves princesses, fairies and most likely pink. Hello? My nails alone will wow her to bits. I'm treating this more like volunteering for a charity that gives you coffee money than an actual job.

But if you talk about it job wise, it ain't too tough; half an hour telling stories to little kiddies for $20. It's not something you pay the bills with, but it's fun.

Unfortunately, Mom is freaking out about it. Going on and on saying how it's just a part time thing and I can't do this for a living while I was trying on my fairy wings (what? Every girl should have a fairy godmother on her birthday). I know, Mom. I'm not a fucking moron. Unless there happens to be a number of kids having their birthday on the same day in staggered timings and they all want a fairy to tell them a story, what I earn from this won't even begin to cover my expenses. I may be bad at maths but I didn't fail it.

In fact, Mom is freaking out about me not working at all. I think it's projection. She's not really working too; she quit from her job a while back because of some major mutiny (all the sales people up and left) and is now doing exhibition fairs, which happen about once or twice a month. Unfortunately, this means she's at home much too often, and while she's here, I can't do my own thing, and she feels compelled to nag me about finding a job.

It's been one week. Literally. Seven bloody days since I finally stopped my old job. They haven't even finished paying me my salary yet. And she's going on and on and on about reading the Classifieds, checking the "ingternet" and asking my friends for jobs. Give me a break, woman! I was fucking tempted to start work at McDonald's or something just to shut her up, except you just saw her reaction to doing the story telling gig. She won't be happy unless I work in Shenton Way and have to dress up in office wear all the time. Fine. I'll just never have to spend a whole day with her until the day I retire. Wouldn't that be nice?

My mom's vision for me is that I'll marry someone so filthy rich, I can just be a complete tai tai and go have high tea with her all the time and my bevy of maids can do all the household work. She didn't spell it out in those exact words, but she always implies it when she grumbles about how my dad doesn't give her any money and talks about how her friends get allowances from their partners on top of the salary they earn. I know she resents that her life has been tough, having been the sole breadwinner for almost a decade, and she just wants me to have an easier life. She'll also be happy if I became a ridiculously successful businesswoman who never marries but is strangely free so I can go have high tea with her all the time and my bevy of maids can do all the household work. Basically running theme is a) become rich, b) spend all my time with her, and c) have maids who will do all the cleaning up.

The problem with her scenario A is that I'm not really a materialistic woman. I don't expect my guy to buy everything for me. Yes, the ideal life for me after I have kids would be that of a stay at home mom, but it's not a tai tai life I'm envisioning. Even if I were to marry a millionaire, I want to be a Stepford Wife who takes care of the kids, manages the house, and has dinner ready on the table when my hubby comes home at night. I'd listen to him grouch about work, we'd watch the kids play, and once every week I'd run a D&D game. Or twice; one for the family, one for friends. Why? Because if you don't use it, you lose it, and I'm very fond of my mind and motor skills, thank you. Even now, in my supposed bumming days, I've got more things going on than when I was working.

For a little pocket money on the side, I'd write freelance for magazines like Simply Her (because by then a bit more auntie) or Kids Company, help people zhng things (my services include making MP3 ringtones, decoration of items with crystals, and manicures, but no pedis, because I'm just not comfortable fiddling with people's feet for pocket money), and plan kids' birthday parties. My house will be a beautiful classy place with matching crockery and utensils and so clean and neat you'd think it was out of a magazine, and my mom will come over and be at a loss because there's nothing for her to neaten up. In other words, I may not be drawing a salary from a company, but I will still be working 24/7. To me, a marriage is a partnership; both parties pull their own weight in some way or another, and they do it because they want to, and there's no irritating score keeping, unlike how my parents constantly try to one up each other about who pays for more things around the house.

I know that the reality of it is that I'd most likely have to work in a job that I'll just be able to tolerate so I can pay the bills, and that is fine with me. But the problem with her scenario B is that I don't want to be an old spinster type who spends the time when she's not busting her employees' balls with her mom and only her mom and they can both grow old complaining about men. That's just...foul. I love my mom, but I can only take her in small doses because you just hang around her long enough and she point out that there's something about you that can be better. Or rather, just me. And my dad. We two have the dubious privilege of being the only people she says these things to. To everyone else she just smiles and smiles. Hey, at least I criticize everybody in equal measure. Ok, some more than others, but they deserve it. If I were a successful business woman, I'd get my own little apartment ASAP and visit her regularly, but in short sessions.

She nags out of concern, I understand that. People who care about you are the ones who bother to say anything when it seems like you're straying from the path. I realized that in my final few months of work, when the fresh out of training school crew started to appear. Previously, I'd have tried to teach them how to improve their work because I know the pain of being scolded. In those last few months, I'd think about saying something, then decide not to because the self-absorbed little fuckers always assumed you were trying to put them down and get all defensive when the fact was that our job is far from rocket science and these geniuses still managed to suck at it. Ungrateful little tits.

So the day my mom stops nagging, she either finally understood that despite not being there for me in my formative years, I managed to turn out a very fine specimen and she can just go back to the absentee parenting of that era, or she stopped caring for me. I sincerely doubt she'd reach that sort of enlightenment, though, so I'm just going to have to move far away enough that she can't be bothered to peel herself away from the TV to come nag at me.

If you figured out the title, I know which social circle of mine you came from.

It's oddly fitting though, and you shall find out why. This is my cunning plan to make gamers read about shopping.

So Mom and I went out after I was done with Clearance, an activity that comes at the end of your career with a big company that strangely resembles a scavenger hunt for human moles, since there's a stage where you have to hunt down the right office drones in the cubicle maze. You need to collect all these signatures that basically say you don't owe us nothing more and then you're free to go. It was pretty fun; my timing was about an hour, including drive time. I drive fast.

By out, we went to Bugis, where we went to the temple to pray. To be honest, I'm not entirely certain what my beliefs are. I'd like to be Taoist, since my parents are, but I'm just not comfortable with a whole month of having ghosts wandering around. That is just not cool. But I've always accompanied my mom to the temple, and I always will, since the Goddess of Mercy always has this patient forgiving look on Her face. Like, yes my sweet, I know you're a total fuck up, but I will still bless you. There's no Old Testament to Her; She really is the all-loving deity. I love Her for that alone. And because She has an odd sense of humour when it comes to chiam see, that thingy where you shake the wooden sticks in a cylinder to ask for answers. So far, they usually work out to be true, but the metaphors used in them always make me laugh.

After which, we went shopping at Bugis Village. Now, shopping at Bugis Village is for the young and penniless. It's the one location in Singapore where you can get stuff for cheap. All along the ground floor, where there is a warren of minuscule aircon-less shops, much like a ant's nest populated by particularly industrious yet directionally confused ants, they're selling clothing for $10 a piece. And we're not talking fake Billabong T-shirts that got sewn by people who can't draw a straight line, a la Phuket. We're talking pretty cool stuff, like this shirt I bought with tiny red and white checks that's sort of like a waiter's uniform. Granted, the quality isn't fantastic, and you have to be careful with the workmanship (i.e. examine the piece you'll be bringing home), but it's $10.

Unbeknownst to the people who quickly whiz through the warren, there's a second floor to Bugis Village, that is actually air conditioned. The shops up here are not as tightly packed together, there's fewer people, and prices are a little higher, but not by much, and you can always bargain. What's interesting is that there are beauty supply shops up here of the wholesaler kind, so you can find entire professional manicure sets, complete with that little shell shaped bowl that you soak your fingers in, for cheap.

Unbeknownst to me, one of my mom's friend has a stall there, and we spent almost one and a half hours there while said friend piled her with clothes and Mom did the SatC: the Movie costume change. I don't think she hit 82, but it seemed close.

At the end of it, she bought seven tops, two pair of pants, and that, together with one pencil skirt and a short sleeved princess coat for me, worked out to be over $300.

When Mom and I go shopping, it's an activity that I usually tire of first. That woman has the endurance of a bear. I hated shopping with her when I was a kid because my little legs would start aching long before she called it quits. Not to mention I had very little interest in fashion then. Even now, while she's still raring to go, I'm ready to throw in the towel.

But despite her great tenacity, she actually doesn't really like shopping. It's something she does once in a blue moon, because she hates having to try on clothes. Whereas I insist on trying it on if I can, because I like to show off how cute I look, and because I hate paying for stuff that doesn't fit right. It's all about the fit, people. How come Charlize Theron can look hot in jeans and a white tank top? Because the tank top clings to all the right parts and is of a lighter and looser fabric than normal and so has a slightly baggy, translucent look to it, and the jeans are skinny jeans that hug her long legs, with the pockets placed just right on her bum so it doesn't look saggy.

I should know this, because unlike some lucky girls who just have that savoir faire to throw clothes together and look like they stepped off the set of a magazine shoot, I had to work at it. My knowledge of how to put my clothes together was gleaned from hundreds of dollars worth of magazines and scrutinizing people.

Which is why Mom trusts me when it comes to clothes. When we go out shopping together, she trusts me to tell her if something doesn't go. It's one of the few things she has such complete faith in me about, which is why when we go out, we usually go shopping.

So the mountain of clothes she came home with today was actually culled from a bigger mountain, and all of them with my stamp of approval.

Contrary to popular belief, my mom actually has a more, er, havoc wardrobe than mine. Her sense of drama is greater. She has clothes in every colour family, while you can't find yellow, green (except turquoise) or orange in mine. She owns cargo pants. She has a near obscene number of sleeveless tops. She'll try almost anything, whereas I scrutinize things and dismiss them without even looking at it in front of a mirror with the hanger squashing my face. I go for clean lines, simplicity with interesting details, while she has no qualms wearing clothes with giant rosettes pinned all over. There's one top she owns that looked like someone's macramé project gone wild. Thank god she doesn't really wear it anymore.

Despite that (the difference in our aesthetics, not the FUBAR top), we shop well together. We're governed by the same el cheapo-ness and can recognize when something is just...not working for each other. I mince no words when she picks up high necked or spaghetti strap tops that do nothing for her top heavy figure, and she usually picks the better of two options when I can't make up my mind.

It's one of the things I missed doing with Mom the most. And I'd better do more of it before I start work again.

I struck the kerb on the very first segment of the circuit on my very first practical driving test. As anyone who's gone through the test will tell you, that is a bad thing, a very bad thing, because it's a straight 10 points, and you can only afford to get 20 before you're out. Straight failure, do not pass Go, do not pay $50 and submit your photo for your driving licence.

For some reason though, I passed. On that very first test, despite that very first and very major boo-boo. And mind you, this lady drives a stick. If I were religious, I'd wax lyrical about the Grace of God. But because the most religious I've ever been was to read Lamb, The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Friend (which, by the way, is a bloody hilarious book and should be read, even by the particularly Bible-thumpy people; ignore the rather nasty review by the Publishers Weekly guy), I'd like to say it was not thanks to GoG, but to the numerous driving lessons I had to take and just plain skill. Then again, that wouldn't cover the fact that it started to rain right after I exited the circuit, thus possibly cutting the test route shorter, or that I managed to draw a certain tester who was, according to all accounts (from other instructors to the guy who takes your pictures for $9), the nicest one of the lot, or that said tester decided to chit chat with me about my occupation, leading to a nice gossip session about a stewardess who got slapped recently.

From the way my dad celebrated over the phone, you'd think I just struck the lottery. First prize with like a $10 Small bet (which, oddly enough, yields more money than a Big bet). In a way, it wasn't far off. Apparently passing on the first try is one of those rare things, and I had joined a special group of people who have the bragging rights to remind people ad nauseum about the fact that they passed on the first try, woot woot. Never before, I think, had my dad been more proud of me, because he too, is a card carrying member of the First Try Club. It's one of the few things we have in common.

Am I proud? Yes, but I'm more relieved than anything else; those lessons were getting more expensive, and after the $190 charge for that test (one lesson before the test, plus car rental fee, plus circuit entrance fee), I wanted to pass just so I didn't have to pay any more money or spend any more time on getting that piece of plastic (the whole ordeal took about a year, I think). So while I may occasionally brag a bit, I think I'll most likely keep my FTC membership a secret, and let the proud men in my life show off to other people while keeping my head down modestly (so you can't see the smug smile).

So what's the secret? Guts, apparently (my instructor hinted that a lot of people freeze up when they get in a car, so much so they put a five minute limit on the parking segments in the circuit part of the test). Good spatial awareness. Knowing which way to turn the steering wheel. Practice. Having a kiasu instructor who plasters the car with hidden markers ("When the pole reaches the red sticker, turn left one time."). Paying attention when your dad drives you around as a kid.

Some of my fondest childhood memories of my dad were when we were in a car. Looking back, some of those probably weren't the safest things to do, but that was during an era when child seats were these new-fangled overpriced things and putting on seat belts, especially in the rear seats, was an insult to the skillz of your driver. (On a side note, that was also the era where this kid apparently took over the lorry when his dad fainted at the wheel and got them to a hospital, so I had a small fantasy that I could've done the same if need be.)

We owned two cars, one at a time, though I can only remember the black Daihatsu Charade (my mom has a thing for hatchbacks; all three cars we've bought were hatchbacks, the current one being a grey Suzuki Swift). They were manual cars, and Dad would let me change the gears for him while he drove. Not that he needed me to (despite having only one good hand he could still parallel park in one try in a manual car), but he'd let me because he knew I liked it, and it felt like a game. That was probably where I picked up my instincts on gear changing; I go by the engine noise.

If I wasn't being the co-pilot, I had a tendency to stand over the hump in the back seat, poking my head between the seats and looking out the windscreen. It didn't matter who was driving or where we were driving to, I liked to watch. I liked the whole car thing, the idea of going somewhere, the freedom of being able to go wherever, the speed, the control. And it didn't change when I grew up. I scrutinized cab drivers, not because I was paranoid they were taking me to Holland, as the old folks would say (ask the Hokkien folks, "Chuah li ki Hoh-lan" basically means taking you for a ride), but because they tend to be so comfortable with the whole clutch-gear thing, it was like watching a kung-fu master at work. Yes, I know, I'm a weird chick.

So a lot of practice went into passing the test, most of it centering on mastering the clutch. That, my friends, is the most evil piece of machinery ever made, but once you get it, you can laugh at the lesser people who stall all over the place. And honestly, if you fail a test for an auto car, I'm sorry, I can't look at you with much respect after that. Especially if you're a guy.

Yes, there's a bit of a double standard in driving, and I admit to buying into it, partly. Women drivers do tend to suck, but not all of them do, so be happy if you aren't one of them and stop fighting a lost cause. I hated going to the circuit and being stuck behind a woman. Because inevitably, they'll turn a corner, stall, take forever to park, and you'll always see their wheels turning left and right and left and right because they can't figure out which way to turn the wheel while reversing the car. The one time I nearly had an accident outside of the circuit, was because a woman was trying to figure out which way to go and her car was veering way out of her lane and onto the wrong side of the road, where I was. Best part, after we horned her into awareness, she started giggling in an embarrassed manner. Ugh.

That being said, there are capable women drivers out there. So stop using "woman driver" as a cuss word; half the time when you catch up to a driver who's driving like a moron, it's some middle-aged uncle in his sedan anyway.

But the reason why women drivers tend to suck is because women tend to worry too much. There's a great deal of fear in any random female's mind. Put them in a hefty piece of machinery that has been known to kill people on a per-second basis, and some of us just freak out silently on the inside. They don't dare to go too fast because the traffic lights seem to change without warning and they don't want to run a red. They don't dare to make turns because they aren't certain when cars are going to randomly appear around them. They don't dare to park because they're afraid of scraping against another car or a pillar (and those over-enthusiastic reverse beeping things they put in cars nowadays really don't help).That, and most women have pretty bad spatial awareness. They have a tendency to imagine that the car is a lot bigger than it actually is, and parallel parking is a complete nightmare to them. (Probably why Mom has a thing for hatchbacks; the windscreen and the rearview is pretty much where the front and the back of the car is, so WYSIWYG.)

For guys though, it seems almost part of some unwritten guy code that driving is a must-have skill, up there with the ability to casually open jars and read maps. They are expected to be good at it (hence the "woman driver" thing), and some have been known to make it a point to be licenced for all vehicle types (Dad, for example, can drive practically anything with wheels, except for those usually not found outside of a construction yard, or run on rails). I think it's a little bit on the ridiculous side, but hey, everyone's got to have a hobby. And it comes in useful if you ever need to run away from bad people, GTA style. Or look for blue-collared work.

But looking at the people driving on the roads, I question the idea that men tend to be better drivers. Especially if they're middle-aged and driving sedans or SUVs. Or really young and driving sports cars (so many assholes test-driving sports cars in Ubi; can you pay for that bloody car anot? Cut me off one more time and limpeh will bloody crash into you, unnerstand? How many years of pocket money will you have to save up to repair that, huh? Or how many burgers will you have to flip at McDonalds?). The middle-aged men in their SUVs tick me off the most; if the car is too big for you, then don't drive it. Half the time they move through parking lots like snails up a slippery slope. Then despite the "Baby on Board" signs in the rearview, like their companions in the safe silver/grey/white sedans/some-indeterminate-shade-of-boring-colour sedans, they'll change lanes abruptly with no signals, making you jam your brakes. Then they'll refuse to give way to cars from side roads, because of some strange idea that once they let a car in, the whole stream will follow. Gah. Makes me want to go all Clive Owen on their ass. Does it take that much to stay in your lane? Does it take that much to turn on your signal? What, is your car battery running so low that flicking on the signal will cause your car to spontaneously combust or something? Great daddy you're being, dipshit.

And the parking, oh good god, the parking. The "speed" I can sort of ignore; I get it that we should take care not to damage other people's cars or our own and hence care is needed. Like the one today who forced me to watch his painfully slow reverse parking when all I wanted was to get out of the carpark but happened to be behind him. (We all went through the same training; we understand that the turn signal when switched on while stationary in front of a lot means you want to park. Now move your most likely saggy butt aside and let me through.) It's the kiasu-ness I can't stand.

There was once Elton and I were in a carpark that was located up a steep slope. There was a sedan with the usual middle-aged man in it at the very top of the slope, where the carpark began, with his hazard lights on. It was one of those places where the lots are few enough that you can see at a glance if there were any more spaces left, and we realized there was going to be a lot (someone was preparing to get out), but that guy was there first, and there was naught for us to do but to go in, make a U-turn, and get out.

Except that our good friend, the MAMITS (Middle-Aged Man In The Sedan. Or SUV.), was in the way. We made a pretty death-defying turn around him while still on the slope so we could get to level ground in the carpark, since he refused to move, which caused him to panic, and lurch forward, which caused us to almost ram into him. As we passed, I rolled my eyes at the MAMITS and gestured that we were just making a U-turn, though in hindsight, I should've used my middle finger to make the swirl in the air. Do you honestly think that we had no shame as to steal a parking lot from such a low life-form as a MAMITS? And if we did, would it be such an issue to just get out of your car, explain to us the situation, then get all passive-aggressive and post the picture of our car on STOMP if we refused to give it to you? And the thing that boggled the mind the most was, why couldn't he have moved further into the carpark? It wasn't as if though his little Nissan would've blocked the way of the car coming out. And couldn't he see us behind him? Didn't he realize that the old Mercs with the square headlights tended to have manual controls? (Ours didn't, thank god, it was ahead of its time.) Selfish little man, so worried about losing his spot he'd rather have a young promising couple roll back down a slope and crash than move a few feet ahead. Tsk tsk.

And that is just one story in a anthology of thousands. If your time management was bad enough that parking will make you late, take public transport. Our train system is very efficient. And besides, that's like the best excuse for being late; not being able to find parking or bad traffic. Or just go park somewhere else.

So far, in my very limited driving experience, I've had pretty good luck with parking spaces, mostly because I go where others fear to tread. Like today at Bishan, where everybody insists on parking on the first level of the public car park, because it's sheltered and has a direct linkway to the mall, I went one floor up to the open air level, and found a lot just one car away from the stairs heading down. If it rains, well, that's why I have a brolly in my bag at all times. And at Serangoon Gardens, I stopped following the cars ahead of me and veered towards the parallel parking lots because they were closer to Video Ezy, and because people seem to have an aversion towards parallel parking. I found one the second I turned the corner (though I think that was most likely due to great timing). And I'm proud to say, parked the car in one try. Though my palms turned clammy and I trembled bad enough from the adrenaline (hey, it was my first time) that I asked Elton to drive after that.

I think it's an issue of karma. Doesn't matter if you think the other drivers are idiots. So long you're a big enough person to drive despite their faults, turn on the right signals at the right time (two nanoseconds just before you change lanes is not enough), give way to others when necessary, and don't hog the whole carpark, the parking gods will smile down upon you.

Traveling to Paris results in two things; no prizes for guessing what they are. Because once you're here, there's a certain sense of obligation to purchase something local, and that something local tends to be something pretty expensive from Louis Vuitton. Not only that, we go specifically to the main flagship store along Champs-Elysees, just down from the Arc du Triomphe.

Yesterday, four of us went in there, and all four walked out with a little something something. Ok, one of us (not me) walked out with two big something somethings. (She bought two Neverfull bags, in medium, and insisted that they be put in boxes.) But before you shake your head at my spendthrift-ness, the one item I bought was a present for my dad.
I feel sort of bad about it; I've been flying for a year and a half and have been giving my mom LV coin pouches, Coach bags and such, but I never got anything for my dad. Partly because I don't know what to get him. The other partly was that I didn't want to get him something and result in it being put in a drawer, unused for centuries. That's the thing I hate the most. If I buy you something and you like it, you better use it, or you can forget about another present.

So I got him a wallet, and not the cheapest one they had either. It's a nice big one that even has a coin compartment, a see through panel for photos or ID, eight slots for cards, and of course space for bills. I figured his current one has the texture of mashed potatoes after being squashed in his pocket for so long, so it was time that he got something new. That, and finally, la maison de LV finally yielded something else practical. It's bizarre, looking through their catalogue, they keep insisting that items are pratique, but honestly, they aren't really. Half the time their wallets are really only usable if you keep like three cards and some dollar bills. And really, the only people with that sort of a lifestyle are the broke and the very young.

Which is why I don't have more LV in my wardrobe. Price-wise, it's a bit of an ouch, but still not the sort of thing that results in kaya toast for months, if you don't buy the whole store, that is. The problem is, I struggle to find things that I would actually be able to use in my life. The one bag that I like the look of and that I found usable was the Saumur Mini Lin, which I bought a while back (and never used another bag since). I find the classic monogram to be rather old-looking, and they don't produce quite a few items in the other materials. And some things are cute (like the Popincourt, the Papillon), but their very shape translates to a rather awkward space for your stuff.

But I digress. I bought the wallet because I felt quite incredibly bad about not buying stuff for my dad. And I know he thinks that I'm doing it on purpose because he's the less favoured parent. (Second part true, first part not at all.) So now at least he has something to show off to his friends.

Once upon a time, I used to detest Chinese New Year. The disruption it made to retail shops everywhere was devastating. Even if you managed to escape the madness of the festival, there was no place to escape to. Malls were mostly closed, restaurants shut down for the two days. You had a choice of sitting at home and watching TV or gritting your teeth and suffering through the asinine comments made by well-meaning but none-too-bright relatives. How does one reply when this comment is made, "Wah, so tall already ah?"?

So it is unexpected that I am actually ridiculously happy to be home for the holidays. Or at least the eve and the first day of it anyway. I fly on day two, but that's almost manageable. And it's to Perth, so it's all good.

Despite the slightly caustic comments, I actually do like my family. Not enough to want to spend time with them constantly, but I don't mind catching up with them on occasion. It helps that a bunch of us in the same generation is starting out on our first jobs, with the disposable income to do things like go out apart from the adults and watch movies or sing karaoke. I'm one of the youngest in the group, so they still refuse to let me pay my way sometimes.

In general, my family is pretty cool. Two of my cousins are pilots in the same company. We share our war stories when asked to, usually a pretty big scene stealer. There's a navy officer somewhere, but he's sort of disappeared since he married his reclusive wife. One of my female cousins, a tiny sweet looking young woman, is a tough ass narcotics officer, as is her husband, who looks mean enough for the both of them, but is actually quite a sweetie. Another of my female cousins owns her own hair salon, to which the whole family flocks to, because as the saying goes, fertile water should not go to other people's fields. That, and she does a damn good job.

We're of the age whereby some of them have married already, and it's weird receiving red packets from them, as per tradition. Every time I do, I keep flashing back on our childhood, where we suffered through clothes picked out by our parents and braces and zits and exams. We used to play games like tag (though in Singapore we call it "catching", just as "peace" became "twist", or rather, "twiss"), soccer if a ball was available, then there was a couple of run ins with the flight sim computer game (guess who were playing it). Last few years though, it was as though some critical mass had been reached. We somehow morphed into adults and started to sit around and chat. Or watch TV. With some caveats to our generation, of course; we chat over MSN to cousins in far flung corners of the world, we watch our downloaded episodes of Heroes on laptops.

I was in Shanghai last year for CNY, and it wasn't a nice feeling. Add the fact that most things were closed, it was quite upsetting. At least have the decency to send me somewhere where things were open. It is depressing not being home for the holidays, make no mistake. You miss your loved ones even more, and even if you don't miss them, you'll miss the option of being there for the general hub bub and food. It's always the food. I was craving pineapple tarts and bahkwa and the steamboat.

So while I'm enjoying my two days of rest and relaxation here, I can't wait to go back. I wish they'd dumped me in a city with random snacks that I could buy back though. London's sort of lacking in that.

The best way to see who cares is to have a short but debilitating illness. Anything too long and you're just checking who is sainthood material.

My parents, bless their souls, came to pick me up from the airport at six in the morning when I got back. They didn't ask anything, just bundled me and my luggage into the car and took me home. Both of them showed. And I think they both took a day off from work without asking to make sure I was ok.

After I woke from a long sleep in my own bed, Dad wordlessly drove me to the clinic. He casually dismissed my awkward thanks for rescuing me, but I could tell he was worried sick about me, and my gratitude meant a lot more to him than he let on. As we walked to the clinic, he held my hand to guide me through the crowds. Feeling his dry, callused palm, I realized it had been years since I'd had any sort of physical contact with him. He asked what I wanted to eat, and I said apples. He went down to the supermarket straightaway to get some. And included a honeydew and some pears for variety.

I haven't needed Dad for a long time. And I think he knew that. In that brief period, I could see he had always been there for me, always willing and ready to be my hero. I just never let him, because I only saw him as this stern, explosive man with a hell of a temper. I'm sorry Dad, I love you, but it's just scary loving you sometimes.

Mom helped me unpack my giant suitcase while I was out. That is quite a task, when you consider how much crap I had in my luggage. It's a good thing Mother's Day wasn't far off, and I gave her a bottle of that SKII Treatment Essence thing that she'd always wanted to try but found too expensive.

In my family, thanks aren't given much. We just silently try to show each other how much we love each other with gifts, actions, and sometimes just not at all. It feels strangely awkward, when at work thanks are expected for the tiniest, most nonsensical gesture ("Oh, thanks for moving your giant butt out of the way."). The words I wanted to say were stuck in my throat as Dad and I drove along. And strangely, they were in Hokkien. Wa bo li nang wa buay sai. I can't do it without you two.

One of the earliest lessons my parents taught me was to be independent. With a distant father and an absent mother and no siblings to play with, I learned to stand on my own two feet, entertain myself. I was a microcosm unto myself. I'm strong. Honestly. I need a vent, and I'm damned dramatic, but I've never been anywhere near breaking down, contrary to what my posts and my speech might claim. Probably not healthy, but I like to cry when I'm stressed, because, like what Marv from Sin City said, "That's the thing with dames, sometimes all they gotta do is let it out and a few buckets later there's no way you'd know."

Makes it hard for me to really just let someone else take care of me. Except for maybe the two people who spent most of their lives doing it.

Elton came over that night. He wanted to take an MC to spend the day with me, but since his boss knew I came back that day, it seemed a little too obvious. He brought me sour plums and one of my favourite gummy candies. Perfect for a girl suffering from nausea. It was a very sweet gesture. And one that was well-received, because it did help a lot. As much as I love him, there are times his nursing skills are somewhat suspect.

He commented a few days back that I seem to keep harping on the negative lately. I guess he probably can understand the motivation from the last painful post. But he's right, I need to stop focusing on the bad. If that's the way the system is, and I'm stuck with it until next April, then I'm just going to have to learn the system and beat it. Rather than wondering why I have to direct him on how to care for me when I'm drunk and puking like mad, be glad that he's sticking around so I don't drown in my own bile. Rather than growling at my mom when she asks me why I didn't take the health supplements because they would help, be glad that she's concerned, just doesn't know how to show it.

It isn't easy loving me; I got that from Dad. Not a good trait to inherit, but there you go. We seem to have this screwed up mentality that because we love these people, and they love us, they should have the same level of understanding and self-sacrifice that we give to them. Reciprocation. I'm trying to break out of that. I feel like Catherine the Great, trying to push changes through for the sake of enlightenment, yet held back by the sheer resistance of long-standing tradition.

It's a freaking evolutionary cha cha.

Well, not quite. It was my bookcase that got raided today, in a strange fit of neatness.

I get them from time to time from this usually dormant part of my DNA inherited from two anal-retentively neat parents. I get through most of my days perfectly ok with a mild level of mess; books on the bedside table stacked haphazardly (hey, I'm still reading them), a tangled nest of wires from the various chargers from my many tech toys in the drawer, bags and barang randomly sitting around on my desk. Then again, growing up in a household where the floors are clean enough to eat off of and even mess is restricted to special baskets on tables, my level of mess is no where near the madness I've witnessed at some people's houses.

One of the reasons why I couldn't carry on with an ex-boyfriend of mine was because his room was a fucking warzone. Sorry for the French, but I've no idea how else to convey the just-robbed-by-a-hurricane-on-PCP, world-class mess that was his room. I remember having to balance with one knee on the bed and my big toe on the floor just so I could see the mirror to apply my eyeliner. I mean, I get that he has a lot of stuff. Any gamer who's not a cheapo has lots of stuff; mountains of source books, one range for each game, boxes upon boxes of cards, boxes and boxes of miniatures, giant pouches of dice, stacks and stacks of CD-roms from the countless PC games they have, more if they have a console. But. Elton is no less of a gamer, and he manages to keep all his stuff neatly tucked away. Granted, my mom would still have a field day "neatening up" his room, but hey, at least I can see the floor, and I'm not attacked by dustbunnies when I want to check my next character build.

So, seeing my darling books having to pile up in weird positions in my bookcase, I decided enough was enough, and threw away two large garbage bags of junk, rearranged things around, and now things look a lot more normal.

I'm heartless when it comes to junking things. I've thrown away yearbooks, birthday cards, sentimental things like that. I've kept some, like my uni and JC yearbooks, but if it was from a period I wasn't that fond of and I didn't look good in, I don't see why I should keep them. I mean, I don't give a rat's ass about the people from my secondary school. The guys should be rounded up and shot like dogs, the girls, well, I don't know them from Eve.

The last time I went through the bookcase, I kept a lot of my JC and uni textbooks, because I spent so much money on them, I figured I should keep them, just cause. This time, only two books survived the culling, and that's cause I figure I might go into HR or something to deal with managing people, so Organizational Behaviour and Interpersonal Communication might be good references to have in my nifty PowerPoint (tm) presentations. I kept all my French stuff, because I will continue with that. Hey man, I not only passed my DELF A2 exams, I got 95.5 out of 100 marks for it. If you're good at something, might as well keep at it.

So now Laurell K. Hamilton has her own shelf. I panicked briefly when I couldn't find The Laughing Corpse, book two from her Anita Blake series. It had flown under my CPU during my tossing (and yes, I toss my books. I take care of them, but paper backs can survive mild tossing. Hard covers are a lot trickier.). I'm a little annoyed though, because of the unmatching covers and sizes of the books. The last two books I bought, Danse Macabre (Anita Blade series) and Mistral's Kiss (Princess Meredith series) are not the usual paperbacks. The former is one of those large print ones and the latter is a damned hardcover. See, I've no issue with books like George R. R. Martin's A Feast For Crows coming out in hardcover, cause the paper back version is just going to get ruined by the time you get through the first third of the book. It's just so damned thick, the hardcover is necessary to protect it. But, as much as I love Laurell's writing, reading Mistral's Kiss in hardcover brought me back to the good old times of the Enid Blyton hardcover story books. The ones with the silly names like The Teddy Bear's Chair and stuff like that. In paperback, it'll probably have measured half an inch thick. Max. And I hate reading books less than an inch.

Regardless, man, it felt good to reorganize and haul those two bags of trash out. I can't stop looking at my bookcase with a silly grin of great pride. I've got my self-help shelf, my fantasy shelf, my Laurell shelf (she writes so much, she gets one of her own), my embarrassing teenage shelf (with L. J. Smith's many series, including the incomplete Nightworld one, and the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series), and the crap shelf with books I have no problems sacrificing to a fire. Above all that, at the very top, is my manga collection. I haven't read those in a very long time now, but those are proof that I can understand Chinese. When accompanied with pretty drawings.

Next to that is my comic collection, most of which were taken from the shop I used to work at. After changing hands many many times, there remained a large stack of comics no one wanted and was pretty darn hard to sell, so the staff took matters into their own hands. I've a lot of Spawn and Gen 13 stuff, and some random things I picked just cause they've nice art. Of course, there's the world-changing series Rising Stars by Michael J. Straczynski, the guy who brought us Babylon 5, and Midnight Nation. I found the first two books in that mess, and paid good money for the third. If you thought Heroes the TV series was great, my friends, Rising Stars predated that and is one of those rare graphic novels that make you think, cry a little, and wish that the world was a better place.

Then there is my massive magazine collection. I've four shelves of Female, Her World, Cleo, Simply Her, Elle, Style, Seventeen, Cosmopolitan, and Instyle. Oh, there's also a couple of issues of Shape, FHM and Maxim. I should throw them away. But but but. They remain, because I know Mom will just grumble that I waste money on them. As though she doesn't read them when I bring them back. Gah.

For a damned neat family, we have problems with junk. We like to collect, and find it hard to let go. Or rather, they find it hard to let go. Dad's the worst; my book case is cluttered with his junk, including this giant plastic gold dog. Don't ask, because I don't know. The store room is filled with crap that are supposedly useful but never get used. Mom doesn't like it, but when I cull my wardrobe or drawers, she doesn't like that either. It's bizarre.

Which is why I try to do my cleaning when they aren't at home. There's nothing more difficult than throwing stuff away than having someone pick through them and asking why you're throwing them away.