My Gua-Ma Said

I was from Sumatra, Indonesia. I didn’t know your Gua-Gong before we got married. In turbulent times. It was a union arranged by our parents.

The Japanese were invading our country at that time. Unwed girls were hurriedly matchmade to men who wanted to start a family. There was even this girl who hid under the bed when the Japanese came. It was that bad. Lucky for her, she did not get raped.

Your Gua-Gong was very smart. He began to work without much education. When he was a kid in China, he dropped out of school after maybe a couple of years. But he learnt things very fast and was very successful in business after he came over to Indonesia. He spoke the local language and traded local products. Rubber, bananas, durians… We did not have to worry about money and he was highly respected in the community.

Your Gua-Gong was also a very kind man. Children had to travel long distances to attend school. To let them have an easier time, he hired a teacher to teach at where the children lived. During my time, it was not easy to get an education. I probably started to attend primary school only when I was 10 or 11.

He had a big heart. The Malay children would always beg for money. Some of them wanted money to buy opium. Sometimes, your Gua-Gong would pity them and give them money. I don’t think they ever returned the money. Same with land. Your Gua-Gong owned some land and sometimes people would beg to have some land to bury their family members. He would also agree to it.

The place that we lived in was very simple but we had to leave it to escape to a safer place. Your Gua-Gong came over to Singapore first for work. My parents didn’t allow me to follow him. The ship that he traveled in was a small one. It was only later when he arranged for a bigger ship to transport local products to Singapore that I was allowed to go.

One year after I came here, I gave birth to your Dua-Yi. Your Dua-Yi studied in a Chinese school. Your Dua-Gu and Ji-Gu were very different. Dua-Gu didn’t play a lot. He was the one who could study. Your Ji-Gu mixed with the wrong company and played more than he studied. Soy-Gu started well but also mixed with the wrong company. I remember your mummy and your Ji-Yi studied from the night to the next morning. And those topics that they prepared for were not tested. Those that they did not prepare as much for appeared in their tests.

Eat. Help me eat. I can’t finish so much. I just went to the market this morning to have fish porridge. Eat. I’m also just getting better from diarrhoea last week. Yes, I’m taking mediation. Better now. Eat.

You cannot go and see your Gua-Gong today. It’s your birthday. Your mummy didn’t tell you? Aiyoh. You cannot go ok. No good.

I listened to my Gua-Ma talk on my birthday. That was last Friday. Two years ago on the same day, my Gua-Gong passed on. I just felt like I needed to go and see him before I started enjoying my birthday break.

In that short time that I was listening to my Gua-Ma share about her life, I was very touched. Somewhat feeling blessed to have such a chance to know more about her and her husband. She spoke entirely in Teochew. Not that my grasp of that language is very polished but at least my mum taught me well enough. I wished I had a recorder then. I’m sure there are details that have slipped my mind, and others that did not register any meaning to me in the first place.

So, at least that was what I think my Gua-Ma said.

NonChillNonMan-gen

Women.

I think they have this secret production of hormones that are called (somewhere in an obscure medical dictionary) NonChillNonMan-gen.

Seriously, it is an innate quality that distinguishes the way both genders behave. Even the online dictionary agrees with me and emphasizes this:

Noun: Woman1. the female human being (distinguished from MAN).

Chill, and be a dude sometimes ladies. Not starting a gender war, but trust me, you'll suffer less during the time of the month and start producing ChillMan-gen.

Oh well, I'm a man. I chill. When's your turn?

Is It Worth It?

I did it. A few weeks back, I told myself that I needed to do something creative for myself. I had a great time creating ads back in school and I needed to re-create those moments for myself now. It’s one of my interests and I’m not about to let it go.

I created a series of three expressions (I don’t know if they’re considered ads since they don’t sell anything) along the theme of “Is It Worth It?” There was this time I was at a games day thingy organized by youth groups in churches. At the end of the day, the organising guy closed it off by saying something like, there are so many things in life that we exhaust our energy to pursue. At the end of the day, we need to ask ourselves if these are really worth what we’ve put in to achieve. If they are, great. If they’re aren’t, then maybe it’s time to reconsider our priorities.

In the same vein, I wanted to express what I, we, friends have done or are doing. Hopefully, these can make you evaluate what you’re doing in life. Or at the very least, make you realize that you are doing something worth shouting, “Wait a minute”.

Did it work for you?

Ishi

I’m back.

My life in the past months hasn’t exactly been eventful. I was beginning to get sucked into this drum of mundane, weary work life. And I thought, what’s the point of writing stuff that’s not exactly good/happy/interesting? But I guess there are times that are simply worthy to note, however devastating.

Ishi left. It has been almost two months. I don’t think the pain will ever cease, it’s just the extent of it that gets diluted over time. Not that I think it’s fair to the dude…

I met him two weeks before he left. I dreamt of him doing something similar more than two weeks before he left. He started opening up before I had the uncanny dream. The foursome started the breakfast series before he started to open up more. He gave some warning signals before the foursome decided to take some action.

We first met each other in 2002 in CS. According to him, we were peeing in the toilet next to the lecture theatre. We looked at each other and said
“Eh you look familiar”
“Eh, you also look familiar”
After that it was just Yos, bear hugs, project collaborations, foursome…

Rosy, him and I worked together for radio, loved one another lots, then got to know Chiang, worked on BAV together, loved one another more, got together as Foursome, and bonded for life.

During one FOC, he was the OGL, Yunshuang was his partner and I was the SA for their group. He had loads of fun in his first camp. We were at Sentosa during the camp and he applied lots of sunblock on his face. Being the fair guy that he already is, he said “见鬼啦！” a la Jacky Wu. And we just went crazy shouting “见鬼啦！” cracking ourselves up silly.

There was one semester we were neighbours in hall 5. At times, he’d just stand outside his room and smoke. Of course I nagged when I saw him doing that. Then there was probably one time that he decided that he wanted to talk about his problems in my room. We rarely spent time in his room since he had a non-existent stranger as a roomie who segregated the room.

We went to Desaru together. Another one of my failed attempts at getting the foursome out on a trip. We drank a little, threw some darts, enjoyed an exclusive beach, lazed at the pool and he had to borrow my shorts. That was funny.

Today was his 49th day thingy. There was a lot of chanting going on at the temple. Very not his style. The monks had mikes but the one on the head monk wasn’t too good. It didn’t capture the voice too well and it sounded like the head monk’s chant kept skipping. Not that it mattered to me since I don’t think most of us there understood much of the chant. But at one point when the voice kept skipping, I could almost imagine Ishi shouting “WTF! His audio sucks!” Yeah, I’m quite sure you would say that. When I looked at Ishi’s brother from the back, I kept seeing images of Ishi. The way he used his right hand to flip his fringe to the left looked very much like what Ishi would do. And they do look alike too. At least from the position I was at, three-quarters left from behind.

Or maybe we’re just trying to hold on to some piece of Ishi that we can find. That I can find.

When I was heading there this morning, my ipod shuffled Corrine May’s Fly Away.

You can fly so high
Keep your gaze upon the sky
I’ll be praying every step along the way
Even though it breaks my heart to know we’ll be so far apart
I love you too much to make you stay
Baby fly away

I don’t see how anyone can be so generous. I still wish you’re around. You missed Chiang’s birthday celebration, you’ll miss mine and Rosy’s. What’s our theme for gifts this year? You never bought the gifts. It should be your turn this year.

We tried, Ishi Lau. Not enough? You wrote on my gift wrapper last year “Haha been really happy knowing you for so long since year 1… and many more years to come” It hasn’t been long Ishi Lau, and I do want my many more years.

I love you Ishi Lau and I hope you’re happy. Happier.


In hairy and unhairy situations, always.