Tuesday, January 31, 2006
wah. havent updated for what has to be one of my longest periods ever. its been nearly two weeks i think. even my fingers are itching from not typing for a sustained period of time for some time now. first off, i wanna congratulate ong soh chin for entirely revamping my impression of straits times(or more specifically, life!) journalists. thanks for that great article in today's straits times on brokeback mountain and the chnaging face of cinema. its on the second last page or last page if i'm not wrong. i can see why she's the senior writer. if only more journalists were like her. damn. been entirely exhausted the past few days from all the running around. chinese new year isn't really what its all cut out to be. it just involves a bunch of aunties sitting around and gossiping loudly and eating new year goodies, while the rest just hang around and try to pass the time. its awkward to say the least. doesn't help that the weather has been horrifically hot the past two days. thank god for my favourite cousins! :)))was caught in this huge traffic jam on the first day of cny. we were stuck for at least 50 minutes. it was almost like waiting at the checkpoint to get into jb during peak hours. unheard of man. it was on the pie too. bet like half of singapore was late for their appointments. apparently there was an accident that spanned 3 lanes. yes THREE. and all the vehicles on the expressway had to cram into one tiny lane just to get through. when we (finally) drove past, we could see at least two wrecked vehicles, a car and a motorbike, and what looked like a body on the main road. it was covered. you know what they say about them. the police never cover the bodies unless they're dead.seeing fresh corpses on the first day of cny. really bad luck man. not that i'm superstitious la. and then later on in the day, we learned that my mum's friend's mother, who also happens to be my exneighbour's grandmother, had passed away that morning. talk about depressing.my mum wanted to go attend the funeral, whenever it might be, but my dad didn't like the idea. he's so damn superstitious la! can't stand it. during the 7th month, he actually tells me not to go swimming. -.-"i don't know whether to laugh or roll my eyes.and my sister just told me about smth that had happened when i was younger. my mum didn't even tell me. apparently when my maternal grandmother died 11 years ago, my father didn't let my sister and i attend her funeral, just because my paternal grandfather had died in that same year too. i mean, what kind of rubbish tradition is that?! i bet its just smth my father's side invented, although i can't for all the world think why. my maternal grandma loved us alot. i can still rmb the patterns of the pajamas she used to sew with her ancient sewing machine for my sister and i. they were squarish and the colour scheme was always purple and green. maybe thats why i like it so much now. i don't know whether to laugh or cry.her hair was always curly. she had greyish-brownish wispy hair, about shoulder length, until it had started dropping off. her frame was thin, frail. or at least thats how i remember it in her dying year. she had had cancer and it had taken its toll on her body. according to my mum, she was a real beauty in her younger healthier years. its just heartbreaking.i don't even know whether her chemotherapy had gone on long enough for her to have suffered.and i didn't even know that my grandfather and grandmother had died in the same year. so much for family history. no wonder i can recall his funeral but not hers. i can remember accidentally burning my cousin's shirt with the ends of my joss sticks while praying. i can remember crying nonstop in the coach on the way back to my grandparents house after the funeral, and my sister telling me to stop beacuse when i cried she felt like crying too. my recollection of my grandfather's funeral is so sharp and clear, and yet all i can recall of my grandmother is that the pyjamas she made for me were always soft, light and silky. i wore them for years until i outgrew them.i shall mention shufen here because she told me to. muackmuacks my darling squishy! the earth says hello.gods. i dont know why im depressing (or boring) all of you to death (no pun intended) right now. but it just started pouring out and i need to finish it. my grandfather's death was smth i never liked thinking about. i can still rmb that for a long long time in my childhood, i blamed myself for it. well not FOR it but...anyway. i was only in primary 2/3 i think and i was waiting for the school bus. it was a really sunny morning. it was only the maid and i at home. then the phone rang and it was one of my aunts. she said gong gong was critically ill and i needed to get my father straightaway. so i told her he wasn't in. she told me to try and contact him in any way i could, beacuse gong gong desperately needed to see him. i was young and didn't understand the connotations of those words, but i did comprehend that the matter was extremely important. the tone of her voice said it all. so i called up my dads company and this asshole picked up. this nameless faceless heartless asshole who i shall remember for life. i asked for my father, and i think he told me to wait. so i waited. and waited. then he came back again and i asked him one more time. you know what he told me? he said that little girls shouldn't play with the phone. then he hung up.in retrospect, i should have tried again. i should have called back and tried to explain that it wasn't a joke. i should have screamed at him and told him it was a matter of life and death. if he still didn't believe me, i could even have gotten my maid to call instead. grown-ups sound more convincing don't they. but i didn't. i was young and naive and innocent and hurt and scared by what that strange man had said, the way which he had scolded me. i didn't dare do anything. then the school bus came and picked me up. i just left.later that evening, after i came back from school, i came back to a silent house. my mother told me that my grandfather had passed away. my father had not had a chance to see him before he died.i don't even know if i cried. i can't remember. memories can be so hazy. all i know is that i thought it was my fault that my father had been deprived of a chance to speak with his own father on his deathbed, that he had not been able to catch even a glimpse of him alive for the last time. guilt racked me. i was the culprit.there. i've finished. it feels good. i wanted to blog about so much more, about how utt and alex polstra are so cute etc but they seem so trivial in comparison now. all my memories just started pouring out and i got off point, but you know what. back up there in this post are memories i didn't even know i had. as i typed i remembered more and more, flashbacks if thats what you call them, until i myself was stunned at the amount of things i never knew that i knew.going to watch spy kids 2 now. another time then-
