0819 - brandon's 1st swim

upon fresh delivery of the baby neck floater from shanghai, and gifted with a sunny afternoon, my sister & i have decided to take baby brandon to his first swim. he's 8 mths and 1 day old, so should be man enough to take on the challenge!

he has his doubts at first, as he was inspecting the pool in quiet. but very soon you can see him enjoying the cool as we swing him slowly in floating water. then he grows more active, circling his little feet. and before you know, he's brave enough to go on his own and display a few olympian synchronized swimmer moves!

thank you for such a lovely experience. look forward to another swim with you!

0810 - shanghai

shanghai is mike's 2nd home. so apart from the hairy crab season which is absolutely unmissable, he also takes the once-in-a-few-months' work opportunity to come home. and whenever he does, a few big family gatherings are always arranged.

if you look from above, you'd see a very different me in these gatherings - i keep a smile on even when eating, and rarely speaks a word - but no fake intended, 'cos the whole gathering is conducted in machine-gun speed shanghainese!

yet i enjoy it a lot being a pure listener & observer. this is a group of people, each with some rich history of their own and some interesting characters. grandma's 93 and so healthy she can almost run on her feet! it's hard to imagine that when she was young, she's been locked up by the government for the sake of her family of 10. how can she stay so positive and happy to this age? when she talks to me she always holds me tightly in her hands. not only did i feel important, i feel an inject of positivity and the wisdom of life into me ... thank you grandma!

then there are the aunts & uncles. the uncle who likes to suddenly pop some english to make conversation with me; another who is a professional cellist and told us off-stage secrets of eason chan as he was in the string quartet of eason's live in shanghai (!); the aunts would always cook us big bags of yummy secret-recipe shanghainese snacks so we can take home with us to hk ... a very loving bunch!

thank you all for teaching me new lessons in family culture!

0725 - my cousin mel

we stayed with my cousin mel on the last few days of our trip in vancouver.

mel has moved from sydney to vancouver not long after university. i would think that is a rather young age. but it seems like she is not afraid of anything. and despite the many complications she has gone through in past years, she has grown into a happily confident lady, and a professionally responsible nurse.

she has grown up in the most protective household of all times. apparently due to her weak body, everything at home needs to be cook steamed (aka tastelss). and TV time is non-existent, while homework time lasted all days & nights. and a single drop of sweat would freak her parents out, and has to be swiped off in 0.001 sec or she would get sick ....

there was a classic story. our families went on an excursion to the countryside together. my sister and i took little mel on a short walk, while the adults were having lunch nearby. i was sure i was holding her hands tight, but next thing i know, mel has fallen into a pond!!!!  i remember trying to pull her up with my full body weight (at 6 yrs old!). soon the adults were there to rescue. and i got into huuuuuuuggggggggggggeeeeeeeeee trouble for the incident.

all these years i thought she has mistaken the 青苔 on the pond to be a grassfield, so she wrong-footed on it and fell into the pond.

mel made a confession when we were in vancouver (after nearly 30 years!)

she had known that it's a pond. yet from cartoons she recalled a fairy flying over and standing on pond-top. so she wanna try the same for herself !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

maybe that's the reason why she's banned from all TV !!!!!!!!

it was good that despite all the bans in childhood she has not abandoned her aspirations. this little fairy has stepped into different ponds and fell, but she has picked up herself time and time again, with no looking back. i admire her being such a brave lady!

mel - thank you for taking us in, and sharing good times together!

0717 - sisterhood

this part of my trip is rather special, as my little sister has suddenly decided to join in. so together, me, my sister, aunt & uncle have taken many roadtrips to visit nearby city sights.

roadtrips are story times. as we have lived apart, there is always so much to flash back, so much to clarify, so much to laugh about. 

my mum is closest to aunt 2. they still talk on the phone a few times a week, over trivial daily things. they love each other, but often get mad at each other over some use of words. well this seems to have been a pattern for them for the past 60 odd years, haha. from my aunt i learnt more about my mum, how she need not do any house chores because she was sick as a kid, how she used to (and still do) linger on the streets til late night and never wanna go home, how she took my aunt along on her dates and taught her to order the expensive items on the menu, how she always think she is more beautiful and younger-looking .... these all cracks me up.

my sister and i grew up rather independently. all memories seem to be dating back to primary school, when we went to school together and was sharing a room. since we moved to sydney, we have grown apart, blame it on the big house, haha, whatever. still those memories were good.

my sister has a baby boy now. i have promised to take him hiking, since she is afraid of the sun. i will tell him about his mum, just like how my aunt told us our mum's story ....

0716 - montreal with aunt & uncle 2

my aunt & uncle have moved to montreal for 13 years. i never really found out the exact reasons, but i guess god brought them there, for they are there to run a church which serves the chinese community.

i moved to sydney as a kid, and have always been looking at the benefits of immigration from the kids' perspective - how it gives kids a much wider exposure in life, being multi-lingual ... etc.

in montreal this time, i learn immigration from the perspective of parents, strangely, for the first time.

what kind of courage was needed to start all over again at mid-age? to get off a plane from sunny 20C hong kong into -40C snowstorm? to leave family whom you can speak your mind, to land into a community where all speaks french? 

like many chinese parents, the courage came from the hope of a better future for their kids. and as kids like us reap the benefit of it all, we often mock about how our parents aren't trying hard enough to fit into the community, and are never thankful enough for what we put them through.

i really don't know how they did it, but my aunt & uncle have long gone from puzzle to pleasure. they take walks in parks over a cup of tim hortons coffee, they sizzle up a BBQ at their little balcony over sunset, they take the snowstorms in winter as just a tiny piece of cake, they miss their little girl but give full respect for her wish to take on her own life living miles apart in japan  ...

as stylish as it sounds, none of it was dropped down from heaven for free. it was all well-earned. 

is this what you call "aging with grace"? a much-respected couple indeed.

thanks for such a lovely time we shared.

0715 - babies

the 2 great fds i visited are both taking care of young babies. being with them almost all day was invaluable. how can babies fall asleep while half-eating a pretz stick? how does water melons taste to them? how do they develop their love & hate of things? how do they interact with adults without words?

are there answers to these? can i handle it too?

0714- LA: re-living high school days

in LA, i stayed with my high school friend fifi. we met 20+ yrs ago, and were the only chinese girls in our form in high school. over the years, we have both left sydney. we have met up in cities like hong kong, taipei, tokyo, london, and now LA. in fact, the last time i was in LA, which was 19 years ago, was a trip with the school, and she was there as well. so it feels quite magical to be here again, with her.

catching-up is the main purpose of the trip. we just talked non-stop. topics can easily cover people varying from my mum to our common friends to interesting people we've met over time. 

but this time, i found more catching-up - those of high school days. the first thing we did was to go see a johnny depp movie - we had fallen in love with him since high school (21 jump st!). we drank soda the size of pop-corn cups. we ate fattening hotdogs, double burgers and burritos. we went on a warner bros studio tour and got on the old set of FRIENDS (OMG central perk!). we went on the hollywood boulevard and tried to spot our fave celebs. we spilt coffee all over the car.... 

there were incidents in life that i had totally forgotten, yet fifi brought them up in our conversations. was i ever the bold girl who always caught the train to the city by myself on weekends? who won a scholarship to japan at 16? who directed a deodorant commercial for uni project? who has been freed by my parents since i knew how to walk?

20 yrs! how could all these time passed at a blink?! it brings some tears to my eyes, happy tears for such blessed lives we've had, and for all that we've accomplished.

thank you fifi, for re-living high school with me for one day.