Thursday, February 7, 2008

Episode 501

Chinese New Year's Eve and I was still hard at work in the office. It was 5pm and trust me - if it wasn't the bloody client who bloody had to place a bloody order on bloody Chinese New Year's Eve I'll be bloody home by bloody 2pm doodling with Facebook.

So of course I felt relieved that I can finally be out of office at 6pm, took the train and reached home at record speed for reunion dinner. I knew I was never a big fan of Chinese New Year - people keep popping the same old questions every year ("When are you getting married?" "Where are you working?") during our visits to grandma's place on the first day of the New Year.

But ever since she died and ever since my uncle had a fight with his sister (ie. my aunt), we stopped visiting. The first day of the New Year suddenly became a non-event. I certainly didn't miss the questions, but I did miss the times while relatives were still talking to one another.

Of course, there is still the reunion dinner to look forward to - it's steamboat with lots of catching up and gossiping thrown in.

At the end of the day, it was my dad and me at the dinner table. Both my brothers and their families had taken leave. Mum was busy doing the dishes. And that was when I discovered that the history of my family was one complicated encyclopedia, more dramatic than the a soap opera and more captivating than any Project Runway season finale. I have made a mental note to blog everything down before I forget, and for now I have to rely on my dad's memory of where we all came from.

The story is pretty straight-forward - Grandfather arrived from China to help out his uncle, who was a butcher. Grandfather went back to China to get married and brought his wife (i.e. grandma) back to Singapore. By then, his uncle had kicked the bucket and the uncle's wife had decided to let him run the butcher shop. The butcher place was located at a shophouse at what is known today as the junction of Lavender St and Kallang Road. Incidentally, this was also where dad was born.

Dad remembered that Grandma once brought him a medium because he was weak. The medium, a woman, laid a row of eggs in front of her and threw a handful of uncooked rice in the air. Two grains of rice landed respectively on two eggs, and the medium asked Grandma if she have had 2 daughters. Grandma nodded. It was there when dad found out that he had two older sisters, who had presumbly died during infancy, and that he wasn't the oldest kid in the family. Grandma never talked about that again.

Running the butchery stall wasn't easy because Grandfather's uncle's wife and her daughter would demand free meat and lard from him, on top of the rent he had to pay everyday. The earliest memory dad has about anything was that he was sitting at the back of Grandfather's bicycle while sobbing loudly. Grandfather was so frustrated that he stopped the bike to yell at dad. Perhaps dad would have stopped crying if he realized that they were running away from the Japanese during World War II.

After Grandfather gave up his business at the shop, he continued to be a butcher in Tiong Bahru. Grandma used to carry dad and walked all the way from Lorong Tai Seng to Grandfather's stall - which was easily a couple of hours' walk. Still, Grandma didn't let herself be the run-of-the-mill housewife and mother. She held various jobs, including painting metal suitcases at Arab Street, selling lontong, porridge and fried bee hoon. Dad told me that Grandma was rather huge for a woman, and had a loud, booming voice. Which was somewhat different from the way I had known Grandma - she's always soft-spoken, had a hunch and her hair was always neatly combed.

By then, Grandfather fell sick from all the years of toiling, and dad believes that he might be suffering from internal injuries. Grandfather went to Johor Bahru to seek treatment (which was free, by the way. You heard that, Ministry of Health?) and he got a little better. He came back to Singapore to celebrate the new year by going to the Butcher's Association for a meal. That included a half-cooked carp, and he ate it anyway, despite others telling him not to.

At night, he spat blood and someone told dad that Grandfather might be dying. Dad kept vigil at Grandfather's bed side but fell asleep, and was rudely awaken in the middle of the night. Dad saw Grandfather using the last of his remaining strength to ask him to bring an adult, and when they came back with Grandma, he was dead. Grandfather was 39. Dad was probably about 11 or 12.

So while life has to go on despite the tragedy, Grandma continued selling lontong, but was shunned by everyone because 'her husband had bronchitis'. Business dropped and she had to stop. So she went somewhere else, away from the Lorong Tai Seng village, and started selling chee cheong fun (rice noodle rolls). She had a beam, and on one side there would be a container for the rice rolls, sweet sauce, chilli and sasame seeds, and on the other container there would be a mini furnace and a steamer. It would not be hard to imagine how heavy it was carrying the containers from place to place everyday while trying to make a living. I always knew Grandma was an extraordinary woman but I didn't know she was that amazing.

But by then dad had grown so tired of eating leftover chee cheong fun he swore off for the next nine years. His siblings, a sister, followed by a brother, followed by a twin sister and brother, all grew up from the paltry earnings Grandma had while selling chee cheong fun.