Family

after getting a lift from a friend's mum yesterday to town to get some lovely and very affordable (bluidy sarcastic bloke i am) balsa wood for a model i'm making, we had to stop by Mater hopsital on the way back to pick up a frenli medical student who also needed a lift to the gym..and outside the gym i saw this kid who had finished his swimming classes and was clad only in his swimming trunks..waiting for his parents to come pick him up obviously...but in that late afternoon, the wind started to blow for a rough spell and it really was pretty chilly..

and i was reminded of my own little kindergarden days and early childhood years where i also would be found waiting outside class or school or kindergarden and good ol dad would be late by 45 minutes to an hour on average at least to pick mi up...or dear mum who bore me in her womb for 9 months and with whom i have an extremely close bond that just won't be broken (probably due to the fact that she shared her food and water with me through a tube the size of a garden hose for those nine months), dear mum who's blood of my blood and flesh of my flesh..she would often be held up by work for at least 15 minutes..i'm not complaining ..no i most definitely can't..but i did have to manage myself often during all those in-between periods growing up..

but just a few nites ago i had an extremely good conversation with both of them over the phone..you see, Mum had very wisely told me to bring her unused Macbook back with me to Australia at the start of this year "in case anything happens"..n it so happened that the night before, my laptop decided to crash and dump the entire operating system..well the data was backed up thankfully..Praise and glory to God for that..but without Mum's Macbook i would have nothing to use and would be camping in the library 24-7 for the next 3 weeks..and since the library doesnt have the Archicad software i use for rendering and can't download it due to "university concerns over the illegal download of music and multiomedia"..yeah right...capitalist rhetoric straight out of an imperialist Telstra executive's mouth...Guillotine the bourgeois apparatchiks man!

anyway, at that point i remember how Mum was always the forward thinking and strategising one who had a great deal of foresight and vision plus untold reserves of pragmatism and patience..she's the steel spine of my family that makes the boys in the family (dad and me) be civilised and have some sort of routine..else we would all degenrate into a Lord of the Flies kinda existence..must be all that Chong blood from Grandma..man, those women sure were legendary...ever heard of 5 hour long tongue lashings? there we go..

and as my good fren and bro Kumu would say, the only woman who will ever stand by you unconditionally is your own mum..the only woman who truly loves you is mum..i learnt a lot about dogged persistence and the ability to take pressure without snapping from her..i sometimes wish that life had been a little easier on her and i would want her to truly retire and not have to keep thinking about the family finances and the like..but thats life..we make the best of what the Sovereign Lord has given, good or bad..no choice in that..her lesson to me also..

and there's Dad of course..if Mum's the steel spine, he's the element of fire.. i mean, there are times when he can be embarrassing due to his extremely outgoing nature (even though he always denies this, "i only have a few friends...dun bluff la pa, haha) and he is fiercely independent (if u wanna noe wat the meaning of "doing your own thing" really is, u have to meet my Dad) and he is fiercly hot-headed also..one of the traits i've inherited from him for better or worse..attack first, talk later..but during the conversation i found out that he had actually been talking to the owners of the shop downstairs of the premises our church back home is using..before our conversation..and he told how the owners were illiterate and din understand english and how they had received a letter from "govenment authorities" aka apparatchiks telling them that their grease trap inspection had failed and they needed to do something about it in 3 weeks or else..and how, my father, being the big kaypo, had decided to translate and explain the letter to them..

i told him, come on, these pple who share the rental of the building with us have never been very kind to us..in fact, they've been downright nasty..and they refuse to separate their utilities meters from us so we never really quite know how much it is we're using since we could be paying for their useage even if we split the bill according to percentages..and how they made so much noise when we wanted to rent the vacant space above them (and its not their building also).. and how much they disturb our peace..the fair thing to do would be to just ignore them and have nothing to do with them and dats wat i would do normally..but my Dad, being a pastor..and being generous and big-hearted, promptly helps them in their need..he even told me that we're all fellow tenants and neighbours and how Jesus said we should love our neighbours as ourselves..he's right of course..which doesnt make it any easier..i want to play power politics by nature rather than show mercy, generousity and kindness..

thats why i love that man whom i call my Dad..i've always defined myself by what he is Not..especially in my growing up years..because i saw his kindness as weakness and because i saw his temper as a contradiction of his kindness and generosity..but now i realise more and more the strength of character he often shows and how we're all equally hypocritical and contradictory at some point..n how all families are dysfunctional at some point..oh well, we're family and family is special..somehow, somewhere..it is..