a father’s love through norwegian sardines

I love these sardines in oil since the day my parents brought this 6 year-old to their friend’s gathering. My family would never buy these sort of sardines but only of the more economical regional brands in regular with tomato sauce in cylindrical cans for our meals. In my family imported Norwegian sardines were considered an extravagance at RM1.20 a pop in 1971 for the cheapest brand with what I couldn’t make out if it was a green-capped gnome, midget or dwarf sleeping under a mushroom on the label (PIXIE).

Dad would pick up a can just for me whenever he had to visit this particular supermarket (Fitzpatrike’s) situated along Jalan Raja Chulan in Kuala Lumpur for work. I didn’t have to share with my siblings because they didn’t like it and would prefer the ‘economical’ ones with tomato sauce; good riddance for that!

In retrospect, Chinese fathers hardly showed any signs of endearment, especially from my dad’s generation but these little gestures among the countless were telling signs. To me they were never tactile with affection probably in fear of breaking some kind of an invisible wall to reveal some sort of weaknesses? They showed up by being present in every challenging circumstance that life threw at us…while I occasionally gave him and my mom headaches no asprins could have elevated!

This is why every time I see a can of these Norwegian sardines, I immediately think of him. No, Dad wasn’t a sardine…I am referring to his unconditional love.

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final crackling of fireworks and yusheng for the dragon year 2024

The most anticipated Chinese festival of the year has come to an end on this 15th day which is also known as “Chap Goh Mei”. A little tinge of sadness has come over me as always because I will have to wait for another 12 months before I can savor my all-time favorite Yusheng or Prosperity Toss dish again. I remember as a kid when this age-old Chinese dish was only served on the 7th day of the Chinese New Year Festival (another festival within the festival called “Yan Yat” or “The Day of Humans” also meaning the birthday of all humankind; the day where everyone celebrates their [own] birthdays). Then in the late 70s they started to make it available a week before the festival until “Yan Yat”. Now they have even extended serving it at most restaurants until this final day. I can still remember my first time having Yusheng at 8 years-old in a popular Chinese restaurant at Jalan Bukit Bintang in Kuala Lumpur. The venue is now occupied by McD since the early 80s.

Another tradition by the Malaysian Chinese originated from Penang is the practice of tossing mandarin oranges. I have heard of the earliest version of this practice where the young ladies would write their names down onto the oranges and toss them into the river. Potential suitors would be waiting down the river to collect them. I have however not heard of any married couples having met by this method (yet?).

In this day and age, who knows if a stalker or a serial killer would be the one scooping up the oranges? Or a sudden flash flood gushing the guys out into the ocean while deciphering what was written on the oranges?

No, now they will just toss the oranges into the ocean as a symbol of luck or blessing in finding a suitable suitor.

Here is to a good healthy year ahead for all.

I dare anyone? Picture credit unknown.

Our store-bought home-assembled Yusheng/Prosperity Toss on Chinese New Year’s Eve. We later removed the red, green and yellow crispies due to their intense color dyes of non-disclosed origins before tossing.

“Chap Goh Mei”, the last day of the Chinese New Year Festival – We took our pre-packed Yusheng/Prosperity Toss to the food court of a shopping mall and toss it as quiet as possible for not wanting to draw any unecessary attention. Normally the practice would be standing up and tossing the ingredients into the air while saying (loudly) auspicious wishes. It is believed that the higher the toss, the more likely the diners’ growth for wealth will manifest in the upcoming year.

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rocking grandma 101

Cutting her birthday cake complete with a tiny white chocolate Chinese God of Longevity!

My maternal grandma turned 101 last 13 July 2013. The big question that everybody’s been asking about her is her alertness despite her age.

Here is my take on what I observed when I was a kid when she shared a room with my brother and me; her bed was on the other side of the room from our double-decker bed. On most nights I could hear her whispering her ‘book-keeping’. She would whisper the numbers like how much she had spent on groceries, who owed her money, or what bills she had settled right down to the balances in her purse and savings account. I think that mental bookkeeping had some benefits to her still lucid mind!

Even when she was in convalescence in my parent’s guest room after being hospitalized, I heard those whispers again but she was unaware of my presence. Upon hearing that, I knew she was going to be fine! This was just a few years back.

There, I hope that answers it. I can see why experts are encouraging people to utilize their brains more in playing games that require more strategizing or planning like Sodoku, Mahjong, word games, etc.

I also think my grandmother’s longevity has a lot to do with genetics. She has always been healthy all her life and was admitted to the hospital just twice – once for a mastectomy (she then was already in her late 70s) and another with intestinal problems (in her late 90s). She birthed all her children at home. This is a woman who when she was in her late 70s was still bicycling around our housing estate looking up on neighbors, and friends and doing minor grocery shopping!

The good ones would be sleep and plenty of it, walking aplenty and active, and of course, mental book-keeping.

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which was which one the brother from hell?

My brother and I used to fight or bicker every waking hour of the day, week, and eventually years from when I was about 10 until he left for college about 4 plus years later. After he had graduated and came back for a few years before returning to the States to do his masters, yours truly, this highly evolved one still had to share a room with him where I was constipated with constant frustrations but refraining myself from any confrontations just to keep the peace. He was laconic in his communication with me but taciturn would be more apt in description.

Na, he wasn’t (that) a bad kid (nor was I). We just couldn’t get along or communicate the way most siblings would and that was all.

Being three years my senior, he was obviously bigger, taller and had martial arts training. When I had to fight him when being bullied , I could never topple or win any physical altercations. The only way I could fight back was putting on my thinking cap and start planning for retaliation sans any physical violence .

To get back at him, I normally worked in stealth! I would take my time. I would save my lunch money and head down to the downtown dingy toy store where they also sold stuff like stink bombs, itchy powder, fake rubber wriggly worms, snakes and insects! Unfortunately, those rubber critters couldn’t scare or affect him (come to think of it, none of the stuff from this store worked on my brother)!

The pranks that failed:

1) I once sprinkled itchy powder on the pouch of his underwear of all places. He didn’t feel anything except for some light prickly feeling ‘there’.

2) Dropped two mini vials of stink-bombs in between the textbooks in his school bag hoping that the books would somehow crush the vials somewhere in transit. Those stupid vials never broke and even if it did, the smell would only last 7-8 seconds. Furthermore, if he got cut by the broken shards of glass from the stink bombs, I am sure my parents would have grounded me till 80!

3) Removed one whole chapter from his textbook the night before while he was asleep after checking that the next day, his class would read and discuss on that very chapter of that book the next morning. My Mom came at me with a cane when she found out!

4) Ditto above but this time, I made tassels all around the pages of a chapter on another textbook with a pair of scissors hoping that his classmates would ridicule and laugh at him for that. He somehow never reported that to Mom nor did I ask him. He probably knew he was the one who made me mad in the first place.

Now, the ones that worked:

1) Reset his alarm clock. One night while I was taking a night cap with my parents in the kitchen at about 10-ish, I knew my brother would come down at any minute because I had tempered with his alarm clock right after he had gone to sleep. True enough, he walked into the kitchen in his full school uniform. Mom started giggling uncontrollably and to my surprise, she didn’t punish me. My brother just went back to bed and he also didn’t get back at me the next day.

2) Scoop a few of his guppies and fed them to the chicken.

3) Remove the colorful tails of some of his prized male guppies and threw them back into the aquarium.

4) Scoop a few more guppies and threw it into a big round shallow earthen pot that housed his ugly and stupid looking tutu fish that fed on smaller fishes (used to call his tutu fish a good for nothing fish until being fried with sweet and sour sauce by my grandma after a long period of time. Cannot recall if the fish meat was tough due to the age of the fish).

5) Removing parts from his model airplanes that he had painstakingly assembled – a wheel or a propeller blade at a time.

6) My brother was a disciplined kid and would assemble his folded uniform on a stool by his bed every night – the shirt, the pants, belt, metal school badge and underwear. I would remove any one of those items after he had gone to bed (he was also the ONLY one in our family who slept early. My sisters and I described him as, ‘chicken-eyed’ because of that).

7) You could do so much with his music cassette tapes and put them back into their cases as if no one had touched them. I don’t think I need to elaborate on this. Couldn’t do too many though because I liked music a lot even at that age and if I destroyed the ones that I liked, I won’t get to listen to them and buying a tape or record was a luxury then – bootleg or otherwise.

8) I got into the bathroom and locked myself inside just in time before he could catch and would have probably clobbered me. How did I get out of it despite him being persistent and waited by the door for me to eventually excite from the bathroom? I poured talcum powder into my mouth and with my saliva, it formed into a gooey substance (NEVER try this at home for it’s a definite health-hazard)! I opened the door and instead of coming at me, he back-tracked calling me a mad man after noticing my mouth. I obviously couldn’t talk but my facial expression told him to back off or I spit! We ended up laughing instead afterwards.

There, I was this lively, cheerful but a tad mischievous kid until my family relocated from Ipoh back to Petaling Jaya. At the same time, ALL my siblings were shipped off to college along with my cousins! I evolved into a socially troubled teenager but that’ll be another story.

My brother and I still don’t talk much to this day, even though I am now bigger, taller, and just two belts away from black in Taekwondo. Of course I will protect him if somebody ever hurt him.

Above: My brother and I circa…oh I can’t recall but this is my favourite photo of the two of us!

Related post: “the crawlies get creepier with age“

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dad the student in 1950’s surviving sepias

These are just a few surviving photographs of Dad’s taken when he was a student at Scotch College in Melbourne circa 1950s. We have lost quite a bit of those photographs and I have personally destroyed some as a kid (and my dad would still occasionally remind me on it unless we don’t go there about his college days or the subject on old photographs!). Until this day I can still recall tearing up some of those prints and flinging them over the balcony of our apartment/flat on the 6th floor!

Kudos for modern technology where I can salvage whatever is left and store them digitally.

My Dad rented a room from an Italian family. He still talks of them as being very warm, caring and treated my Dad as part of their family. In the image above, the eldest son of the family is picking my Dad up from the airport.

One of the experiences that my Dad still loves to tell from his Scotch College days is where he became a subject of mass attention whenever they were called in for ‘mass’ physical/medical check-ups or examinations. They all had to strip down to complete nudity before being asked to stand in line for their turns to go to the doctor’s desk. Before he could even get into the line, he would be surrounded by other white students. They would stare, point at my Dad’s crotch and whisper amongst themselves and giggle. Dad was the only Asian in the whole college at that time.

Here, Dad is posing in front of the main building. Probably circa 1954-55.

Picnic with his friends – the couple on Dad’s right are now residing in Bangkok. They own a gas/petrol station or kiosk. According to dad, the wife was possessive over her husband then and that hasn’t change until now. They still meet whenever my parents have to go to Bangkok.

As a part-time volunteer ranger!

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