The Idyll of Spring

Despite the sweltering heat creeping in with February, it has been a bit of a spring idyll these days for us.

And by us, I mean Charming Calvin and me. He came back to his hometown a while back several days before Chinese New Year and I took an early flight back here to join him.

Which means lazy golden afternoons with me on the couch idly rifling through the pages of my latest book Getting Genki in Japan while Calvin fiddles around with my new sets of Lego building his very own empire. Whiling away our time in each other's company while the radio plays a peculiar mixture of sentimental Mandarin weepies and swinging jazz. Every once in a while, I swipe him with my hardback and steal a kiss from him, messing up his shockingly methodical approach to Lego brickbuilding. He mutters a complaint but gives in anyway, putting aside his carefully arranged bricks - by colour, size and uniqueness - for the moment.

All horrifically domestic.

And yes, awfully nauseating. Enough to make me hurl in disgust if I were the unfortunate one looking in from the outside.


Flowers are romantic, aren't they?
Which I am sure Calvin's mother, Madame Borgia, wished she had. Of course if she had been within such close quarters playing reluctant chaperone, she would probably have had me bludgeoned instead. Having Calvin come over as often as he has the past few days certainly irked her to no end - especially since our conservative Madame must have dreamt up all sorts of horrifically perverse scenarios starring her vulnerable son and his scheming gay ravisher.

Not knowing that we were both relatively involved in surprisingly benign PG-13 tasks. Certainly can't get more family friendly than board games, Korean dramas and a set of Lego!

Probably not the kind of indoor games Madame must have imagined us playing. As it was, our wily Madame Borgia still managed to keep tabs on our daily activities.

Madame : Son, where are you?
Calvin : I told you I was going out with Paul.
Madame : Will you be having dinner back home?
Calvin : This is the second time you've asked me this but no.
Madame : Just checking. Showing concern you know.
Calvin : That's alright.
Paul : Tell her I'm busy licking that tiny indent in your belly button.
Calvin : I'll tell her no such thing.
Madame : What is that? Did Paul say something?

Her excuses were starting to run thin so she quickly dispensed with valid reasons to call after a couple of attempts. No doubt in a failed bid to stop wicked me from ruining her innocent progeny.

Paul : You think she might have hired a spy?
Calvin : Don't think she has reached your level of insanity yet.
Paul : True.

Approaching Zen

I've always wondered about maturity.

Dictionary defines it as the state or quality of being fully grown or developed. Makes sense since surely maturity shouldn't just emobody the sags and wrinkles that accompany increasing age. Of course quantifying someone's mental maturity is a little bit harder to estimate.

I think I've found mine though.

Over the new year festivities, the usual whirlwind rounds of house visits had me caught up as friends and family revolved around red packets, pineapple tarts and green tea. Inevitably there's the occasional encounter with strangers that I immediately develop a distaste for. Yes, I am guilty of the rare hate-at-first-sight.


This is really spoiling my zen.
Especially when it comes to unctuous paragons like Peachy McPreachy who hide their acerbic comments under a veil of sweet piousness. Every gossipy chatty comment made by my cousins immediately had her slipping in as the uncalled-for moderator to police our conversation.

Peachy : Ooh that's so not politically correct tee hee.
Cousin : No, it isn't. Your saying so isn't exactly PC either.
Peachy : Hope your cousin doesn't mind but she really shouldn't be saying such things.
Paul : My cousin is much too kind to tell you so but yes, she minds. So butt out.

Have I ever said that I dislike holier-than-thou sanctimonious prigs? I much prefer blunt straightforward bitches.

But I didn't reply in such an unmannerly fashion. I very much wanted to but I didn't. Rather than snap with a suitably scathing reply as is my usual modus operandi, I shrugged, turned away and paid her snippy comments little heed. Sticks and stones and all that. Perhaps years back I would have instinctively leapt on Peachy with a bloody bludgeon and battered her till she surrendered - verbally of course - but this time I found it far less annoying than I would have.

Why bother flying into a rage when that would only have me developing wrinkles!

So yes, maybe I am growing up. Finally.

Or maybe Fabulous Felix, and his patented shield of obliviousness, is clearly rubbing off on me.

I had to hold my far less zen cousin back from strangling Peachy though.

Black Sheep Returns

Chinese New Year is a time when the family gathers at the ceremonial altar to pay their respects to their distant ancestors, hoping to be showered with future blessings especially when it comes to the next generation.

Guess we must have missed that particular benediction this year since it seems the black sheep in the family has started to live up to his name. After several generations of dull, nondescript law-abiding citizens, maybe he figures it's time we had some notoriety to shake things up!

A while back I made an ominous prediction that we'd probably have to raise funds to bail out my prodigal cousin one day - and it looks like my cousin Richie Runt is doing all he can to turn that into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Unsatisfied with merely extorting protection fees from even smaller runts, it seems that Richie has set his sights a bit higher by resorting to a bit of petty thievery instead.

Seriously don't know which is worse.


Dammit, how else to distinguish myself from the rest of my upstanding cousins! Maybe with a suitably colourful rap sheet? Maybe if I rob a bank?
Didn't take long after the reunion dinner before Lispy Lori pulled me aside to fill me in with the sordid details.

Lori : We think Richie Runt has been stealing from the coffeeshop till.
Paul : WTF. Are you sure?
Lori : Yes, we have proof. We didn't believe it ourselves until we saw the evidence. Video-cams and all that.
Paul : I hold him down, you break his arms and legs.
Lori : Wait, there's more.
Paul : So you brought it to the attention of his parents?
Lori : That actually made it worse. Well, you know his mother.

To compound to the nearly insurmountable problems faced by Richie Runt, his mother - the erstwhile Bo Peep - has not only lost any semblance of control over her black sheep, it seems she has lost her head as well. Rather than proffer any solid evidence to counter the supposedly erroneous accusations, our increasingly agitated Bo Peep instead forced her son to kowtow before said ancestral altar to proclaim his unsullied innocence.

While she provided increasingly shrill whines and wails to accompany the hysterical dramatics. Weepy Korean drama heroines couldn't possibly hold a candle to her imagined pathos.

Lori : Made her son Richie swear on the graves of his ancestors that he had never done any such thing on pain of having his limbs summarily broken.
Paul : Wow. Drama. Make cuts on their wrists to prove their innocence too?
Lori : Wish they had. I only thought it happened on television.
Paul : Evidently it's based on our family. Wish I was there though.
Lori : With your temper, you'd probably have strangled them both.
Paul : Quite likely. But I'd have taken a video of the ensuing hysterics for youtube first.
Lori : Sell the video instead so we can save the money to bail him out one day.

At the rate Richie Runt is regressing, I think that might be a strong possibility. Since he's turning eighteen soon, even juvenile court isn't going to save him anymore.

Prosperity Colours

Hopefully by the time you're reading this, I'd have found my bright canary yellow shirt.

Ever since my cousins and I started earning our very own paychecks, we have started this tradition of dressing up for Chinese New Year. Buying snazzy new gear from head to toe isn't just for the kids anymore! And each year, we tend to stick to a particular theme to match.

Much to my everlasting dismay, someone picked yellow this year as an homage to our family name!

Bet none of you would be terribly surprised but this town isn't exactly a renowned mecca of fashion - actually quite the opposite - so finding a reasonably dapper man's shirt in a shade of yellow is almost impossible. Turns out men's shirts here are only available in the usual conservative blacks, blues and greens.

And unfortunately everything else less conventional turned out to be unashamedly tacky... with metal hooks / zippers / rubber implements.

Or it's a yellow golf tee.

Unless I want to dress up as a Taiwanese pop icon ready for the stage or a golf course caddy, I figure I'd better head back home to find a better fit.


Dammit, maybe if it's dark they won't notice it's not exactly yellow.
So to all who are heading home for the reunion, have a Happy Chinese New Year!

One Book Stand

Rather like the infamous one-night-stand which it draws its name from, a one book stand would be a guilty pleasure read - one you hastily flip through in the cover of night and embarassingly hide away in the light of day when everyone's looking!

Or rather the books you savour once and never pick up again forthwith.

Now that I can empathize with. Quite a few literary classics I had to struggle through just to complete - since everyone else insists that it's a must-read. Honestly books are after all a matter of taste; not everyone's going to love James Joyce or Thomas Hardy the exact same way.

For me the trouble usually lies with the protagonist. Spectacularly biased, that's me. Give me a meek, ineffectual wallflower of a heroine who finds herself jostled about by the wicked ambitions of others and I'll immediately lose interest ten pages in. Unless she gets her groove back, or has serious hopes of finding it, in a hurry. Scarlett O'Hara, Anne Shirley, Emma - those are the oddly compelling characters that I revisit again - and again. Knock them down to the ground and they'll rise again to give as good as they get.


Sam Dong *giggle* One of the dreamboats in Dream High
Fortunately Korean drama, which is well known for its fair share of pathetic, hand-wringing, woe-is-me victims, has finally conceived of a heroine that I can root for. The wildly obnoxious, insanely ambitious Go Hye-Mi of Dream High. Think of the drama as a Korean version of Fame / Glee with Hye-Mi as the aspiring underdog.

Though she never actually thinks of herself as one. Hell, she's a bitch even from the start. Sure, Hye-Mi's horribly arrogant with a crappy surly attitude but seriously nothing seems to faze this tenacious diva.

Abandoned by her ne'er-do-well bankrupt father in a house that's been foreclosed with a kid sister? Not a problem, she'll just make a deal with the notorious money lender. Hazed by her classmates and accused of being a thief? No problem, she'll just grab a loudspeaker and challenge them. Set adrift in a foreign country without funds and resources? Not a problem, she'll just sing for her supper. Country boy buddy of hers finds himself going almost deaf? Not a problem, she'll make sure he stands on stage to sing no matter what.

Ain't no challenge big enough for this girl - which is why she frequently butts in to solve problems for everyone else. Admirable in a way since I abhor wimpy whiners who give up before ever trying.


Though shockingly blunt - and almost brusque in her dealings with everyone else, Hye-Mi finds herself a bit deficient when it comes to the more tender affairs of the heart. Keeps her feelings so close to her chest that she comes off as a heartless robot in the beginning. Sentimental sweet nothings from her ertswhile boyfriends ( since there's a love triangle ) only give rise to nervous goosebumps since she finds them far too mushy.

My ISO : Sounds like you're really into this Dream High.
Paul : Loving the main character, Go Hye-Mi.
My ISO : Well that makes sense.
Paul : What makes sense?
My ISO : Fierce, bitchy, loud but emotionally stunted? From what you've told me, it sounds like you.
Paul : WTF.

OMG he's right. Damn my ISO for pointing it out.