Picnic Basket

I am leaving home when I am least prepared to. Goodbye comforts of home. Hello dingy apartment.

Our resident siuyeh from the previous post, otherwise known as the brother, is also known for his selective hearing (and comprehension). His first language is English, and especially now that he is finally speaking in sentences and can communicate (read: argue!) with us, he is speaking more than ever. Come to think of it, I miss those days when he was silent. But that is an evil thought.

So, back to the subject, selective comprehension. He picked up Mandarin on his own through watching TV, which is a considerable feat when you take into account that #1 he is ADHD with speech problems #2 he doesn’t attend regular classes in the mainstream school and #3 his teachers use Malay and English to teach him. But miraculously, this kid, who can really pick up anything as long he puts his heart into it, has picked up Mandarin, in both the written and aural part of it.

 But he just flatly refuses to speak Mandarin to me and my sister. nuh-uh. We’d tease him and he’d proclaim "I don’t want to speak Mandarin, I want to speak English." Same thing goes for Cantonese, which we use at home as often as we use English. He understands some Cantonese but refuses to use it as well. He’d proclaim that he didn’t understand what we were talking about.

So just now, my mom was shouting to me, in Cantonese, from downstairs: "Do you want to have lunch now?"

"YES!"

 That didn’t come from me!

Selective comprehension, indeed.  

While the mother-ship is gallivanting in Hong Kong with her pals.

She deserves the break. TOTALLY.

So while the mother-ship is away, the sister and I are in charge of the wellbeing of the house and our resident siuyeh. To make things simple, here is our job division. The Chinese call our basic needs  衣食住行 (Clothes/Food/Residence/Transportation).

So, we share the 衣 part - she dumps the clothes into the washing machine and hangs them up to be baked under the not-very-scorching sunlight. I collect them and fold them.

I am completely in charge of 食. Have cooked many dishes, hoping to gain approval with our resident siuyeh, who has shown his pleasure by polishing off every last morsel off almost every dish, conveniently forgetting about his dear subjects who would so desire to have some leftover crumbs. And have washed more dishes than I have ever had in the past year.

住wise, the sister sweeps and mops while I uh, generally make sure everything else is in order before we sleep, before we go out, etc.

 For 行, I’ve sworn off driving for at least another week (but then I’d be back in Singapore) cos of a minor (but traumatising enough) accident I got myself into earlier this week. So the sister drives while I uh, do nothing much. Oh, I decide where we are to go.

 2 of us sharing what my mom usually does ALONE.

Excuse while I go scratch out "Be a homemaker" from my "Things to do after I have kids" list.