Cross cultural mourning

This will be a long post, but I need to recap the last few days, just to process it myself, so writing it down helps.

I flew back to KL on Thursday night. Thankfully the flight wasn't full at all and I could move away from the two little wriggly boys I had been seated next to, and could sleep at least a little bit. I caught a taxi to the funeral parlour, where the first of three services was being held for my grandmother, Lee Ah Yin, who we called Mama. I got there after the service was done and people were sitting around, eating (there's always food).

The funeral parlour is an old, pretty run down and frankly quite depressing complex. There were Buddhists having a vigil in the front parlour, and my family's wake in the back parlour. The body was laid out in the coffin, surrounded by dozens of flower arrangements sent by people all over the world, business colleagues and friends and family. Mama looked the most glamorous I'd ever seen, in her brocade blouse, and all made up. It was so strange to see her so still.

The next day I went into the city with dad while he went to work for a few hours, and wandered around the fabric shops in Little India (and bought some fabric of course). In the evening I met up with my cousins and a couple of people from my aunt's church to practise the songs for that night's service (Because he lives, In the sweet by and by, Amazing grace and How great thou art - it was an old songbook and those were the only ones we all knew (or could fake)). Just quietly, my cousins and I made a pretty good band, with Chi Ming on cajon, Ken on guitar, Jon and I singing. I was glad I could serve the family and God in this way.

Dad led the service. My cousin Vanessa and I read the Bible (John 14:1-7 and Romans 8:38-39). The pastor gave a rambly kind of sermon, but the thing I liked was how he talked about how our hearts are troubled when we are uncertain about things, but we do not need to be troubled about what comes after this life - we have certainty about where we're going if we know Jesus. 

After the message my aunts Christina and Honey got up and shared a few things, and Honey talked about how Mama became a Christian. She had been baptised in 2011 after her dementia had already started taking hold, so I had always wondered how much she knew about what she was saying. But Honey said that she had actually become a Christian in 2005 on a church retreat that Honey had sent her on to Cameron Highlands, and this was before her mind had gone. It brought a reassurance about her last years, that even though she couldn't remember who her family was, her faith was simple and childlike and real. Her character had certainly changed in the last several years; she was no longer the fierce, stern woman she had always been, but seemed much softer.

After the service there was plenty of food, but I didn't feel much like eating. I went and patted the cat that hung around the area, waiting for scraps. There was a lot of sitting around while people ate and talked. Felt kind of weird to be sitting in a room with a coffin in it, eating and drinking. I ate a lot of kueh lapis...kind of the only comfort food I felt like (it doesn't taste as pink as it looks).

We were back again first thing in the morning for the small family service. We sang some more (What a friend we have in Jesus and Because he lives (again)). We read the same passages as the night before and the pastor said similar things.

Then the coffin was put in the hearse (really just a van), and everyone walked slowly behind it, to the crematorium next door. Ken played guitar and Chi Ming and I sang In the sweet by and by and How great is our God as we walked. It was very hot.

Then yet another message from the pastor, and we all took a flower and laid it on the coffin. Unlike Australia, where there is usually a curtain or at least some doors that close on the coffin, at this place you just stand around and watch the coffin go into the actual furnace.

We went out for yum cha at this surreally empty mall (it was still quite early in the day). We had so much food, and it was delicious. My cousins and I sat together; even though we're all in our late 20s and 30s, we will always be at the kids' table, being clowns.

So then it was time to go and collect the ashes. In four hours. So fast. I assumed that we would just go pick up an urn. But no, that's not the Chinese way. This next bit might be a bit morbid sounding, but it is how they do it here. And I actually found it quite fascinating, when I stepped back and observed it. It completely demystifies the whole process of death and dying.

Back at the crematorium, there was a table with two metal boxes on it. In one box there were the remains of the coffin. In the other box were Mama's bones. Beside the boxes was a piece of newspaper with pieces of bone the attendants had separated; these were fragments of skull, set aside because they were the most special pieces.

Each family member had to select some bones with chopsticks and put them in the urn, then pieces of skull. The attendant ground down the contents of the urn with a stick (that was pretty much the sort of thing they muddle mojitos with), then he went and ground the remaining bones into ash in a machine, and the family poured the ash into the urn together. Of course everyone photographed the entire process.

I'll spare you the photos of the bones themselves, but this is my dad (in black) and his siblings in the last stage.

Afterwards I got in the car and said to dad, "well that was weird." And he said, "what was?"

The whole trip has been an eye opener in terms of cross cultural experience, made weirder by the fact that this is half my culture and yet I am so unfamiliar with it.

It has been a strange time of catching up with family, of remembering my grandmother, of trying to bond with my young half siblings, of eating. Dad and Janice have kindly put me up, but my dad and all the kids are unwell and I'm starting to feel a bit headachy myself...I'm hoping it's just tiredness and I'm not getting their colds!

Me and Ethan

Celine, me and Ethan...somehow I didn't manage to get a pic with Matthew!

Tomorrow morning I get back on a plane and go back to Australia and straight back to work on Monday. I'm exhausted. I'm not really emotional, just tired and dazed and a bit spun out from everything that I've been a part of these last few days. I wonder if it will hit me later. Hopefully the plane is not full again and I will be able to sleep the day away.

Goodbye

Mama died tonight.

I'm glad that her children all made it to KL in time to say goodbye (uncle from UK, aunt from Australia). I'm sitting here alone with the cat, feeling sad.

Mama

Nick, my dad, mama and me in July 2011

I wasn't feeling so crash hot today and slept really badly last night so decided I needed a sick day from work. I slept most of the morning away and woke to a flurry of whatsapp messages on my phone from various members of my family and photos of my grandmother in a hospital bed. It seems that she had a heart attack and is bleeding in four places in the brain. She is in a coma and unlikely to recover, according to the doctors (and what I can piece together from all the family's messages), though my aunt believes she can still hear them talking to her.

I've been a bit dazed all afternoon, with updates popping up on my phone every so often. It's hard to know how to feel. I feel terribly sad for mama and sorry for the family all waiting in the hospital (my dad, aunt, uncle, cousins, with more family travelling in from Australia and the UK).

She is my last living grandparent. She has been a complicated and sometimes difficult person to get on with for as long as I've known her, but the family has always been loyal to her. She has had dementia for the last few years and the last time I saw her (last year) she had no idea who I was. She has been in full time care for the last little while after a fall at home when she broke her hip (I only found out about that last week).

It feels weird that I was so close by last week when I was in Singapore, yet didn't go to KL to see her. Yet the last time I saw her was so sad. Gin said not to fret about not having visited because she wouldn't have recognised me and it would have just tainted my memory of her, which is right. But it still feels odd.

what a week

I went to work this morning and lasted an hour before the headache hit and I had to come home and lie down. I guess if you're going to be sick at home, a cold rainy day is a good one to choose!

I watched a disc of West Wing season 1 and slept under my blanket with my hot water bottle. It's been a pretty huge week and a bit. I think I'm going to give up on trying to write anything extensive about Driscoll and all the things I went to hear him at, but I'll do a summary.

Engage
Guan, Mary and I drove up to the mountains in the late afternoon last Friday. We were the first to arrive at our accommodation, The Blue House, where we got set up and ate shepherd's pie for dinner. Mary elected to stay home and have an early night, and Guan and I went to the convention centre and met up with the others.


Mark Driscoll gave four talks over the weekend, and his bombast and difficult challenges were well-tempered by Don Carson's reasonably straightforward exegetical preaching. They were a good combination - I think too much of one or the other would have been a problem.

I really enjoyed seeing Driscoll give a talk; I've listened to a few podcasts and read some of his writing, but he definitely has a 'watchable quality' (as Annabeth on the West Wing would say). But that's not to say he's all style and no substance. He packs a lot into his talks, and goes off on a lot of 'riffs', and doesn't fail to tie his theology in with living life. In fact, he dispensed with his third talk altogether to answer questions from the crowd, as he had observed that in Sydney there is a lot of good solid theological teaching but people had a hunger for practical application of what they were learning. As the questions were SMSed in, people were free to ask anything they wanted without fear of embarrassment, so there were predictably mostly questions on relationships, sex, family and things like that.

It was the end of this question time that he answered a question about why men should leave home younger than they generally do (ie, mid to late twenties). That's been one of his big themes while he's been speaking in Australia, challenging young men with the 'adultescence' mindset to grow up (sorry, I hate that term, but it fits). His thinking is that no woman is going to want to marry a man whose mom still tucks him into bed with his Star Wars sheets and footy pyjamas (when he speaks in the States, it's Star Wars pyjamas, but I guess he was tailoring the message to the audience), so guys should grow up, get a job, leave home, show they can provide for a family, get married, etc, etc.

He also talked about the responsibility fathers have towards their daughters to protect them, nurture them, encourage them to make good decisions and teach them discernment about men. He said some very good stuff here, but then it just started hammering into me that this was something sorely lacking in my relationship with my own father and how I had made some colossal mistakes and trusted some very dodgy people because I hadn't had a good model in regards to men as I grew up (not saying dad doesn't love me, or that I'm not also culpable in the decision making/wilfulness of the whole thing, but I didn't start off with a very solid foundation). It made me immensely sad, and by the time we got back to the house for lunch, I kind of lost it, cried all over my lovely friends, had to go and lie down and sleep it off for the rest of the afternoon.


But it was nice hanging out with the Beilharzes, the Un families and Elsie. By the end of the weekend, the big talks, the 2000 people and not sleeping very well, I was glad to be home and back in my own bed.

Ministry Intensive
As a National Office team, we went to this together and saw many other AFES staffworkers there. Again, it was the Driscoll and Carson double-act, with Kent and Barbara Hughes as well. Carson repeated one of his talks from Engage, which was a bit of a shame as I'm guessing a good number of people there had been at Engage (and apparently he wasn't supposed to give the same talk twice!).

In his second talk Driscoll was hard hitting and confrontational about what, as an outsider, he saw were the reasons that evangelism was being hampered in Sydney (Gordo gives a pretty thorough rundown if you're interested). I thought it was a brilliant talk, and really something only an outside observer could deliver.

I got cranky after lunch when we were separated into men and women and told which talk to go to, so I skipped Barbara Hughes' talk on Evangelism in the Home. Was too tired to go to Carson's big talk in the evening, and hadn't really perked up much by the next morning. I didn't really get much out of Kent Hughes' talk on Pastoring from the Pulpit but then I guess it wasn't really aimed at me.


Was supposed to go to the New College Lecture series on God and the Artist, but I was so completely drained by Tuesday night I didn't go. As I mentioned a couple of posts back, on Wednesday I resigned from work and hadn't recovered any more energy so didn't go to that night's lecture. And on Thursday I was unexpectedly given a ticket to Bek Caines's PhD graduation ceremony, so I went to that and missed the lectures entirely!


So it's probably no wonder that today I'm out for the count.

a completely unbiased review

I was still a bit out of it yesterday, but my brother had invited us for lunch at his girlfriend Linda's new restaurant, Pyrama, and I can always be tempted out for a good meal. It was another gorgeous, jewel-like Sydney winter day and we headed down to shop 1, 56 Harris Street, Pyrmont.

Pyrama is almost at the end of Harris Street, just as the hill slopes down to the water. It's nestled in amongst new blocks of flats and old workers' cottages and wintry trees and a glimpse of sparkling water, perched over a dramatic cutting in the sandstone for the light rail track. It's a really interesting spot, quiet but villagey. It seemed the perfect place to be on a bright winter's morning.

Nic, me and mum

It's always wonderful to hang out with Nic. But it was especially great to see Linda in her restaurant, obviously so proud and excited that Nic had brought his family. She and her brother Jim (who is the chef) have been working towards the launch for a long time, and have put a lot of effort into making it a great space with a really relaxed, friendly ambience and food that perfectly suits the setting. It's unpretentious but delicious fare, not trying to be fancy, but doing simple things well, allowing the top-notch ingredients and the expertise of its staff to shine.

Nic and Mum

We sat outside, drenched in sunlight, each of us sporting our huge sunglasses. Nic and I both need to get more sunlight (me for my depression, him for some horrid skin thing he's gotten), so it was therapeutic too. Linda's mum and sister were also there, so it felt very congenial to stroll into this slick new restaurant and already be 'regulars', knowing the other regulars. But I watched the small team of staff and although they were, of course, very friendly and chatty with us (being connected to the owner) they were pretty much the same with everyone who walked in, which is great.


Mum decided on ricotta pancakes with rhubarb and apple compote from the all-day breakfast menu.


Nic chose a wagyu beef burger with the most delicious chips.


And I had the most tender, light and melt-in-the-mouth calamari with harissa aioli I've ever had (I think I need to change my standard line from "I don't eat seafood" to "I don't eat prawns or oysters" because I quite like calamari and some shellfish. So there you go, this one dish has converted me).

Then my favourite part of any meal, dessert. It was hard to decide, so I promised Linda I'd start at the top of the menu and work my way down it each time I came to eat there. So the top of the list - 'The original' Belgian white chocolate creme brulee with passionfruit coulis.


Ohhh. Aside from the one I had in Paris recently, I can safely say this was the best creme brulee I've ever had (and the Parisian one had extra points because of its location of course). Silky smooth, rich but not heavy, with a perfectly formed and satisfying sugar crust.


Mum and Nic shared the warm chocolate fondant, also smooth and delicious from the little taste I had.

Mum, Nic and Linda

Of course Linda is the consummate perfectionist, so she's never going to be happy with the restaurant and is always going to be tweaking things to improve them, which is as it should be I think. But I think she and Jim should be very proud of what they've created so far!

Nic and Linda, showcasing the fuzzy feature wallpaper

So go on a sunny winter's morning and sit in the courtyard outside (when I go there for dinner I'll let you know how that was, but I'm pretty confident to say it'd be fantastic for dinner too). Eat well and enjoy. You won't be sorry!

assiette

I am so full. Had dinner this evening with mum and Nic at the wonderful Restaurant Assiette in Surry Hills, near Central. Well worth a visit; a beautifully simple room, quiet and not ostentatious, with friendly, knowledgeable, yet unobtrusive staff. We had the degustation menu, tiny portions of marvellous delights.

Standouts were little touches like the tender coriander on the oyster (yes, I had an oyster!), the wasabi-infused caviar on the sashimi, the parmesan ice cream on the risotto (sounds strange, but it was divine), and the sliver of chocolate mousse cake. We also drank a delicious 2004 Moss Wood cabernet. Suffice it to say, I'm very fortunate to have a brother who loves to treat us to wonderful meals because I couldn't eat like this all the time! It would be so easy to become jaded as a food critic I think, but when you only dine like this once every so often, the meal becomes a celebration in itself, something to be savoured and remembered.

Restaurant Assiette Degustation Menu

Seasonal oyster with Vietnamese dressing and baby coriander

Tuna, cucumber and avocado ‘sushi’ sashimi with wasabi-infused caviar

Carpaccio of wagyu beef with baby beetroot, port jelly, horseradish and shoestring potatoes

Pan fried scallop with onion bhaji, curried cauliflower puree and mint yoghurt

Mushroom and asparagus risotto with parmesan ice cream and parmesan crisps

Crispy skin barramundi with parsnip, smoked eel, caponata and sauce matelote

Veal fillet and shank with spiced pumpkin, almonds and gnocchi

Selected cheese with rosemary lavosh

Vanilla custard with spiced fruit compote

Chocolate mousse cake with brownie and prune Armagnac ice cream (below)

I've got to get better at surreptitious food photography with my mobile phone camera.

the Friday that was

Yesterday was a lovely day. It was akin to a Christmas lunch, only without the stress and pressure that Christmas celebrations seem to bring. I didn't get to church because it was raining and mum had the car and I was in charge of preparing lunch.

Meet our lunch. This is the 2kg snapper that mum bought from DJs, and he was massive. I've never really cooked fish before, let alone a whole fish, but armed with Stephanie Alexander's the cook's companion (my all-time favourite cookbook) and my trusty sharp knife, I set to preparing the fish for baking.

Nic and Linda came round at about 1.30, armed with delicious cheeses (including the most incredible soft cheese, Delice de Bourgogne - Linda knows I love it!) and Valhrona chocolates from Simon Johnson, and Nic's Wii. They were really excited to be over, as they rarely have time off to just hang out. Linda and her brother are opening a restaurant in Pyrmont soon so I don't think we're going to have a huge amount of time to spend together this year.

We did the fish with lemon, coriander, white wine and copious amounts of salt and pepper, and roasted a bunch of kipfler potatoes to go with it. Mum made a delicious salad of avocado, tomato, rocket, beans and zucchini (the last three from our garden). Nic filletted the fish for us so it actually fit on the platter, and then it was time to eat! It tasted wonderful, and was a success all round.

We pretty much just stayed at the table for the next few hours, eating, chatting, laughing. We didn't really have dinner, just slow-grazed on the cheese, chocolate and grapes. Nic and I repaired to the other room a couple of times to play Wii Sports, and I kicked his butt in every single one, except bowling I think. Hee! It was so much fun. Mum and Linda got to have some good in-depth chats while Nic and I shouted and carried on in the other room. This is what Nic and I look like in Mii/Wii form:

They left around 10.30, after looking at some old photo albums and mucking around with the cat. So it was a lovely family sort of day, with no pressure to be anywhere or do anything, and the promise of a sleep in the next day!

The end.

It's a bullet point post

I'm in a bit of a bitsy place at the moment. Fragmented thoughts.

• I'm currently listening to a mixtape and I have no idea what's on it, so that doesn't really help with the disorientation! It's good, kinda fun to listen to the music semi-objectively.
• I have a brand-spanking-new iMac at work. It is shiny, glossy and huge. I keep having slight headspins because I'm not used to the bright shininess of it all. It has further entrenched my gadgetheadry. I'm a lost cause.
• I'm having my staff review today. In half an hour, to be precise. Please pray for me if you read this in time. I don't know what the upshot of it will be.
• Almost finished the design for the writing resource site that Guan, Karen and I are involved in building. Soon we'll actually be able to post stuff!
• George has organised a bunch of people from Wild St Church to volunteer to teach swimming to a group of disabled people. Well it's not really teaching swimming, it's just being there to help them as they swim up and down the pool with varying degrees of ability. I did my first night last night. They seem like a lovely bunch, and I even got the kid who was determined to 'shoot' me in the foot with his imaginary gun to do a few laps. It felt like an achievement. Chatted briefly to one of the other (non-church) volunteers and she said how impressed she was that our church group was helping and that we were even organised to the point of rostering people on (yay George!). I hope we can be a really positive Christian witness to people like her, and the carers, and the swimmers themselves.
• End of an era - after around three years, our 'temporary' flatmate Dave has found a place of his own, in Dulwich Hill. I think he's moving out this weekend. We'll miss him (but we'll have a spare room back in case anyone drops by to visit!)
• I got a weird text message from my brother's girlfriend Linda the other day, passing on Happy Chinese New Year wishes from my dad's 32-year-old fiancee (hereafter referred to as 'DF'), who for some reason has struck up some sort of text messaging friendship with Linda. First, DF referred to me as 'Becca', which as far as I'm concerned is not her right to do (you have to earn dodgy nickname rights, yeah? I've only met her once or twice and don't think that entitles her to call me a nickname I hate). Then she finished with: "This time next year, we'll b celebrating as a family!" It made me feel slightly queasy. I realise I haven't actually processed what I think about this whole situation, I keep putting it in a box to think about later. I wonder when that 'later' will be. I guess the only thing is I'm glad she's not texting me directly.
  
• Think I might have to start seeing a counsellor again.
  

Mood-wise, I'm still very tired and very sad. Keep trying to pray through it, trying to find some balance, trying to throw all my cares on God. Some of them seem to be tangled around my legs and keep tripping me up...

I need a holiday from my life.

new year's day

To follow up on the cruisy new year's eve, we had a cruisy new year's day as well. After sleeping in and bumming around the house, we met up with Nick and Linda and went to Centennial Park for cheese, beer, boules and to just soak up the gorgeous weather. A beautiful day!

Yes. I am that nerdy.

Christmas that was

We had a lovely, quiet Christmas day. Mum likes to have a cast of thousands, and I know what she means; there is a certain joyousness to having loads of family and friends round at Christmas. But, quite frankly, Nic and I were glad it was just the three of us as it meant we could just relax, enjoy one another's company, and there was no stress or fuss.

Mum and I went to church in the morning, then came home to prepare. Mum cooked while I picked my brother up, then we had drinks and present opening and lazing around in my hammock...oh, I'll just let you look at the pics.

Our beautiful Christmas table, with candles from the Baddeleys.

This is my brother enjoying my Christmas presents - my hammock and my cat. He was very impressed with both - and I discovered after lunch that the hammock is very comfortable to nap in. Though ever so slightly disconcerting when the cat makes flying leaps onto you every so often.

Well you can't quite see the food, but there was a delectable feast of roast turkey, roast potato, pumpkin and sweet potato, beans and peas and lots of gravy. Even after we'd finished the meal, there was enough left for an entire other meal. Guess what we're having for lunch today?

Can't tell we're at all related, can you?

Nic and mum
My very regal cat, draped in her royal colours, having conquered the Christmas crackers.

Mum has a well-deserved rest with a glass of champers (I think we were watching Babe at this point)

The last evidence of my gingerbread house before the yearly tradition that is...

...Gingerbread House demolition! (It was very tasty)

farewell to Rose

Today was my grandmother's funeral. Well, my step-grandmother. But seeing as my actual grandmother died when I was two years old, Rose may as well have been it. She was a quiet Swiss-German woman, adept at knitting and sewing, as well as making delicious rösti. She had two sons, Richard and Victor, but Richard died when he was in his early twenties. She was married to my grandfather for around 20 years (I think), but Victor didn't get on with Papa especially well, so we never became close to my step-uncle and -cousins.

Anyway, after my grandfather died in 1999, we gradually saw less and less of Rose. She lived in Hornsby; it was quite difficult to get there on a regular basis, and also it was always filled with a kind of desolate sadness going to the house where Papa had lived and having nothing to talk about. As I said, she was a very quiet, reserved woman and this was heightened following a stroke she had. She started speaking a mixture of English and German, and would ramble on about people we had never met. But the one good thing was that after Papa died, her son Victor and his family became close to her again and really brought her back into their fold. She absolutely loved her little great-grandchildren, and I think the last few years of her life were happy and full of love, even though she was sick a lot.

She was a faithful Catholic, so the service at the Macquarie Park Cemetery was a Catholic one, arranged by her son and his family. And it felt very strange to me. The chapel had the coffin in the middle, a little spotlit statue of Jesus on one side, and a little spotlit statue of Mary on the other. The priest was disorganised and spoke with a very thick accent so was hard to understand, but I don't think we missed much; the parts of his homily I did pay attention to were irritating, self-absorbed and seemed to me completely pointless. He spent half the time talking about himself and his own mother who had died a couple of years ago, and there was hardly any reference to Rose. He got the family's names wrong, and stumbled over very familiar Bible passages. He talked about how although Rose belonged to God, we still had to pray for her soul because we didn't know whether she was with him or not - and that made me mad. We said the Lord's Prayer, but stopped before "The kingdom, the power and the glory are yours, now and forever, amen", (which is apparently what Catholics do but it still angered me). By the time he closed in prayer and asked us to pray for the people in the cemetery, I was ready to throw something at him.

There was no singing. No eulogy. There was a slideshow of photos with Ave Maria playing over the top of it, and the thing I thought curious was that there was hardly any reference to my grandfather or our family. If I had wondered what they thought of us before, I had no doubt now; there was one photo of Rose and Papa together - and this is a couple that was married for two decades! I think mum and I were in there too as we had been at Rose's 80th birthday, but there was no reference to anyone else from the Shearer family. Interesting.

Still, afterwards I went up to her son and gave him a hug, said I was sorry for his loss and if they needed help with the house or anything to let me know. He smiled and squeezed my arm and said "well yes, likewise, let us know if we can help you. She was family to all of us."

As we were leaving the cemetery, my brother and I found ourselves behind the priest who had taken the service. His numberplate was 'PRIE5T'. Says it all, really.

I was very fond of Rose and loved her. I remember staying at their place as a kid and pottering around in the garden with her. I remember going on walks down to the national park at the end of their street with her and Papa. I remember reading a book she had about the Swiss children living in the Alps and always wondering about the country she had come from. I remember that she loved me and my mum, and that we had a special place in her heart.

She was a special woman, and she loved God and was faithful to him. No matter what that priest said, there's no need to pray for her soul (as if that would make the slightest shred of difference!) because I think she is with God now. And that's a wonderful place to be.

that's better

My cold is finally ebbing away. The weather has been cool and sunny - beautiful! I've been digging in my garden. We've been celebrating mum's birthday by going out and eating lots of wonderful food. Life is good.

We went to China Doll, where Nic works, for mum's birthday dinner on Friday. The meal was wonderful, and the company (Nic's girlfriend Linda) great. It was lovely being down at Woolloomooloo and seeing the city from a different angle, though it did get a bit cold (they give all the customers blankets if necessary!). Nic did what he does best: he 'took care' of us, and just ordered what he thought would make a great meal. And it did! We had rabbit dumplings (divine), the most delectable Peking duck I've ever had, blue eyed cod and Moreton Bay bugs. I loved it all and I'm not even a seafood fan. The dessert was delicious too - a plate with tastes of all sorts of different things on it: sorbets, sago, sticky black rice, and the most divine caramelised pear with Tiger Beer ice cream (which was incredible).

So, as you can tell, the meal was good.

Then on Saturday mum and I went to The Observatory (our favourite posh hotel) for high tea. I got an idea for another book while sitting there, looking at all the women eating these sweet delicacies - lots of civilised hen's gatherings I think (not a bunch of well-mannered chickens - I mean women celebrating an impending wedding...though given the chatter, you can understand where the 'hen' label comes from), and a particularly vociferous Chinese mother-daughter couple sitting next to us who gave me a very pointed up-and-down look (finishing at my chest) when we got up to leave.

"It's so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up." Never truer a word said, Ferris.

family odysseys

i was just woken by my father and brother ringing me from malaysia and now i can't go back to sleep. they were at my grandmother's 80th birthday party, and it sounded like the typical jee-family extravaganza in the backgound. i ended up having to yell my part of the conversation and even then i think they only got half of it.

my brother sounded pretty relaxed, although he admitted he had gotten involved in that day's family meltdown (a regular occurrence, one that he usually stays well away from). but by the time we spoke it had blown over and he was feeling pretty good and was back onto trivia: "oh sorry for waking you up. hey you know that song that goes, [singing] 'i love you, for sentimental reasons'? what's that called?"

"um...i think it's called 'for sentimental reasons'."

"great! thanks, you're a great phone-a-friend. do you want to talk to mama?"

he handed me over to mama, who, as usual, was talking with her mouth full, but sounded like she was enjoying herself immensely as the focus for the whole dinner.

"hi mama, it's rebecca. happy birthday!"

"anh...anh...hey, hey, hello, anh thank you, thank you. eating lots, very good food. why you not here?"

"i couldn't come because of work."

"work? ai-yoh, what's work? no need work. just stop and come round. i save you some." uh...ok.

"ha ha, that's nice."

"no, you come, you come round, okay? i save you some."

"ok, sure."

"so when you coming?"

"i'm too far away, mama! i'm in sydney!"

she laughs like it's the funniest joke ever. so i just said, "well happy birthday then."

"okay, okay, thank you."

she handed me back to my brother and i went "okay, did she even know that was me?" he laughed and said "yeah, probably not." oddly enough though, it wasn't that much less comprehensible a conversation than those we would have had before she started 'losing it', as my dad so gently puts it.

talked briefly to dad and ended up yelling down the phone "I might have hepatitis or glandular fever! no, hepatitis! maybe!"

"oh really?" he said. "what did you do to get that?"

"um...nothing!"

well he sounded suitably concerned, but i guess the context he was in made it difficult to have any sort of serious conversation.

sounds, images and smells from other massive chinese family birthday banquets won't stop banging around in my head. at this point, i'm glad that i'm able to just go back to bed and not have to participate. must try to go back to sleep now.

hereditary

it has long been lamented by parents and friends that my brother will often refuse to pose for photographs, or if he does, is obliged to pull a silly face in them. for example, at his birthday dinner the other night:



however, it has been brought to my attention that perhaps this is not entirely his fault and the problem is in his DNA. let me present exhibit B - me, my dad and nic (who actually looks quite good in this one):



ok we look slightly less freakshow in this one: