Random Things You Didn't Know About a Random Guy...

Sunday, June 14, 2009

A random 80 plus year old guy died.

It appeared on the obituary section of the papers on Thursday, 10th June 2009, alongside with all the others who had also just passed away, or had their death anniversaries announced.

I'm sure even, that hundreds of thousands of readers who bought the Straits Times must have carelessly overlooked it.

But that one single difference that it all makes is that this particular 84 year old man who passed away is none other than my only grandfather I had ever known since I never got to know my maternal grandpa.

... Right, stop rolling your eyes. I promised not to be 'emo' or dramatic about it but I really can't help it.

So now I decide to share with you 8 facts / stories associated with him, 8 facts representing every decade that he had lived. Facts that some of you may not have known, in the hope that the memories are no longer remembered by me alone.

I don't really know how or where to begin. There are so many memories that I don't know how to cram them all into just eight. I'd just fill them up with random notes that I am able to recall right now at this very moment, since the ones that are recalled so easily are some of those that I'm going to remember very clearly for the rest of my life.









Okay, so one of the earliest memory I had about my Ah Gong was this:

He doesn't use SingPost to mail letters back to China where we came from. He did mention countless trillion times however, that our family is from Dong Shan 东山, Fu Jian Province. A small little fishing village called Sai Po Hee. No blardy idea how does that sound like in Mandarin or whether it has any English names to begin with.

The weird thing was he always goes to this shop somewhere out there to post his letter. And while he's at it he talks to the old man working there. You know, have a nice little chitchat and all.

So there I was, not more than 6 years old. wondering why does Ah Gong always go out without bringing me? I asked him to bring me (I have to admit I'm abit domineering when I was young. At least to people whom I'm sure I could boss around. I TOLD him to bring me. Not ask.) He absolutely refused.

So I waited one day when he went to change his clothes and prepare to go out that I hid in the backseat of his car. It was very obvious. He would take some time to 'dress up' in his typical white shirt and dark blue pants.



This is the exact car that Ah Gong was driving back then. We sold it but came across it when we were having CNY dinner in 2005. It was parked outside the restaurant that we were eating. What a coincidence. Pity Ah Gong wasn't there to see his old friend.

PS: Yes. The paintwork was MUCH better back than.

Now, back to the story.

I hid at the backseat of his car until I was about to give up. It was quite hot and although sweating doesn't bother young children, I was starting to have difficulties breathing.

Just then Ah Gong got into the car and I inwardly heaved a sigh of relief.

I remembered he always used this trademark cologne that is in the shape of some alcoholic / wine bottle. He doesn't really use it. He just leaves it in the car and the whole car would reek of it. I say reek because the smell wasn't all that great. It was overwhelming! But then it was Ah Gong's car's trademark smell :)

He drove off and I waited until I was sure we were far away from the house. Far enough that he would not bother to U-Turn to go home and then kick me out of the car.

I waited until the most opportune time and then I jumped up on the backseat and shouted very loudly "AH GONG!!!!!!"

I have to tell all of you that my Ah Gong has a very good heart. I think any other human being would have had a mild form of heart attack or at least get into some sort of car accident.

He didn't. He didn't even flinch. The only reaction he did was that his eyes widened and he shouted (some explicit words) and said "YOU HIDE BEHIND THE SEAT AR?!" and then he quickly turned his eyes back onto the road to make sure he didn't swerve to another lane.

Well, my presence was an obvious answer to his question.

I was successful but so what. I soon learned that I should never have followed. He probably sat there for almost three hours chatting after giving the old man his letter (I do clearly recall that he hadn't tell this old man anything about me hiding in his backseat).

I never ever followed again. Ever.












Most seniors always ask us this question. Ah Gong is no exception.

"Lee Jia Liao Buey?"

He always talks in his weird Hokkien. Weird because alot of people told me that there are some Hokkien words I use that differed from the norm. Some remain unconvinced that it is because I learn my Hokkien from my grandparents. Des thought so too at first but he agreed after he talked to Ah Gong a few times and wasn't able to fully understand his grandfather stories about building and construction of drains.

Throughout the years, I have been conditioned to answer quickly and robotically with a "Jia Ba Liao".

This answer would just fall out from my mouth even though I may have just woken up 5 minutes ago and have not even drank a single drop of water.

I realised this problem only when Gua Ma (my maternal grandmother) asked me the same during the funeral and I replied her too even as my stomach was grumbling about the lack of food when it was already dinnertime.

I then had to very embarrassingly queue up at the buffet table to await my turn in scooping my precious dinner, all the while praying that she would not notice me standing in line.












Another funny thing about my Ah Gong was that he always complimented me whenever I wore this shirt. Apparently he found my ridiculously floral blue Hawaiian shirt very VERY nice to the point that he always thinks I'm going out whenever I wore that shirt.

For your info, I only wear it at home, and when I do, I don't even go out to the car porch to wash Joon's cage because I'm afraid that the neighbours would see me in it.

Shirt looks something like that:



You may think: What's so bad about the shirt?

My answer is: Everything.

After it has been machine-washed a few hundred times, it starts to lose its shape though not-so-thankfully, the vibrancy of the colours remained. As a result, it became a HUUUUGGE Hawaiian shirt.

Those that the ladies are wearing in the photo was because they were wearing it for the very first time. I doubt many of them keep it or even consider it as a going-out shirt anymore.











Another memory I had was back when I am in Bendemeer. I bought an Aloe Vera plant that I still keep till this day. Had gotten it from the nursery situated right along the main road.

I called him on my prepaid handphone and asked if he could come to school to fetch me. He agreed and we left it at that.

I took the risk that he would see me at the main road so I didn't tell him that I'm actually not in school. And that I was actually waiting at the nursery for him.

Figured that since he had to turn in from the main road, he would definitely see me at the side of the road, waving.

He didn't!!!

In fact, I waved, almost got knocked down by my own Ah Gong because I was standing at the edge of the kerb, and then with my heavy school bag like a turtle shell on my back, a hand holding onto my A4 files that could not fit into my huge backpack, and the other hand holding onto a flower pot containing the Aloe Vera... rannnn....

All the way back to Bendemeer Secondary School!!!

He didn't even realised why didn't I walk out of school but walked IN to school instead!

I told myself that if I ever wanted him to fetch me again, I would have to reconsider telling him my exact location and be VERY precise about it.

Joon was considered to be one of the newer additions in the household other than the Putehs. Not many people remembered but there was this very short period that Joon actually could tolerate Ah Gong.

Very. Short. Period.

He then developed this habit (I'm referring to the human) of irritating the heck out of her by pushing her head really hard!

You don't have to be a genius to guess how the fierce bird returned the courtesy everytime he even tries to go near her.





There is this little silly thing about my Ah Gong. He likes to stare at me. Like, really stare. He doesn't bother to cover up by peeking through the corner of his eyes. He likes to remark about very general things about me. Like when I excitedly recall something that happened in school to my mother, he laughs at how fast I talk (to him, English sounds like a very 'fast' language).

For him, his most fluent english words were 'Thank you' that he speaks perfectly and naturally. Other English words are lost to him.. like how he affectionately calls me 'Gek Gek' when he was actually trying to call me 'Girl Girl'.

So obviously his stares were not those pervertic kind. It was those observing kind and always accompanied with a toothless grin on his face.

Yes! Ah Gong no longer has any teeth left! He would tell me about how this stupid dentist back in the good ol' days who tried to overcharge him. I guess it was due to poor dental hygiene but Ah Gong's teeth was totally gone except for this two or three that stubbornly remained.

It made it more difficult to eat instead, so he decided to have them removed by going to that dentist.

I think the dentist was being some sort of jerk as well. He asked Ah Gong for some cigarettes and when he realised he had none, he decided to charge per tooth although extraction procedure was the same throughout back in the old days; clamp on teeth and pull.

Ah Gong would recall to me how pissed he was that he left the dentist room and sat on the steps of the staircase right outside.

The more he thought about it, the more angrier he got and he eventually pulled out the teeth that he wanted to remove. By his own hands!

Just then the same dentist walked down the steps and he said he called the dentist as he walked past and showed him his bloodied teeth that he had all plucked out himself, even as blood was flowing down his lips.

Gutsy.








I'm on to the second last memory of my Ah Gong already. But this is not the end of it. I have alot more that I will add as and when I recall about them.

So, now, for the 7th detail, here's a photo of Ah Ma and Ah Gong on their wedding day, and another photo taken a few years before Ah Ma's death.

Last but not least, I hate the way how I always walk to the kitchen to place the dirty dishes and then realise from the corner of my eye how oddly bright his room is.

He ALWAYS leaves the curtains down because he's paranoid about bugs crawling in from the grass into the room to bite him. Even the sliding door is always closed so the room always looks overtly dark. It was also recently that, due to the sickeningly hot weather, he started using the aircon, which explains why I am quite used to the fact of seeing his door closed.

But now the door is open. Just open. And the room is bright. But you take a step in and what do you see?

His biscuit tin was as how he left it.

His remote controller to turn on the TV stays on top of the TV. He even has this special instruction paper that he translates what each button means by drawing a cartoon version of the remote controller and then arrowing in Chinese words what each was.

His ash-tray is untouched from the time he left it. In fact, the cigarettes that he had smoked was all still inside the ash tray.

That bottle of strong-smelling medicine that he always used to rub on his leg and relieve the joint pains was still placed behind the TV set in that innocent-looking Coca Cola bottle. No idiot would be able to mistake the black liquid inside for Coke. The smell was THAT obviously different.

It's amazing because I remembered how I would always have those slight sprains at my ankle and he would call me over, and take that Coke bottle and pour some into his huge hands and then rub it onto my ankle until those dirt marks formed (the way Ji Gong rubs dirt from his armpits into a ball and gave it to the sick and poor to eat so that they would be healed). It kinda resembled eraser markings when you rubbed your worksheet alot.

I hated the smell of his overpowering ang hoon (cigarette) that would make me choke and tear, but then I hated the way I no longer smell it even more and I find myself still tearing but for a totally different reason.

The very last thing I want to add is that I miss him very much. His absence is deafeningly obvious because there is one less figure who hangs about the house all the time, squatting at some random corner and smoking away.

Scientific theories about Death aside, if there were really an afterlife, I hope that both Ah Ma and Ah Gong have managed to reunite after these three years of separation from being in different realms. I also hope that they have managed to find Lao Ma and Dua Pek too.

CiiN Sniffed Her Pillow At 5:16 PM