Chinese Mothers

A few days after I was home, my mother regaled me with a year's worth of stories of the latest gossip from her life, how my doggie poo dug up the garden, new marriages, newborn babies, broken marriages and so on and so forth. I politely listened while reading a book piping in questions at strategic points so that she could rant on further, as all mothers do.

That Sunday at church, she pushed to almost every single member asking me to smile and greet them, familiar faces and the new. The cat smelled curiousity when she anxiously introduced me to a new family, Uncle Robert, and his son Ronald who was about my age, currently studying medicine in Melbourne, Australia, and who is "a nice boy".

Later on in the evening, over a game of scrabble, my father also casually mentioned this chap and how he is "a nice boy". He then later bluntly asked if we needed to be set up, or if we could exchange e-mails or something, because that would make mummy happy.

My mother still denies any intentions on her part. Albeit very feebly.

What's In A Name?

My mailman assumes that I'm related to every single person whose last name is Lee. My neighbor, S. Lee, has his mail constantly put into my mailbox. So do phantom residents P.Lee, J.Lee this Lee, that Lee and as of today, HsiaoHsien Lee. I really need to tell him to get it straight. I just want mail in my name. No A. Lee, no B. Lee, no C. Lee. And while he is at it, no coupons.

That got me thinking, so what is in a name? Who knows.

With a facebook group with my namesake, a struggling actress whose credits include 'the woman at the airport' in Bones (I think she played a corpse), a CNBC financial reporter, a Shakespearean quote rings true.

What's in a name? that which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet.

Here's my favorite version of me.

"Model"

Teacher Teacher

When I was in Primary One, my secret pleasure would was craning my neck to look at the teacher's desk, watching her red pen gracefully skimming a page of handwriting and putting check marks,crosses and stars where appropriate. My seven-year-old pigtailed self thought that it indeed must be wonderful to have such a task.


Throughout my younger years, I recalled when my cikgu matematik commanded us to pull out our buku congak. She would then rattle off some arithmetic problems and making us quickly scribble the answer in our books after working it out in our head. Afterward, I waited with abated breath, seeing whether she would decide to collect our books, to mark it herself, or announce, "Tukar buku, cikgu beri jawapan, tanda sendiri!", and I would delight when she said the latter and let us mark the answers.


Fast forward to the present, and here I am, making a quick run to Walmart before closing time because my red pen is out of ink, picking up a soy latte to keep awake to finish marking these horribly wrongly answered quizzes, when I can be spending my time, doing something much more worthwhile (like my homework assignment or watching Grey's Anatomy).