My Maternal Grandma
Hi everyone!
It was chinese new year's eve yesterday and I just came back from my paternal family reunion dinner. Unlike our
usual steamboat tradition for a reunion dinner, this year we had
something really different, and perhaps more in touch with the Chinese reunion dinner tradition.
This year we had a really really
delicious,
oriental,
homemade reunion dinner, courtesy of my third uncle and aunt. We had sea cucumbers, mushrooms, abalones, scallops, tiger prawns and lots of vegetarian-like dishes [which I do not exactly know what the ingredients are].
It was super yummy and
I broke like,
10 rules of dieting. =P
ish....whatever lar!
its chinese new year, i'm
allowed to get fat! haha
Anyway, after the reunion dinner, I drove my family to my mom's mom's house, which was just a stone's throw away. well, maybe three stones' throws away. Anyway, we reached my grandma's place around 10.30pm and saw the three
hooligans cousins, screaming about outside. they were supposedly playing badminton with their dad but from how I saw it, it was more like the elder one was
madly swinging her racket around, screaming about, while the younger set of twins were
zooming around in circles. kids...tsk tsk
I headed to the kitchen where I can usually find my grandma, and as expected, my mom was already there, chatting fast in hokkien with my grandma.
I should elaborate more on my family and my maternal family's relationship. my family [dad, bros n me], cannot speak nor understand hokkien.
ermm, i do understand phrases like "chiak peng" "pang sai" "ho chiak" and "wa ka lu kong", which means eat rice, crap, nice to eat/delicious and I Tell You Ah. this 'I Tell You Ah' is by far the longest term I've learned from all those years of sitting at the dinner table, gawking at the adults talking really fast in hokkien.
I tell u ah, "wa ka lu kong" can hit like 50 times during a single, 30mins dinner.
Whoa!
*ok, i have to stop going around and start talking about my grandma* =P
Because we can't speak hokkien, my family is a little distant to my maternal side. Even so, my grandma always treats us hospitably, like always. She'll always assume that us, as growing kids, are always hungry, even though we told her we just came back from a huge dinner. She'll always offer us food and snacks generously, which is really sweet of her =)
So, i was talking to her in the kitchen, with her offering plenty of different types of food for me to ''try'', she gave me a life lesson.
She told me not to be too stingy on myself, unlike my mom and my grandpa/her husband. She said that yes, we do have to save for the rainy days but, takkan forever we will have to be living in cheapness kan? If we can, why not splurge on ourselves [and family] a little bit ? =D
Then, she gave me a pretty good example, mandarins.
She said "There is a difference between rm4.90/kg mini mandarins and rm9.90/kg ones. The latter is so much more nicer than the first one"
[she tapau-ed for me some of the rm9.90 ones and the rm4.90 ones, just to compare] - which is so true, rm9.90 is so sweet while rm4.90 is so darn sour.
Wise words, grandma. I shall forever engrave that into my heart.
there you go, bonding with my grandma =D
Happy Chinese New Year Everyone!
Labels: celebrations, family
