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having dinner and listening to some music now. dinner is a soup of my mum's that i tried to emulate and music is some old disco stuff. the combination then led me to think about my parents. i don't normally write about my parents, because i never really spent much time with them. in fact, my childhood days were pretty much split almost equally between my parents, my aunt (my mum's elder sister), my cousins (daughters of that aunt), and both sets of grandparents. that meant i learnt about my parents through my relatives more than from my parents themselves. one thing that my aunt and my cousins would often joke about is how my dad and my mum loved going to the discos when they were younger. when i understood music on a more intellectual level, the disco thing became evident – all i had to do was to look through my parents' music collection. to be fair, besides the disco stuff, there was also a lot of folk, rock and pop. they were also largely english songs. some of those songs i remembered watching them play on my mum's guitar, which she had since she was a teen. and the guitar is now mine! also remember getting awed by my dad when he played this on the guitar – and he sang too! then, he got awed by me when i played it back to him one day, without the singing though. i also played a lot of his favourite deep purple and rainbow songs, just to see him grin. haha. even today, on my mum's iphone, this song is on her playlist. my dad would only listen to it on his sound system in the living room. i know that song inside out because of that. it's a great song! anyway, the point is a picture of my mum that my cousins would often bring up, and whenever the picture was spotted by them, the disco jokes would come from all directions. that picture then became somewhat like a mythical thing to me since. as a result, when i got my first scanner, that picture was scanned. when my backup mishap occurred, i thought i had lost that picture. thankfully, the picture was recoverable. and so here's the picture:  until today, i still don't know what the deal is with the picture. maybe i'm too close to the picture to even begin guessing. i'm also trying to look for the picture of her wearing a wreath of flowers around her head, with her big shades, flowery blouse and bell-bottoms. i've seen it before but it has disappeared. i swear she must be hiding it. nonetheless, the picture above brings back lots of memories for me, because i know it was taken at a corner of my mum's parents' house. the house had a garden with a section cordoned off for cheery flowers (which my mum have always loved), a garage in which parked a classic off-white volkswagen beetle, a shed which the fearsome big black dog lived in (which i got chased by too many times, apparently because i always disturbed it), and a breezy patio that featured a rattan rocking chair as well as a rattan spherical chair that hung from its ceiling. my favourite feature of that house is the drain that ran around it, because i could fold paper boats and watch them sail around the house over and over again. also, i'll always remember the high ceilings in the house, because it always made me feel safe and comfortable. and whenever chinese new year came around, the rooms in the house would be filled with relatives. not that i cared because i would be busy on the sunny court in front of the patio – setting off fireworks. my dad would be nearby tuning his sports car, which was sometimes parked in the garden when relatives visited and more space was needed for parking. he would also be playing music from the car stereo, and i would always enjoy the music because it made the scorching sunshine become something more than just heat and light. he would be tuning his car because at that time, he was still into racing with his friends. i remember being seated in the back once when he was racing with his friends. let's just say it was terrifying and i wouldn't like to experience it again. i remember once, i aimed a torpedo-type sparkler at my dad, who happened to be slacking under the tree next to the flowers. luckily, the whistling sound was loud enough for him to notice and he jumped out of the way. it zipped into the flowers and exploded, blasting a bunch of them into shreds. of course, i was laughing away because i saw my dad jumping away. in the end, i got away with just a little warning, because i was only five or something. i did apologise though. :) sadly, all that is no longer and will never come to be again. my grandmother had passed away, and the last time i was in that house, it was to attend my grandmother's wake. the house had also lost quite a lot of its glow from before. also, i always wondered how my mum's father was like. i have never met him before. i think when i do return home one day, i'd like to pay the house a visit – if my mum wants to, that is. |
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