Memoirs of a Gecko
1st Fabruary 2006, Wednesday
So the Lunar New Year break is officially over, a bit extended for me at least, but still I am rueing over the fact that here in Singapore we don't get a good week long of rest like our counterparts in China. Taiwan or Hong Kong..bummer
Anyway as the title of this post implied, I am sort of acting as a gecko over this period and the object of my persistant "stick-on" is my lass as I found the 3-4 days of break surely bolstered some quality time spent with each other which had been missing in our lives since we started working respectively.
初一(1st day of the New Year):
Very staple routine of us heading to our maternal 4th aunt place which is an unspoken venue for gathering among our relatives in my maternal front.
This is followed by crossing a few void decks to my 1st paternal aunt's place which I just dropped by, greeted some of my relatives who are already present with the usual classic greetings which is always in the "play safe" zone rather than some creative proverbs which has been well forgotten with the years of not touching the Chinese language despite speaking it day inday out.
I had to meet my lass, her mom and her brothers at the mosque beside the KFC outlet in AMK as we headed off to Bedok to pay respect to her aged maternal grandma which is the 2nd year in the running for such tradition for me.
A lot of attentions was focused on the baby of the household, Ashley, my lass' 1 year old niece who is an adorable toddler who unlike many scrawny devils of her age who kept crying when been carried by strangers or always seeking attention with endless wailings. Ashley would just like to walk around in her baby steps and carry objects from one point to another, showing the strength she acquired from a daily breast milk diet. Meanwhile as I was pondering over the fact that Ashley's father is actually a vampire as he looks much younger than before while his spouse is impregnated with their 2nd offspring due for June delivery.
I also got to see my future father-in-law whom I had not seen since the divorce fracas and it seemed like things may had patched up between a parents but she highly felt it could be a facade and her hatred for him persisted as she was very reluctant to take a ride on his commercial mini-bus back home.
初二(2nd day of the New Year):
We struggled to get up after a late turn-in and my sis had to rush us to expeditie as her beau would be dropping by to our household which then they would head to his place in Johor Bahru.
We made to an annual spot to pay respect to my paternal 4th grandaunt who like many elders is always glad to be remembered by her predecessors and would not scrimped too much on the "Ang Pow" money...
Speaking of which many relatives actually realized that we would be tying the knot later this year and kept reminding us that this would be the final year we would be on the recieveing end for the red packets and be sure to distribute in the subsequent years.
A stop-over at my lass' place before heading to a couple of her Yishun-bound relatives with her aunties.
Our schedule to make it to Vincent's place ran a bit overtime and was berated by the likes of Chan and Karen who were already there.
Ziwei, Chan's confidante came along as well after not seeing her in a while.
In fact we were still very much the earlier group to come by for this potluck party with Ferris and Bryan following our trail moments later and Jackson, Weixian and their Kagoshima gang coming in the early evening.
With cuisine made of chicken meat very prominent from the food everyone has brought, my mom hand-made carrot cake is a breath of fresh air.
The night was well litted by a self-created gambling game by the likes of Vincent, Ferris and Tay-chan who was perhaps the last to arrive.
It was a horse-racing game making usage of dices and mahjong tiles for the horse numbers and the flip-side as grids for respective lanes.
Every throw of the dice would indicate the numbers allowed to move a grid forward, if the same number hit twice or thrice, the horse would be able to progress much further to the ending line.
Later on we threw in a new rule of another throw of a single dice to indicate the number to make a step backwards to make the game more exciting.
It was a rowdy game which at first seemed pretty lame but surely caught on among all of us and Chan made a big coup after a game was held on twice due to no winner on both tries and on the 3rd attempt, Chan's lucky number 3 made it and he grabbed the accumulated kitty of $24 and made his timely departures with Ziwei, causing the rest of us licking the wound for the major loss and I had to back out after seeing my sudden winnings well decimated and in total I lost around $4-5 and my lass made around $5 for sticking to her auspicious number 6 all the time when she played.
初三(3rd day of the New Year)
A day set to stay at home with our friends and relatives making house-calls.
The 3Ts (not Wacko Jacko's equally wacky nephews) of Huizhen, Geneth and Ling Min were the first to arrive and the golden couple of Jing and Edmund soon to follow.
As usual, we got the scoop of each other's lives for the past few months and some gossips to people we know from our NUS science faculty community..then of course Ed's acid tonque with Huizhen's the usual victim of his chastizing.
Last but not least some brainstorming for our wedding day ceremony since everyone was been invited as a brother or sister for the usual "bride-fetching" procession.
Edmund ask me to get the likes of Jerry and Andy to join in the brother bandwagon which I would contemplate on as my current list of "brothers" are a precarious bunch who might do the disappearing act.
One of them is Foo who was supposed to come by but due to a bout of illness, he gave that a miss; however a fellow Japanese-clique Cheryl came by despite busy schedule with her beau, Raymond whom I have seen for the 1st time in person and I must say they are a compartible pair and I tried my best to help Cheryl to "brain-wash" Raymond for their upcoming Tokyo escapade.
By 2, all our friends had left and in exchange my paternal aunties and their families had arrived and I started to be reeling for the lerthargy of the afternoon of the final day of the holidays as my lass and I watched "Byakuyakou (白夜行)" which you might mistaken for a second for "Sekai no chuusin, ai wo sakebu (Crying out love in the center of the world)" with the same leads, mood, production team and even with Shibasaki Kou doing the theme song but the story is not your usual tear-jerker but a industrial tragic story of how a gullible boy was forced to commit the hideous crime of murdering his own father which include adultery and pedophilic elements, got enough sleaze to get to me.
The evening I tried to psyche myself to move into the working mentality after the hiatus but my lass was reluctant to go back and even insisted me to stay over her place.
My mind was in topsy-turvsy state and by the stroke of midnight I was compelled to take a day of leave to extend my break and spend another day with my girl.
I SMSed Bobby and YM and was glad that the former was awake and my only mean to inform my supervisor of my absence.
By the time I sent my lass back after enjoying some festive program on my cable networks, it was already 1 plus in the morning so I felt my decision of taking an urgent leave is justified.
初四(4th day of the New Year)
I had to luxury to creep out of bed near 9 in the morning when my fellow colleagues would be starting work then.
My lass went for her appointment at the National Skin Center to continue her therapy to remove the warts on her fingers and I joined her at Orchard Cineleisure as we would be catching a movie she had been coercing me to watch for the past 3 days or so...."Memoirs of a Geisha" with Ziyi Zhang and the rest of the gang which the only aspect I am attracted to is the picturesque Japan which otherwise is a rather bland affair with the entire cast made up of Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese and of course Japanese as Japanese in the post-WWII era when the art of geisha was peaking.
We then spent sometime doing some shopping including a set of very-much wanted trading figure set which my lass got for me for advanced V-day gift.
We then parted ways unwillingly as she made her way for her weekly sideline meeting at Tanjong Pagar and me back home to type this long post...
So with the festivities done with it is back to normal working life and vigorous work out sessions to shed that extra weight from the indiscrimatory devouring I had indulged in over the period..not to forget my RT sessions beginning this coming Sunday morning.
So the Lunar New Year break is officially over, a bit extended for me at least, but still I am rueing over the fact that here in Singapore we don't get a good week long of rest like our counterparts in China. Taiwan or Hong Kong..bummer
Anyway as the title of this post implied, I am sort of acting as a gecko over this period and the object of my persistant "stick-on" is my lass as I found the 3-4 days of break surely bolstered some quality time spent with each other which had been missing in our lives since we started working respectively.
初一(1st day of the New Year):
Very staple routine of us heading to our maternal 4th aunt place which is an unspoken venue for gathering among our relatives in my maternal front.
This is followed by crossing a few void decks to my 1st paternal aunt's place which I just dropped by, greeted some of my relatives who are already present with the usual classic greetings which is always in the "play safe" zone rather than some creative proverbs which has been well forgotten with the years of not touching the Chinese language despite speaking it day inday out.
I had to meet my lass, her mom and her brothers at the mosque beside the KFC outlet in AMK as we headed off to Bedok to pay respect to her aged maternal grandma which is the 2nd year in the running for such tradition for me.
A lot of attentions was focused on the baby of the household, Ashley, my lass' 1 year old niece who is an adorable toddler who unlike many scrawny devils of her age who kept crying when been carried by strangers or always seeking attention with endless wailings. Ashley would just like to walk around in her baby steps and carry objects from one point to another, showing the strength she acquired from a daily breast milk diet. Meanwhile as I was pondering over the fact that Ashley's father is actually a vampire as he looks much younger than before while his spouse is impregnated with their 2nd offspring due for June delivery.
I also got to see my future father-in-law whom I had not seen since the divorce fracas and it seemed like things may had patched up between a parents but she highly felt it could be a facade and her hatred for him persisted as she was very reluctant to take a ride on his commercial mini-bus back home.
初二(2nd day of the New Year):
We struggled to get up after a late turn-in and my sis had to rush us to expeditie as her beau would be dropping by to our household which then they would head to his place in Johor Bahru.
We made to an annual spot to pay respect to my paternal 4th grandaunt who like many elders is always glad to be remembered by her predecessors and would not scrimped too much on the "Ang Pow" money...
Speaking of which many relatives actually realized that we would be tying the knot later this year and kept reminding us that this would be the final year we would be on the recieveing end for the red packets and be sure to distribute in the subsequent years.
A stop-over at my lass' place before heading to a couple of her Yishun-bound relatives with her aunties.
Our schedule to make it to Vincent's place ran a bit overtime and was berated by the likes of Chan and Karen who were already there.
Ziwei, Chan's confidante came along as well after not seeing her in a while.
In fact we were still very much the earlier group to come by for this potluck party with Ferris and Bryan following our trail moments later and Jackson, Weixian and their Kagoshima gang coming in the early evening.
With cuisine made of chicken meat very prominent from the food everyone has brought, my mom hand-made carrot cake is a breath of fresh air.
The night was well litted by a self-created gambling game by the likes of Vincent, Ferris and Tay-chan who was perhaps the last to arrive.
It was a horse-racing game making usage of dices and mahjong tiles for the horse numbers and the flip-side as grids for respective lanes.
Every throw of the dice would indicate the numbers allowed to move a grid forward, if the same number hit twice or thrice, the horse would be able to progress much further to the ending line.
Later on we threw in a new rule of another throw of a single dice to indicate the number to make a step backwards to make the game more exciting.
It was a rowdy game which at first seemed pretty lame but surely caught on among all of us and Chan made a big coup after a game was held on twice due to no winner on both tries and on the 3rd attempt, Chan's lucky number 3 made it and he grabbed the accumulated kitty of $24 and made his timely departures with Ziwei, causing the rest of us licking the wound for the major loss and I had to back out after seeing my sudden winnings well decimated and in total I lost around $4-5 and my lass made around $5 for sticking to her auspicious number 6 all the time when she played.
初三(3rd day of the New Year)
A day set to stay at home with our friends and relatives making house-calls.
The 3Ts (not Wacko Jacko's equally wacky nephews) of Huizhen, Geneth and Ling Min were the first to arrive and the golden couple of Jing and Edmund soon to follow.
As usual, we got the scoop of each other's lives for the past few months and some gossips to people we know from our NUS science faculty community..then of course Ed's acid tonque with Huizhen's the usual victim of his chastizing.
Last but not least some brainstorming for our wedding day ceremony since everyone was been invited as a brother or sister for the usual "bride-fetching" procession.
Edmund ask me to get the likes of Jerry and Andy to join in the brother bandwagon which I would contemplate on as my current list of "brothers" are a precarious bunch who might do the disappearing act.
One of them is Foo who was supposed to come by but due to a bout of illness, he gave that a miss; however a fellow Japanese-clique Cheryl came by despite busy schedule with her beau, Raymond whom I have seen for the 1st time in person and I must say they are a compartible pair and I tried my best to help Cheryl to "brain-wash" Raymond for their upcoming Tokyo escapade.
By 2, all our friends had left and in exchange my paternal aunties and their families had arrived and I started to be reeling for the lerthargy of the afternoon of the final day of the holidays as my lass and I watched "Byakuyakou (白夜行)" which you might mistaken for a second for "Sekai no chuusin, ai wo sakebu (Crying out love in the center of the world)" with the same leads, mood, production team and even with Shibasaki Kou doing the theme song but the story is not your usual tear-jerker but a industrial tragic story of how a gullible boy was forced to commit the hideous crime of murdering his own father which include adultery and pedophilic elements, got enough sleaze to get to me.
The evening I tried to psyche myself to move into the working mentality after the hiatus but my lass was reluctant to go back and even insisted me to stay over her place.
My mind was in topsy-turvsy state and by the stroke of midnight I was compelled to take a day of leave to extend my break and spend another day with my girl.
I SMSed Bobby and YM and was glad that the former was awake and my only mean to inform my supervisor of my absence.
By the time I sent my lass back after enjoying some festive program on my cable networks, it was already 1 plus in the morning so I felt my decision of taking an urgent leave is justified.
初四(4th day of the New Year)
I had to luxury to creep out of bed near 9 in the morning when my fellow colleagues would be starting work then.
My lass went for her appointment at the National Skin Center to continue her therapy to remove the warts on her fingers and I joined her at Orchard Cineleisure as we would be catching a movie she had been coercing me to watch for the past 3 days or so...."Memoirs of a Geisha" with Ziyi Zhang and the rest of the gang which the only aspect I am attracted to is the picturesque Japan which otherwise is a rather bland affair with the entire cast made up of Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese and of course Japanese as Japanese in the post-WWII era when the art of geisha was peaking.
We then spent sometime doing some shopping including a set of very-much wanted trading figure set which my lass got for me for advanced V-day gift.
We then parted ways unwillingly as she made her way for her weekly sideline meeting at Tanjong Pagar and me back home to type this long post...
So with the festivities done with it is back to normal working life and vigorous work out sessions to shed that extra weight from the indiscrimatory devouring I had indulged in over the period..not to forget my RT sessions beginning this coming Sunday morning.
Japanese word of the day: くっつける~kut-tsu-ke-ru~(Stick) Hope we can stick on to each other like this for the rest of our lives
posted by Kei at
7:12 PM
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