White sight

If anyone was hanging about Boat Quay today, they might have spotted some girl in an oversized white t-shirt tagging along behing some office man with a suitcase, and an office lady with… well, whatever mom was carrying. Meh.

In anticipation of Mid-Autumn festival, there was a food festival held to celebrate Chinese culture. Naturally, they did the “appealing to the public” thing and got ‘Taiwanese cuisine’ as the theme for the year. My parents (specifically Mom) wanted to bring me there last week, but I was being snappish and stressed over exams and stuff. So oh vay. We agreed to meet up for Monday dinner at Clarke Quay station then - kinda just to experience some interesting stuff, and let dad off from cooking.

We tried a few dishes: oyster omelette, eel noodles (except the noodles are all strips of onions), something that sounds exactly like “coffin board” (which is like clam chowder soup in a hollowed out piece of sliced bread), and some.. oolong-tea soaked boiled eggs. It was really fun splitting up to queue for the food, and then meeting somewhere over a tiny table and kinda marking it as our dining place. There’s just something very… um… Well I don’t know the word for it.. but very.. “down-to-earth” and just plain… nice… about eating from street stalls.

There were some decorations along the river, and some horoscopes to look out for. Oh and dance and music performances too. And there was also a place for riddling. All of them were soooo hard. And the old guy who presided over the riddling insisted on a certain fashion… like having to recite the words out in a certain sequence before offering an answer. Very.. very.. very.. cool.

We rested a lil at Central (where we ate the boiled eggs). While mom wandered around the calligraphy and some other generic shop, I told my dad about some… less than pleasant memories around this place. Whether it was about getting lost, or certain outings, Clarke Quay isn’t really one of my favourites.. But then, even before I told him the very same… my dad said something like.. “Well, then you can create some good memories with us to ‘dilate’ the bad ones”.

…Isn’t it interesting? I was about to tell him that same thing.. How it is important to me that I’m spending time with my family, and how I really am having fun and feeling better about the place. I really can’t describe enough the depth of gratitude and relief I have toward them.

..

So we watched a couple of music performances, debated on whether an instrument is a di zi or a… whatever one-word it is for that chinese flute thing…. and then headed home. On the train, my mom was kinda.. leaning towards this guy cus she didn’t know he was standing at that corner, and I saw that and just kept laughing behind my dad’s shoulder. When I next looked up, the poor guy had run off and my mom had  leaned back enough to hit her head at a protrusion from the wall. Hilarious stuff. We all had a good laugh about it. :)

Bought bread for mom and me to share for breakfast and my lunch, went home. I slept a lil in the air con master bedroom and at about 1130pm, dad asked if i really am sleeping there.. to which I kinda groggily said nah… and stumbled out. He’s the first one to sleep in the house for the night (surprisingly) and mom just went to sleep when I’m typing this.

…

Ok. Just a narrative about today. Talking to Sean about my past experiences in some relationships is bringing back some memories .. some faces.

Random serious realisation today about how much I really really really depend and like this one particular person, even though I’ve never actually told this person anything…. God, I’m so fortunate and undeserving.. but oh well. I’m happy about things. Dad said that MM Lee said that an important factor of success is “Luck”.

Thank goodness I know I’ve got plenty of it.