The Insignificance and Vulnerability of Simplicity

Sunday, December 26

A Finnish Guest and A Learning Process

About two months plus ago,
Don's gf came to our house for the very first time..
It started with random days of stay over, and gradually became a full stay with us.
None of my brothers has ever brought their gfs home to stay overnight prior to this.
The first overnight and a non Chinese..
Needless to say
The folks did not like the idea..
But they were pretty diplomatic about it.
Still there was a lot of internal struggle and imbalance..

A Caucasian gf
Nothing surprising from him.
She was someone whom my brother fell head over heels for..
And who can explain the reason behind falling for someone?
Just find it strange that he kept getting into relationships that drained a lot of his energy..
Totally emo-ed.

Perhaps it was Don's fault that he failed to explain many grey areas to us right at the beginning.
Perhaps he was simply defensive because he saw our subconscious and senseless objections.
Perhaps it was the weirdest circumstances to which we met her..
A brief introduction, nothing like the endearing Chinese Uncle or Auntie.
Everything was a simple "Hi" and off they shut themselves in the room.
Don did not take much effort to tell her the social norms of a Chinese family of neat freaks.
She was living alone back home, so maybe tidiness wasnt the top priority on her list.
But cleanliness and hygiene meant everything to my folks..

Questions kept ringing in our minds.
It was seemingly alright at the beginning when she first arrived..
We asked her 812748 questions and she was curious about us too.
But living together under the same roof after a while soon revealed problems..
Because of these disapprovals, these supposed taboos..
There was some sort of a growing wall between us on and off.

There was no logical rationale to our disapproval but we disapproved.
We were drifting in and out of relenting but we relented.
My bro will be joining her in Finland in four months' time to look for a job and reside there for three months.
If everything goes well with his Finnish employer, he will come back for graduation and then goes back to Finland and maybe continue to work there.
Tell me how are the folks gonna accept that..?

And so,
She had to witness the arguments we had with Don in Chinese..
Felt the bad atmosphere around us..
Endure the subtle cold shoulders from us whenever Daddy brought up his 101 ways of
"How to stop Don from going Finland before his graduation"
In fact,

Daddy placed a lot of expectations on him..

Amidst the struggle in our minds..
We gradually felt her growing on us..
Her warmth, a good listener, her poise..
Raw vegetables and more fruits..
Tomatoes seem like her daily dosage of energy..
(We have never eaten soooo much tomatoes prior to her visit)
Our yearly supply of tomatoes seems to be her monthly buy =x
It was a healthy snack though =)
We got influenced by her very healthy eating style.
Mommy often cooked more vegetables whenever she was having meals at home.

For her,
She got addicted to mommy's cooking, especially the spicy ones =)
And she has never seen such a wide array of vegetables..
Brinjal, bittergourd, lady's finger, kangkong..
And she sure has a high threshold for spicy stuff.
She loves Mommy's home made chilli paste.

We brought her to meet grandma during grandma's birthday meal..

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Brought her for crab liberation session..
(This picture is like some modelling photo shoot lol)

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Two days before she returned home
She passed us a Xmas card and a gift.
Mommy and I passed her two packets of soup seasoning as well =)
I opened the card, read it..
Passed the card around the family..
Opened the gift.

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This meant a lot to us.

"I hope this present lets you all know a little bit of Finland so that you know where Don is coming to see me"

We melted instantly.

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*****

Just a day before she returned home..
I happened to be on leave.
She wanted Mommy to teach her how to make chilli paste..
So for the whole morning,
I was helping her to remove the seeds of the big packet of dried chilli.
We chatted for a long time for the first time.
She told me a lot about Finland..
And I told her about work and life in SG.
Inevitably cleared some misunderstandings that all of us had with her.
Just like that within a day
Our mutual respect and adoration blossomed.

Daddy and Mommy gave her a red packet..
I gave her a customised Xmas card.

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Whatever is going to happen in the future..
No one knows.
But this does not mean that we cannot be nice to people around us.
We've been horribly judgmental and making loads of baseless assumptions..
This interaction session, this learning process..
I guess at every age, you never stop learning.
This sense of consciousness..
I believed mommy and daddy learned a lot too.
No two individuals are the same.
They realised they have to release the reins somehow..
It's not easy to win the folks over..
But she did =)

I learned a lot too and I'm still learning..
I do grow on people very easily..
Perhaps that's why I've always maintained my distance from others so as not to become too attached -.-
Guess I could really spare more time to warm up to her earlier..
Don grew the most I supposed.
He felt the pinch of not having his own finances to do the things he wanted.
I guessed he realised not being money minded and not being mindful of finances are totally different principles.
He revealed his immature side because of Tuuli..
He matured also because of her.

Tuuli told me she was still worried that she would not reach home in time for Xmas because of the heavy snowfall..
Xmas is a big day for them.
Signifies that reunion of a family who frequently stays apart from one another.
So I really felt it when Don told me she arrived home safely =)

It's really rare to have overseas guest residing in our place for couple of months..
Especially in the SG context,
Having guests staying for the night who are not related to us is definitely not a common phenomenon.
Not to say guests from overseas.
How many of the flats here cater for guest rooms?
Having guest rooms in the Western countries is an unquestionable norm..
I really have to admit..
The Westerners are definitely more cultural savvy than us in this aspect.

This has really really been a wonderful experience for us..

*****

Labels: family, thoughts

irony @

10:15 PM