Of loans, coding, and SMH

Family and duties.

My brother asked me to the guarantor for his study loan. I had no qualms about agreeing. He then approached me with a question about his programming assignment. A few probes later, I wondered whether I had made the right move by being his guarantor.

His assignment was due Saturday and yet he had not started on it, nor started on the materials for it. It was a basic topic in programming and that he could not understand the fundamentals worried me. I tried to teach him, but he was not learning. Was I a bad teacher, him a bad student, or both? I wished he had a more committed attitude to his studies. I did not know what his other commitments in life were, but I wished.

In another matter, my sister asked me about housing loans and I felt oddly peeved. While she and her husband stayed rent-free in a place I bought, because I wanted them not to be financially burdened when starting a new family, I was feeling mixed about the prospect that they could be looking to buy a place to rent out. I mean, I want them to earn, and be independent and succeed, but why was I upset that I did not charge them rent and that they may be charging someone else rent? I was a conflict of emotions and pointed that much out to my sister, rather unfairly. I needed to learn and resolve that issue on my own, I suppose. Or perhaps letting her know how I felt was the correct path to an open conversation. Or the closing of certain family conversations.

What be my duties to my family?

Here, There, on a Thursday

I wasn’t planning on heading to office on Thursday. I decided to wait at home for a delivery. The office had been kind to send everyone something. I decided to wait for it to arrive. In the morning, the delivery guy had messaged me to inform me of the time of his arrival, and I was all ready. I thought I was ready till I punched my postal code into the system to track the delivery.

My postal code could not be found.

I thought I hit the wrong numbers, till I tried a few times, and then a different postal code. As it turned out, the delivery would go to my sister’s place instead.

And so, I headed to her place during lunch time, not before I grabbed a nice plate of satay bee hoon near her place for lunch. I would have bought chendol as well, but convinced myself there was no need for an extravagant lunch as such. The delivery had arrived and in spite of that, I decided to stay a while at her place to chat with her while work from her place. Only, I did not bring my laptop charging cable. So it was mid-afternoon, I was expected to be working, and I was in danger of being unable to work.

I headed to office after some working and sibling bonding time, just so I could charge my laptop. Well, I could have thought my Thursday through a bit better. At least I received the package from office, from my sister. It was a good present and use of time at her place.

An Analogy/ Unresolved

I almost wrote something.

It was a moment during lunch, when I realised the bickering from the kitchen that was my housemates’ sounded like my parents. The funny thing was, I never thought of my parents in that light till I heard my housemates’ enter a conversation about buying in excess and hoarding. It was slightly amusing, not nice to be in the same house with, and altogether despair knowing that given the current pseudo-lockdown situation, and partly it being a work day, there was no escaping their argument. I laid in my bed, wondering when the conversation will draw me into their midst.

It did, and I didn’t respond fairly, nor kindly.

In that intense moment, that was probably no more than ten minutes, I thought how loveless the argument sounded. I wondered why they were together, but of course, I was discounting the other abundant moments of love. Maybe I was projecting my parents onto them, onto that brief moment of their quarrel. I didn’t wish to be in the house, and so I let my mind roam. They made up, but the thorny issue at hand would never go away, be resolved by being unresolved.

I don’t know why my father married my mother, but that is not a question I need answers to. I don’t know how my mother puts up with my father, but that too I do not need answers for. I just ask for solitude, but I end up in an abode with two other persons. No man is an island, but sometimes, I really just want to be away alone on an island, preferably with pristine waters, pure sand, and a mid-afternoon sun gently roasting.

But to society, and community, we all have our ties, I too.

End of Production

It’s not often I get invited to a party. Yet as I say it, I’ve been to at least three this year. The hosts are always the same. And these parties, I recognise, are precious opportunities just to be with friends, to be nothing, and to be in the company of. I love these occasions. So I allocate time to them accordingly, even if it means I stay till late in the night when I have work the next day.

A show’s run comes to an end. I come to terms with my feelings about the show, about the people I’ve come to call family, blood relatives or otherwise. Actually, that’s not entirely true. I can only come to terms with the issues that I care to place thought on.

Family is inevitable.

秘密

There is a secret in my family. We don’t speak of it. Over time, we forget it. But it’s there, buried deep no matter the years past.

There is little I know of the life my parents have: their friends, their siblings. No one really asks where they are now, or know what they are doing. Maybe someone is in the hospital, maybe someone is dead. I won’t know it, and I won’t know to ask if my parents know it. But there definitely is a secret in my family. Surely somebody remembers it.

What is a death like, without family, without friends, lying in the emptiness, forgotten, and discarded?

Something went wrong with my aunt’s e-mail and almost four months of sent items were moved to her inbox. But for a brief moment, it seemed like they were gone: the missing messages from November 2018 to February 2019. The internet browser glitched, and would not load more than fifteen e-mails. Seemingly lost, was all the information, from the Sent folder and from the inbox. An independent verification of the inbox with another device yielded the “missing” mail. There definitely was a problem with the internet browser on the laptop, and somehow, a batch of e-mails was moved.

I loathe to be the “IT Helpdesk”, mostly because I think people assume the stereotype that Computing students are the IT Helpdesks of life. But just as I have my perspective, others too, have their impressions. In the middle, we try to meet. I’m a valuable resource. People loathe to turn to me but they do because they have no better choices.

Yet, still, we will never, and may never know the secrets.

Milestones in Life

It was a rare gathering. My youngest sister desired to gather family members together for an evening of steamboat. I was hardly the type to organise these things, and also hardly the type to refuse these things. It was a nice evening of parents, idiosyncrasies, and all things boiled.

I didn’t do much for the day. I keep thinking this funk at work would blow over or cease, but the current flows, and I’m being swept along, rather than navigating it. Perhaps it was the right time that my boss initiated a switch-up of roles, and job scope. I’m almost looking forward to its implementation in April. I should give myself milestones in life, or look to other interests.

I also realised that I’ve not been following the latest comic book plotlines, nor mustered the will to catch the recent movie sequels. This all begs the question: what indeed has been occupying my time?

First Day in the New Lunar Year of the Pig

Thankfully, the first day of the Lunar New Year was uneventful. I visited my aunts, attempted to fix a rocking chair, made dinner, and ended the day rearranging shelves and watching anime. Most of the shops were not open, and there was no one about, like a zombie apocalypse had hit Singapore, or at least the part of it where I lived. It was a good break from work, life, and peace was about, at home, because my housemates are on holiday in Taiwan.

I did fuss about possible new houses, with my friend, who was also acting as my buying agent. Something spurred me to want to find that new place. I have to, because I can. The present living conditions of my siblings and parent can be greatly improved.

Reunion Dinner

It’s been a while now but every Lunar New Year’s Eve, the family would dine at a Chinese restaurant for Reunion Dinner. This year, there were eight of us because my brother-in-law joined us. It went well, even though we are pretty much a dysfunctional family at the dinner table with each our quirks.

I’ve a sister who eats very specific things, and another who wouldn’t touch food unless she’s got the first helping from the common plate or bowl. My father half-praises, half-criticises the dishes, and all the while regales me with tales from his observations, his past. I look around the table and see that me and my siblings have inherited different facets of the idiosyncrasies of our parents. I’m stubborn, and have a voracious appetite for the esoteric and inane. I also have a youthful appearance, and these are really because of the good genes.

Work, food, and rest. I decided not to spend the night at my parents’ place this year, but instead join them on the first day of visiting. Children, they grow old, and times change.

Dust to Dust

More prayers, and a journey later, the cremation ceremony is over.

The last we had, was a chance to lay flowers on the open coffin, and say any goodbyes. Then we were brought to a viewing gallery, to see the coffin travel a distance to an eventuality. I had anticipated flames in our vision, but the process was solemn, muted, and overall a slow-hitting, solemn realisation. It was well-managed. And in the moment of the coffin’s journey, I thought how wonderful it might be for her to be reunited with her love, with whom she bore these daughters who in turn bore us grandchildren. I never knew my grandfather, but I imagine my grandmother was once a radiant beauty who found a man she could love, and loved her. How far this journey in life has taken her, and now that she is back with the Lord, may she be at peace in the eternal years.

My mother cried, but was assured, and my aunts coped in their own ways. I could have cried, I suppose, but I never did let go. I guess we were all red and teary-eyed without bawling all over.

Those who live, shall live on, and strongly.

A Shadow Passed, A Shadow Passed

A few cousins, and I, we stayed up all night, with the coffin, keeping watch, simply being. In the cold, a night passed. I spent the rest of the day resting, and experiencing my company event vicariously through a colleague’s messages, and the administrator panel of an app the event was using.

I still have yet to walk to the coffin to take that “last look”. Is it compulsory of us to do so, or am I avoiding something? Anyway, it could really be said that I’m avoiding something as I chose not to divulge the location of the wake to my friends, and colleagues. In my defence, I feel that I didn’t need their presence for emotional support, nor felt that their presence would improve anything for anyone but me. So, I made the call to turn everyone away.

One more day to the big day, where all will be permanent and ash. I think a few of my relatives will be inconsolable. I may be at a loss on an effective course of action to prepare, and take.