Dear Rockstar,
Red meat has been known to cause cancer in lab rats.
Smoking has been known to cause cancer in lab rats.
Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) has been known to cause cancer in lab rats.
Mummy is wondering if anyone ruled out cancer being hereditary among those lab rats.
We’re currently on a surprise visit to Kampung Baru Rasah, Seremban, to cheer Kong-kong up. He has been ordered to give up some Good Things In Life – his thick, local-brewed coffees, and his smokes – because he has really high blood pressure.
Poor Kong-kong probably never imagined that as he approached 60, he would have to overhaul his way of life just because a “young and inconsiderate” doctor had the nerve to inform Poh-poh about his test results. A grievous insult indeed. He has been yelling at his dogs a lot when they bark.
It seems such a no-brainer – your perception and attitude play such an important role in your enjoyment of life. Cultivate a love of things that are wholesome and good for you, and you never have to give up the good life. Right. And then what are you going to do with all your friends?
Back in Kong-kong’s day, who could have imagined coffee was bad? And all his friends smoke. What is he supposed to do now, not hang out? Even if (perish the thought!) he dumps his smokes, he’s constantly surrounded by second-hand smoke.
So, you are Daddy’s Secret Weapon to distract Kong-kong. (Though yesterday at the village toy store we caught him smoking outside while you shopped.)
In contrast, Grandpop beat the offending “young” doctors to crazily reorganizing his life years ago, probably in part because he is mildly obsessive compulsive (which is probably where Mummy got it – and she’s still watching you to figure if she has passed it to you too.) Grandpop works out at 6am most mornings, having turned part of Mummy’s old room into his personal gym after she moved out before her 18th birthday. Pek Kong remarked sometimes it just feels like you live longer…
Anyway. Mummy was simply challenging herself to write something that could possibly tie all 3 older men, from such different worlds, together. Kong-kong’s history your father would have told you (he worked a variety of interesting jobs including Entrepreneur, Construction Worker, Local Cinema Canteen Operator).
So Mummy will supplement this with the mention that Grandpop’s fitness regime is a carryover from his days as an agricultural consultant who retired in his early 40s. Grandpop had to be fighting fit to trek for days thru primary forest to reach the plantations and soils he was consulted on.
Pek-kong, Grandpop’s older brother, is a (now semi-retired) heart surgeon who once ranked top 10 in the world on some scale Mummy doesn’t know enough to write about. He operated on an uncle named Chow Yuen Fatt, whom Great Grandmum greatly admires (Mummy has spent years searching for Man In The Net on dvd for her in vain) and an Indonesian Sultan who later adopted him as a brother.
You however remember Pek-kong better as the uncle who took you to Toys R Us in Paragon, Singapore and asked you to pick out something. He was rather pleased you did, because there have been times when you didn’t see anything you wanted, regardless there is someone trying very hard to buy you a gift. This continues to confound your grandparents. You politely returned a prize you won at the village fair last night, explaining it was “for babies”.
Something you will probably be more impressed with one day – Grandpop once carried a gun. Mummy has childhood memories of watching him clean the pieces on the bed. It is because we lived near some very unsafe estates due to the nature of his job. Til today, Mummy remembers not to walk with her back to oncoming traffic (someone can grab your bag, or worse, stop the car and pull you in).
Grandpop has been chased by modern day pirates (well, as modern as you can imagine in the late 70s/ early 80s) on the open seas between plantation islands, where he has also seen one of his best friends disappear, to be found tied to a tree slashed up, days later. This was when he started smoking again.
Once when Mummy was about 9, a man walked into Mummy’s school and bear-hugged her while she was playing among her friends. He claimed he was Grandpop’s friend and had come to take her home.
When he wouldn’t let her go, hugging tighter the more she struggled, Mummy stopped struggling and announced she had forgotten her schoolbag. He reluctantly let Mummy go fetch it, and she never came back. She remembers hiding in a classroom, watching the man walk by, when a classmate popped in and mentioned the man had asked her for Mummy’s name. Mummy never saw him again after that day. But she still remembers his aviators and light colored long-sleeved shirt. Also, the smell of his cologne.
Mummy also remembers the drives to Sepilok, the nature reserve in Sandakan, Sabah, where Grandpop was stationed for a decade (and Mummy spent 8 years of her childhood there, before moving to Penang with Grandmum). One day we drove up to see a baby elephant casually chewing on the plants outside the entrance where he was loosely tethered. When asked, we got the response “Oh, we shot the mum, who was destroying our crops. Then we found the baby, and felt bad. So here he is.”
Grandmum and Mummy lived together in a little house for a few years before reuniting with Grandpop. Grandmum spent hours driving around by herself, reacquainting herself with her hometown, when we first moved to Penang. She also gave free English tuition in a tough neighborhood after her regular hours as a secondary school teacher, and read books at the St Nicholas Home For The Blind.
Our way of dealing is the same, that way – when stressed or unhappy, we try to do something nice, albeit unrelated. That way we don’t feel so helpless. In the face of a bad experience, even if we don’t know how to fix it, we know we’re doing something, anything good. And yes, we pray.
Sometimes, Mummy strove to achieve because when she did, people were happy, at least for awhile.
Mummy hardly plays the piano now, because you love interrupting (even when you were still in her tummy), but Mummy once earned a Grade 8 and went for competitions and concerts. This is less important to her than the fact she practiced the absolute minimum hours on a broken down third hand piano bought so she could continue lessons while she and Grandmum lived alone.
Some of the keys didn’t work, but Mummy imagined what they sounded like in her piece anyway. The only reason she mentions this is because there were other kids around Mummy with beautiful, exquisite-sounding pianos who once made her feel like theirs was better.
They did not finish their Grade 8. So theirs were probably not better. In fact, Mummy thinks it wasn’t very good for them to think so either.
