I beat the Ah Peks

I bought a pair of very comfy Volcom Jamiaca style beach shorts a few weeks ago.
Of course, even a simple pair of beach shorts constitutes fashion, and it’s all about image projection right?

After dinner, I asked the Mother if my shorts are very much like Ah Pek/DOM PJs. It’s the print, very 70s Ah Pek style, I fear.

My mom nonchalantly replied, “No lah, Ah Peks where got wear such short shorts to sleep?” WL, I’m more indecent than DOMs in the eyes of the parent.

African Sea coconut medication

I had a bad cough yesterday, and the kind parents bought cough syrup from the pharmacy. They swore by this brand, said they had taken it when they were young and it cured their coughs and other ailments.

What has African sea coconuts got to do with coughs? What a mystery.
The syrup has a Chinese herbal taste, not too bad. It worked. I stopped coughing today. And it’s sold over Amazon.com

What else is amazing, the parents bought dapao-ed dinner for me as well, and their idea of sick people food was Crab BeeHoon. That's my chicken soup.

The Siglap Farmer

The Father's harvest of the week. One cucumber and papaya. The Mother was put off by the freckles on the papaya and didn't want to eat an ugly fruit. There are another 30-odd baby fruits getting ripe on the papaya tree, hopefully they include some aesthetically pleasing ones. Maybe switch fertilizers?


UPDATE: 11 July
We did have the ugly papaya in the end and it tasted good!

Household Mystery of the Day

In the Chin family, I’m in charge of buying heavyweight grocery items weighing more than 5 kgs. No one, except me, has noticed that it’s ironic, as I’m easily the physically smallest Chin family member (even if we include overseas family members).

So, the grocery list was passed to me… as usual… rice, washing detergent…Rice! We’re buying rice again? I just bought a 10kg sack of rice last month, and now we need more rice?

I did a survey amongst friends. Going by rice grain count, my family consumed almost twice as much rice as everybody else. How is that possible? We’re not heavy eaters. We have only one meal daily, six times a week.

I consume 0.75 bowl of rice, the maid 0.8, mum 1.0, dad 1.0 (approx), and Rocky 1.5, which would be a maximum of 5.05 bowls of rice. There are no refugees hiding in the basement or attic. Where did it all go?

This time, I bought two times as much rice - 20Kgs. If we finish the rice in less than two months I will scream and launch an official investigation.

Dengue Scare

Phone call from Dad & Mum’s office to me, at home, rotting in pain with a PMS backache.

DAD: “Ah Ping, can you bring the maid to the doc? She has fever and is feeling itchy.”

Ah Ping: “Can I talk to Mum?”

DAD: “Sure, but she’s on the phone now. I can put you on call waiting, call back later” [Phone goes dead]

10 minutes later…

MUM: “Can you bring the maid to the doc? She has fever, and is itchy all over. It’s Dengue Fever. I left her card and money at your study desk”

Ah Ping: “Is the body covered with little red dots?”

MUM: “Yah”

After call to clinic… circuit driving across Siglap and mad dash across car park to clinic before it closed in 10 minutes, we caught the Malay-speaking Chinese Doc as he was going out for lunch. Nurses looked grumpy and I felt a little guilty. The ministry of environment people were just at our place last week checking drainage systems for mosquito larvae colonies.

5 minutes later…

DOC: "it’s not Dengue. She also said she has no fever. It is just a rash caused by allergy, she had scratched herself some serious looking red welts here”.

Ah Ping: “Ok, can you please explain to her in Malay it’s just an allergy? She will cry later if she thinks she’s very sick”

DOC: [In Malay to maid] “You are not going to die.”

Nurse: “She says she using a new soap brand. Better change back to old soap brand”.

15 minutes later…we got home and I tracked down the culprit soap. Palmolive! I quickly passed her three bars of Lux.

From Dengue to Hives, I thought we did pretty well.