Cruising To A New Sunrise

A Vacation With The Extended Family

 
When Mom broached the subject of an extended family vacation on the Royal Caribbean – Mariner of the Seas for 5 days, I spent 2 weeks mulling about spending my precious leave days from work stuck in a cruise ship.  My thoughts on the first week was focused on the possibility and ease at which I could jump overboard and swim back to shore should the need arise.  The second week was dedicated to research about the facilities and activities on the ship which could allow me to have adequate me time away from the claustrophobia I might feel from being restricted to the space within the ship as well as  the disdain I felt about being immersed in a crowd of tourists queuing at the dining room entrance an hour before meal times, reserving deck chairs with their towels at 5am in the morning,  and stacking their plates with dessert, appetizer and main course all at once.

 
It did not help Mom’s case about this vacation when she sold it in this manner, “I booked you and I on a cruise with the family because if you come along, I get 50% discount on the price as I am a ‘senior citizen’.  So you must come ah!”
 

Obediently, I applied for leave from work and assured my men at home that the only reason I was leaving them behind was that they were not senior citizens.

 

Determined To Enjoy The Cruise

 
I was determined to enjoy my first experience on the cruise.  The friendly crew from the State Room attendant right through to the waiting staff at the restaurants went above and beyond to delight the guests, so it was not difficult to relax into a daily routine of enjoying the copious amount of food served 24 hours a day, and the professionally produced staged shows each night.  Several bars were dotted conveniently at each deck of the ship, in case I was driven to drink while managing conversations as civilly as possible with an uncle who had an EQ of 0. 

 
I was also cognizant of the fact that with an 86 year old grandmother in tow, I had the responsibility of ensuring that she enjoyed every minute of that vacation time with the family.  Mom often whispered to me as she kept me in check when I felt annoyed enough to want to hit that 0-EQ Uncle on the head with my shoe, “How much more time does Granny have with us? Please think twice before you say anything stupid.”

  

Family Time

 As we sailed across the Malacca Straits into the Andaman Sea, I woke up each morning at 5am to capture the Sunrise, and left our dinner table abruptly each evening at 6pm to capture the Sunset. I spent most of the mornings perfecting a selfie against the backdrop of the emerald-green waters of the ocean.  I wheeled Granny into the Casino to watch her operate the jackpot machine like a rabid Pilot on the computer dashboard of the Starship Enterprise.  I strolled with Mom along the jogging path on the deck whilst listening to a lengthy lecture on sun-damaged skin and ageing. I shared jokes with my other 2 favorite uncles who were gifted with higher EQ than the eldest one.
 

I did not have a chance to embark on my daily gym routine although the ship had a huge gym filled with state-of-the-art equipment because I did not fancy spending an hour working out, only to spend another 3 hours trying to hunt down the rest of the family throughout the ship after. I was all kitted up and ready for my sunset rock-wall-climbing experience but Mom was more interested in lining up for a chicken roll and a slice of pizza at the 24-hour café.  So I decided that spending time with Mom having a good chat over a cup of tea while she polished several chicken rolls and slices of pizza was more important.   I registered for yoga classes early in the morning but decided  that sitting out on our balcony with Mom to discuss the important topic of what shapes the clouds made, was more fun.  I was prepared to spend my day enjoying a half-empty ship as the rest of the guests disembark for their shore excursion in Phuket one day. As my son aptly put it across Facebook one day, “For Mom, a HAPPY CRUISE IS AN EMPTY CRUISE.”  However, I decided to disembark the ship in the afternoon to take my Mom out for a little shopping trip in Patong Beach, Phuket, and we enjoyed the ubiquitous Thai fare of Pad Thai and Boat Noodles before returning to the ship.

 
Throughout the cruise, I hardly had any Me Time as I tried to “stick with the program” to spend more quality time with my extended family. So when I returned from the cruise, a friend said in surprise, “What? You packed for a vacation with the intention to spend more time in the gym each day to get fitter, do your sprints around the track, attend yoga and pilates classes and get in some massage time but you did none of these! What exactly were you doing for 5 days?”

 

Chasing A New Sunrise

 
I reflected on my experience during the cruise and realized that the reason I had initial doubts and skepticism about this vacation was because I had been chasing my sunrise and sunsets in a wrong way. 

 
I was focused on the superficial aspects of special moments that I was expecting to enjoy, like waking up at 5am to wait for the sunrise. However, I forgot about the miracle behind a sunrise and the fact that the sunrise each day, actually looked very different from each other, beckoning me to see each day as a gift and an opportunity to start anew.
 

This vacation was not about spending more time with an 86 year old Granny who might have so little time left with us.  It was about reconnecting with the grand dame of the family who had planted the roots of piety, familial love, and resilience in the ground for my mother’s generation, my generation and the generation after.  That was an invaluable lesson in committing to celebrate our family’s past, present and future.

 
It was not about having to manage verbal altercations with my eldest Uncle who had very little social aptitude.  It was about the fun and jokes my other uncles and I shared across the dinner table, having a hearty laugh at my eldest uncle’s callous retorts that he had often dished out irrationally.  That was an invaluable lesson in diffusing tension and managing the dynamics of interpersonal relationships.
 

It was not about how much time I spent with Mom throughout the vacation.  It was all about the quality time spent having meaningful conversations with her during the cruise, sharing our thoughts, fears and memories.  This was an invaluable lesson in the need for me to make the effort to continue having more meaningful conversations with her even after the vacation.  Acknowledging that I spent little time with her every week, I was committed to ensure that each moment I spent with her would be one where I was fully present.

 

Coming Home To New Perspectives

 
On the last day of the cruise, as my ship pulled into Singapore waters and the skyline of the central business district came into full view, adorned with a spectacular sunrise, I began to see this wonderfully quirky extended family in a new light. We all came together, whatever differences we had as a family, and whatever expectations we had about the cruise.  What pulled us together was the fact that we celebrated a priceless moment together as a family.  We might sometimes fight, and we might sometimes not speak to each other, or we might each hold stubbornly strong to our respective opinions.  However, nothing could change the fact that we were a closely-knitted family. 

 
How could I ask for anyone within the family to change, including my uncle with 0 EQ? I will always love them for who they are.  Every day, I celebrate a new sunrise, and like a new sunrise, I am grateful for the opportunity to feel the warmth and love within this family.

About The Writer

The writer of this blog post is a Marketing and PR professional for over 20 years.  Due to her love for Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), she is also a freelance sports writer on the side, contributing MMA-related articles to several sports media.  She works in partnership with her husband, David Ash, who is an avid sports photographer from www.singaporemaven.com.  She is passionate about Boxing and nurtures a dream to fight competitively one day when her coach stops making fun of her.  She is also a psychic intuitive by birth and runs a consultancy that does tarot and numerology readings under her brand, Sun Goddess Tarot.  This blog is affectionately called "The Crazy AngMo" as she is married to one, although she has not yet explained to THE Ang Mo that when translated, he has been labeled  “the bloke with ginger hair”.  

A Tale Of 2 Cities And 2 Families

A Tale Of 2 Cities

 

Although I have been back from my vacation in Sarawak for 2 weeks now, my heart is still there, buried somewhere in the depths of the forests at Rancan Waterfall.

 

I came home with a truck load of indigenously- grown spices and produce like pepper, Kuching Laksa paste and Olives from Sibu which Mom insisted on lugging across seas back to Singapore.  I am not sure, what is it about travelling, that compels people to do strange things, like carrying 20 boxes of pineapple tarts back to Singapore, only to watch 19 boxes disappear into the hands of relatives and friends before our eyes.  

 

I amassed some wonderful memories of the wildlife reserves and other places of interests that I still talk fondly about, and am planning a wildlife photography trek through the forests some time with David.    

 

Most importantly, I came home also with new familial connections formed as I was introduced to my extended family in Sarawak and was reconnected to familiar ones that I had not seen in more than 40 years. This was the tipping point in my trip because, it played an important role in helping me connect the familial dots between Singapore, Sarawak and Sibu.  In the past, whatever stories told by Granny about Sarawak and Sibu did not make sense to me.  They seemed to be lifted out of 2 separate story books written by several authors all at once. Now, I know better, and it made it more difficult for me to write this blog post but I did promise myself that in 2016, I would CELEBRATE.  So, this post was a way I would celebrate family.  I celebrate being part of a new extended family, with new-found uncles, aunts and cousins. I celebrate being part of a rich familial history that dated back to an enterprising young man who came from China to Borneo many years ago to eke a living and build a new home and family.  This man’s blood courses through me enough to tell the story that I had picked up from the discussions with my Grandmother, Mom and my Aunts.

 

Great Grandfather

 

The story began with my Great Grandfather, Kho Eng Khng, who like many immigrants in his time, came to “Nanyang” or South East Asia by boat to build a life leveraging the abundant opportunities and natural resources it offered.

 

Great Grandfather met and married my Great Grandmother in Kuching.  She was the only daughter in the family and was gifted 2 bangles by her father at the wedding. She gave Great Grandfather one of the bangles as a gift which he had very cleverly used to invest in his business.  He started a textile business under the brand Nan Chi which when translated, means Southern City. The brandname Nan Chi was a meaningful one because it reflected Great Grandfather’s commitment to the city of Kuching. He grew his business on the bedrock of economic growth and development in Kuching then, at the South of the river in Sarawak, and this city had been adopted as his home, where he raised his family.   Nan Chi operated out of a 3-storey shop house and that business became highly successful and expanded beyond his wildest dreams.  Because of his love for nature, he started a landscaping business operating out of Nan Chi Garden which had also become very successful.

 

Great Grandmother

 

By this time, Great Grandfather and Great Grandmother had 4 children, 3 daughters and a son.  One of these daughters, the youngest was my Granny.

 

Great Grandmother with Mom 

When the kids were in school one day and my Great Grandmother was at home, a man from the local immigration office dropped by the house and told my Great Grandmother that she had to sign some immigration papers to allow for the passage of my Great Grandfather’s relative from China to Sarawak.  My Great Grandmother could not read, speak or write English yet she surrendered to the concept of spousal duty by affixing her thumbprint on the dotted line, and unwittingly agreed for my Great Grandfather’s first wife from China to relocate to Sarawak.

 

While my Grandmother’s story veered towards the perception that Great Grandmother was just ignorant, I on the other hand believed that Great Grandmother loved my Great Grandfather so much that she just wanted to do what she thought was right for him.

 

The Other Great Grandmother

 

 

So with the new situation created by that thumbprint, 2 families headed by 1 man with 2 wives co-existed in that 3 storey shophouse at Nan Chi.  Those were the days, when practicality took over and any negative emotions about the awkward situation were just cast aside out of spousal duty from both women to keep my Great Grandfather happy. 

 

The household now consisted of my Great Grandmother with her 4 children, my step Great Grandmother with her 8 children and my Great Grandfather who was perhaps the happiest man within this complex scenario.

 

When step Great Grandmother moved in, my Great Grandmother and the 4 children had to pack up and move to the 3^rd floor of the shophouse while my step Great Grandmother and the 8 children moved to the 2^nd floor of the shop house with my Great Grandfather.  In an Asian family, the first wife of course took precedence in importance and rank, hence Great Grandmother had no choice but to comply with the social rules.

 

The Relocation To Sibu

 

I must have got my rebellious streak from Great Grandmother who not long after, decided that these social rules were bullshit and there just could not be 2 queens in a household.  Ok, Grandmother did not quite say that but I thought that was the best way to describe it in my words. The truth however, was that Great Grandmother's eldest daughter got married and moved to the neighboring city of Sibu. Her son had also moved to Sibu due to work. What else had she then in Kuching? So Great Grandmother bundled the remaining 2 kids and moved to  Sibu too. 

 

To my Great Grandfather’s credit, he did divide his time between both homes in Sibu and Kuching.  Accounts about their lives in Sibu related by my Grandmother also convinced me that my Great Grandmother’s life in Sibu was a better one, surrounded by the kids who grew up to be highly successful people in their own right.  Her 3 daughters, my 2 Grand Aunts and my Grandmother relocated to Singapore eventually.

 

Luckily Grandmother had settled in Singapore when she married my Grandfather and these are the reasons why.  I am truly convinced that the food in Sarawak is much better than that in Singapore.  My diet failed in epic proportions when I was holidaying in Sarawak.  Secondly, Mom told me that her uncle, Great Grandmother’s only son, had the fondness of knocking her head with his knuckles to punish her for running around the estate “like a ruffian” when she was very young.  Well, I would have a huge dent in my head if I had grown up there too.  My Granduncle would be sending a search party through the forests and up trees to look for me.

 

Finally, Grandmother is now the only daughter left to tell me the tale of my Great Grandfather, my Great Grandmother and my step Great Grandmother.  There were many positive stories as well as negative stories that she had related to my mother and I.  I cannot begin to imagine what must have coursed through my Great Grandmother’s mind when she realized that her beloved husband actually had another wife before her.  It must have been difficult to explain to the kids, why they had to move up a dark set of stairs into the 3^rd storey of the shophouse to make way for a “stranger” in the home.  It must have been a difficult decision that my Great Grandmother made to leave the marital home, pack up 2 kids lock, stock and barrel and move to another city to join her 2 other kids.  She must have known it would alter the lives of everyone involved in that move.

 

 However, these did not matter now.  My Great Grandfather and his complex life of 2 wives, 2 families and 2 cities eventually was just a story.  Its complexity was not remotely far from the complexity of what modern families go through in their daily lives of managing home, career, and family life.

 

What was more important though, was that I honor this family and this legacy that my Great Grandfather had built. 

 

Underlying all that, I celebrate the strength and courage of the womenfolk in this family.  When I think about my Great Grandmother, my Grandmother and Mom, I only see strength from the difficult decisions they had to make, the rocky paths they had to walk, the painful stories as well as the happy stories they lived to tell.

 

For this and more, I am truly grateful to be his Great Granddaughter.

Acknowledgement:  The old photographs of my Great Grandfather and his family that accompanied this article was provided with much thanks from my Aunties Sharon and Judy Kho.  The details within this article were woven from stories related to me by my Grandmother, Mom, my uncles and my aunts from Sarawak.

 

 

About The Writer

The writer of this blog post is a Marketing and PR professional for over 20 years.  Due to her love for Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), she is also a freelance sports writer on the side, contributing MMA-related articles to several sports media.  She works in partnership with her husband, David Ash, who is an avid sports photographer from www.singaporemaven.com.  She is passionate about Boxing and nurtures a dream to fight competitively one day when her coach stops making fun of her.  She is also a psychic intuitive by birth and runs a consultancy that does tarot and numerology readings under her brand, Sun Goddess Tarot.  This blog is affectionately called "The Crazy AngMo" as she is married to one, although she has not yet explained to THE Ang Mo that when translated, he has been labeled  “the bloke with ginger hair”.  

 

 

Mothers And Daughters

Unwavering Commitment And Undying Love

I loved to dote on Mom. I enjoyed pampering her with gifts and lunch treats as often as I could.  In the words of my Dad, handwritten in a handmade birthday card for Mom a couple of years ago, she had taken care of him with "unwavering commitment and undying love".  Indeed, she had taken care of the entire family with unwavering commitment and undying love. So, I would never hesitate to take the day off from work to spend the day with her, call her in between my meetings at work just to ask her about her day, and surprise her with gifts from time to time. What I could do for her was nothing. The amount of sacrifices made would not even come close to those that she had made for the family. This woman's "unwavering commitment and undying love" was not reserved only for Dad, my brother and I. She rendered it generously to the rest of her family, particularly Grandma.  That is why, as  I grew up and became successful, I had always put Mom above everyone and everything else.  All I wanted was to be able to take care of her and make her happy.  I wanted to wipe off every wrinkle from her face, the tell-tale signs of the struggles she had suffered during her younger days.  

These are just some of the stories of her past that I had picked up recently.  I did not want to make the mistake I did in the past when I finally shared stories about Dad when it was way too late.   I am sharing these stories today as my belated Mothers' Day tribute to the strongest and bravest women in my life, my Mother and my Grandma. 

The Engagement Ring

On 11 August 1968, Dad and Mom got engaged to be married.  I flipped through the dusty family albums to get an insight into that occasion.  It was a day filled with so much happiness as they exchanged engagement rings and  promised each other a future of marital bliss and eternal love.   A few days ago, I spotted Mom wearing the engagement ring and proceeded to remove it from her finger to play with it.  The underside of the white gold band was inscribed "E. Nah - 11 August 1968". I thought that was rather odd.  That had to be Dad's engagement ring, wasn't it?   When one exchanges a wedding or engagement ring, wouldn't the inscription within the underside of that ring be that of your spouse's  name and not your own?  

I then asked Mom,"Where is your engagement ring? Isn't this Dad's?"  Mom then proceeded to tell me that shortly after her engagement to Dad, she gave the ring to Grandma so that the latter could have it pawned in order to have some money to feed the rest of the kids at home.  Grandma had 6 kids including Mom. It was a difficult life having to raise 6 kids post war, on my Grandpa's meagre earnings as a clerk at the university.  Mom said it was a matter of survival for the family. She felt that as the oldest sibling about to be married, while she was one less burden on my Grandma and Grandpa, Mom felt that it was her duty to help the family out when they were in need.  Dad knew nothing about the pawned engagement ring and neither did anyone else within the family.  It was a secret shared between mother and daughter.   I felt compelled as the daughter and granddaughter to finally let the cat out of the bag within this blog post because it was to me, a symbol of my mother's "unwavering commitment and undying love" shown towards her family.  If I were put in the same position, pressured by those circumstances, I would have done the same. It is this special unspoken mother-daughter connection underlying our relationship and her own relationship with her mother, that no one else on earth could ever understand.

The Hairdresser Duo

Today, during lunch with Grandma, I spoke to her about the engagement ring. She  shared even more stories from the past that underscored this special mother-daughter bond.  Grandma was a trained hairdresser.  At the family's home in Serangoon Gardens then, she had put up a sign that said "Hairdresser" at the front of the house.  Many women living in that area would visit the home to have their hair washed, styled and permed.  Grandma and Mom who had helped her then, would sometimes suffer from skin irritations on their fingers because of the hair treatment lotions they had to use in the course of their work.  When times were really tough and money was tight, Mom would help Grandma to pack the curlers, combs, pegs, pins, hairnets, lotions and hairdryer into a little old schoolbag and travel across the village neighborhood to sell their hairdressing services. They were "hairdressers making house calls".  Serangoon Gardens then was a village where many British military personnel and their families had lived.  So many of these women who had their hair treated by Grandma were wives of British soldiers.   My Grandma and Mom were such an enterprising duo.  They even took IOUs on payment for the hair treatment sessions because some of these women could only pay them on Thursdays when their husbands who had worked in the British army, got their weekly salary.  I was completely amazed at the thought of this dynamic mother-daughter team gallivanting across the village neighborhood with their little schoolbag, driven by circumstance to become entrepreneurs.   Again, it is this unspoken mother-daughter bond that inspired so much strength and courage to keep the family going, sheltered, fed and schooled.

Never Go Hungry

Grandma also spoke about how she would never allow the family to go hungry. Even with little or no money, she would open a pack of vermicelli that cost 40 cents then, and fried it with a couple of eggs and soy sauce.  That would feed the family of 6 kids and 2 adults very well. If there were no vermicelli or noodles to be found in the cupboard, she would fry a little pork lard in some oil, mixed that with rice and soy sauce and whipped up a delicious rice dish for the family dinner.  Grandma was so resourceful. She had no choice then when poverty struck, but she assured me that the family was a very happy one.  I know, because Mom, no matter what, had always embraced life with positivity. If Mom was a chip of her block, I was truly grateful that Grandma had been critical in inspiring that positivity and courage in my mother.

Today, Grandma and Mom are closer than ever. Everywhere they went and everything they did together, be it playing up a storm at their weekly mahjong games with friends or enjoying a buffet lunch uptown, I would see the same two women walking across the village neighbourhood with their little schoolbag filled with hairdressing tools. 

I love my Mom and Grandma. I wished I was as strong and brave as they were.  I am just a wee shadow of their giant selves, because what they had brought to the table were their unwavering commitment and their undying love for the family.

Respect.

About The Writer

The writer of this blog post is a Marketing and PR professional for over 20 years.  Due to her love for Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), she is also a freelance sports writer on the side, contributing MMA-related articles to several sports media.  She works in partnership with her husband, David Ash, who is an avid sports photographer from www.singaporemaven.com.  She is passionate about Boxing and nurtures a dream to fight competitively one day when her coach stops making fun of her.  She is also a psychic intuitive by birth and runs a consultancy that does tarot and numerology readings under her brand, Sun Goddess Tarot.  This blog is affectionately called "The Crazy AngMo" as she is married to one, although she has not yet explained to THE Ang Mo that when translated, he has been labeled  “the bloke with ginger hair”.  

My Beautiful Grandmother And Mother - Sometimes Looney But Mostly Sweet

Dad's Engagement Ring - He Didn't Know Mom's Been Pawned.  I Hope He Understood Why.

The little schoolbag full of hairdressing tools looked something like this.