A Tribute
May 13th, 2007 | Published in general | 18 Comments
She makes me sleep in backpacker dorms then makes herbal soup, chicken rice and dumplings for the other travellers, and screams about how I’m wasting the day by sleeping too much at 7 in the morning. She walks way too fast for me to catch up, and knows every country’s public bus and train system by heart. She tells me things like “try walking downhill.. backwards, it helps”. She falls asleep reading my articles and doesn’t like rock music, but she still tries to read me (and this blog) and goes to my brother’s concerts with tissue paper stuffed in her ears. She calmly explains to relatives that “Adri’s blog is where… she posts pictures of herself and then people post weird comments about how they love her”, so sometimes I wonder if she’s reading someone else. She introduces me to my ex’s classmates from the med school, even though I’ve never met them and I don’t want to know how she did. She talks about what she wants to eat for dinner after lunch and makes lunch appointments with us for next next month. She still can’t pronounce my girlfriend’s name and calls her yeti (hopefully without deliberate reference to Abominable Snowmen), makes her teh tarik so she won’t leave me, and although these days she can’t stop talking about how fat I’ve become, she’s still the coolest mum.
Happy mother’s day!
P.S. I’m pretty sure you’re my mother, though you’re currently having doubts, now that everyone around you is telling you I look 100% Thai.
May 13th, 2007 at 1:59 am (#)
seriously.
your mum’s soooo cool.
May 13th, 2007 at 9:10 am (#)
How exciting that you’re going to be in Mussoorie! You should stay at Dev Dar Woods (owned by my Dad); they have yummy pizza and all of the peanut butter and jam is made by our family. Have a wonderful time.
May 13th, 2007 at 9:19 am (#)
OMG. How funny! I was just looking for accommodation and had narrowed it down to Rokeby or Dev Dar. :) I will, err, give your dad a call soon. I’m hoping to enrol at Landour!
May 13th, 2007 at 9:31 am (#)
Too funny! My uncle runs it; you can find more info at http://devdar.blogspot.com/
My Hindi is terrible, and I’ve really been wanting to enroll at Landour one summer too. Maybe next! (After Bali or the other places you suggested, that is!)
May 13th, 2007 at 9:48 am (#)
I’ll let you know how Landour works out, though the guys at Indiamike.com (where I hang out) have only good things to say about it. My original plan was to work on my Hindi in Delhi.. but nothing beats learning Hindi in the Himalayas! I love mountains and hills ;P
May 13th, 2007 at 9:59 am (#)
I don’t have enough time there, sadly. I gotta literally fly through seeing friends in various metros (mumbai, bangalore, chennai and hyd), sprint to orissa for an assignment, then rush to mussoorie. the intensive hindi course is 6 weeks long, several hours a day every day of the week. and that’s already quite optimistic: i’m hoping to do it all in 3 weeks, as i have my last semester in singapore to get back to!
May 13th, 2007 at 5:07 pm (#)
We probably could be sisters. I was identified 4 times back to back as Thai during my 3 days stay in Koh Samui.
Damn it. Do I look like a guy to them?! (Okay, that’s just plain racism, pardon :p)
May 13th, 2007 at 5:48 pm (#)
Abominable snowman..that made me laugh! Miss you, sister.
May 14th, 2007 at 12:41 am (#)
Yes, add your mom’s tea to that list of things-to-do when you come home.
–Swollen paw.
May 14th, 2007 at 3:37 am (#)
Yo Yeti. Haha.
May 14th, 2007 at 11:38 am (#)
But… walking downhill backwards DOES help- I keep telling people, they keep giving me weird looks.
…and I must try tissue paper stuffed in the ears… it sounds like the sensible thing to do, I can’t imagine WHY I haven’t done it yet.
May 14th, 2007 at 2:18 pm (#)
Nicole- it isn’t just that. Quite simply, I’m thai until proven otherwise. And i try to indulge them by practising my very basic thai- i hold up for about 3 minutes- then they realize i’m not really thai after all. When in buses with the other foreigners, they get waved by at military checkpoints cos they obviously look foreign- i get checked, as if they expect me to be the burmese illegal they’re checking for! Upon producing my passport they giggle and say oh you thai same same. Oh well!
dawn- miss you darling!
z- :)
May 14th, 2007 at 10:03 pm (#)
You’ve just induced palpitations in me.
I thought I’d missed Mother’s Day. Again. Ours is in March sometime, according to Wikipedia that I’ve just been checking frantically while sweating and mentally going through how I was going to explain to my Mum that I do love her really but I’ve got a terrible memory for dates.
If I have a heart attack in the next week, it’s your fault. ;-)
May 14th, 2007 at 10:08 pm (#)
:) eye meesh eww.
May 15th, 2007 at 1:14 am (#)
Yeti: But I don’t have big feet. But I have big… :)
May 15th, 2007 at 12:20 pm (#)
…shoes?
May 24th, 2007 at 7:29 am (#)
Sigh.
June 25th, 2008 at 2:59 am (#)
hey guys….dont trust indiamike,its a racist website.
it will allow anything said by foreigners for india but wont let an indian say what he wants.me and my friends wanted to discuss topics relating to how women should wear in order to be comfortable while travelling and not attract too much attention.
besides india gets too many junkie travellers who are here only to do drugs without caring about anything else.
they banned us for 2 weeks saying that our topics were racist,insulting and sexist.
on the contrary ,they allowed any discussions relating to male attraction based on white colour and indian male mentality and even females asking to dye their hair from blonde and redhead to black “coz they felt it would attract too much attention and make life miserable for them”.
and they didnt make our banning public..the administrators just send us a private message giving this reason for banning.if they had courage, they should have posted below our post what their objections were and that would be respectful for both me and my friends and that would let all members see what our mistake was.
i hate such double minded inferiority complex suffering whackos!!!