Posts tagged "death"
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Mee Lay
When I was growing up, I thought all families had the same weekend lunches as mine: a giant cauldron of yellow noodles, simmered so long in an anchovy broth that they fell apart when you picked up your noodles with chopsticks. You had to use a spoon. Ah ma made them every Sunday, but ah gong made the chilli. Even…
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To the Mountain
Going to the mountain. In all of my 29 years, my grandparents had been such a big part of my life that I could have never conceived of a life without them. Like the 1128-episode TV serials they watched, Ah Gong and Ah Ma just went on and on. In the background, their voices blended in with the voices of the Chinese TV…
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I Hate Cabbage Soup
White cabbage is death. If there is a Creator, it is one of his less glorious moments. The only thing worse than white cabbage is white cabbage soup. I am a soup maniac, but white cabbage soup I do not touch with a ten foot pole. I cannot even sit at the same table when it is being drunk. The sight and smell of it…
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A Drinkable History of My Family
The following piece is an original piece written specially for Ceriph #3, published by Math Paper Press. It's on sale at my favourite bookstore, BooksActually, and also at Kinokuniya.. Fish Sauce We are Teochew, people of the coast. Fish sauce, more than hot food, opera, more than even yam paste desserts - is what…
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Two Hundred and Nine
A year in review 2009 was a year of many things: it was the year of change and death. More so it was the year of change because of death. Many famous people died that year; my grandfather, who was not famous, somehow also did the same. In April I called him from a phone booth in Beirut at US$2 a minute and had a…
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And The Living is Easy
Weddings, funerals and fortune tellers depress me. Weddings, I’ve been known to say, make me linger too long on the idea of happiness. Not that it’s ever been bleak on the romantic front. The wedding type of happy simply seems worlds apart from the love type of happy to me, but then I was the odd one out in too many…
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There Is Always Chicken Curry at Funerals
Last Rites Living in Singapore is not easy, one can quickly see. Could it be that we tire quickly from our programming — the PSLE, the Os, the As, the university, the serving the nation, the feeding your family and all these things? Or is it that we pack the rush hour morning and evening trains daily, increasingly…
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Ah Gong and I
Let’s just say I don’t do death. I’ve never had to deal with it, never thought about it, possibly because I never had a pet, and never had family or friends who’d passed on or contracted anything major. People lived, in my family, and lived quite long. Especially my grandma and grandpa, who seemed to just go on and on.…
8 posts tagged "death"