Archive for October, 2008
October 31 2008: So, Um, England
Filed under Travel with 28 Comments
80% chance that I’ll be going to England in January for two and a half weeks.
…I would elaborate, but it’d only be squealing, talk about cheap airfares, and musing about whether or not to stalk Prince Harry while I’m there, and that’s not interesting for anyone to read.
So who’s willing to lend me a sofa to sleep on?
October 29 2008: The Greatest Gift From Parent To Child
Filed under Family with 15 Comments
The past three entries is the answer to people’s questions about why I’m still at home when I do more than what they believe to be the role of a daughter. Because I’m not a selfish cunt. I recognise the sacrifices my parents have made for me, and I know that the little sacrifices that I myself make here and there do not in any way compare to the daily sacrifices they have made, and continue to make. What’s a couple of hundred dollars here and there for rent and board on my part when they left their comfortable middle-class lifestyle to live in a country where they can’t communicate with their neighbour and where they work tirelessly, just to give me opportunities I wouldn’t have received otherwise?
I think that’s the key defining factor between myself and many other people of my age group - I don’t think that I’m owed anything by my parents. I don’t think that just because they conceived me, birthed me, and raised me, that I’m owed an allowance, or free rent and board, or to pay for university, or to buy me a car, or take me on holiday. I do believe that as my parents, they should be supporting me spiritually and emotionally, which, in the things that matter most, they have. From age zero, they’ve given me opportunities that other children perhaps wouldn’t have received from their parents:
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October 28 2008: Three Part Series: My Parents
Filed under Asian-ness & Family with 14 Comments
Part three of a three part series. Read part one and two.
Aged 24 and 18 respectively, my father and mother met under mutually beneficial circumstances. He needed a wife to care for his aging mother, she needed a husband to help her move away from simply being a factory hand for the rest of her life and to achieve legitimate residency in Hong Kong. Introduced by his godmother, her landlady, they began courting in the summer of 1984, and married by late autumn 1984. She was able to quit her factory job, moving into his rented apartment to care for his mother who lived with them. He was able to work longer hours to support what they hoped to be a rapidly expanding family.
For the first eighteen months, their marriage was coloured by an inability to conceive, no matter how they tried. My mother’s early years of near-malnutrition had wrecked havoc with her reproductive system, and it was only with the help of foul brews of Chinese medicine that they were finally able to have me, the much cherished child (if slightly less valuable because in possession of a vagina rather than a penis). There were no further concentrated attempts for a child, with my brother’s birth ten years later a complete accident.
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