Aunties and Uncles, Please Gather...
Starting from 6pm today, by Mr Almighty's Grace I found myself skipping from one shitty situation top the next...
First things first, I had to rush home from my god-forsaken workplace, somewhere along Upper Jurong Road, and join the maddening traffic packed with the most ungracious drivers and black-smoke-puffing school buses, to get back home by 7pm ++. The worst part of the trip of definitely the part where I tried to cut through the school-bus queue at Boon Lay and Lake Side MRTs... I swear the smoke I inhaled would beat the tar amount found in my one month's serving of fags.
Thankfully I reached home alive, and in time to join my folks for some "old-time-buddy" gathering they organised at some unknown uncle's house. i think I have skipped such frivolous socialising for a few years, and feeling bad that my folks didn't have the chance to show their friends:
1) How much I have grown? (normally height is the first thing they talk about, "WAH! YOUR SON SOOO TALLL!!!")
2) What kind of education am I receiving? (I thought I could conveniently skip this topic since I am no longer in school, but my seemingly against-the-norm decision to quit uni seems to generate only more controversy and fatherly-lectures)
3) Which camp am I in? (Since they eventually found out I was a regular soldier... I pretty sure I was thoroughly interrogated by 8 out of 11 uncles on this topic, and of course they presumed I would be so very interesterd in their army stories, so I wasn't spared from that either)
30 minutes into the thing and I was already regretting my obliging presence. I seem to fit nowhere in the odd crowd of 50 year olds and 5 year olds.
The 50 year olds would plunk their asses on some chair and start rattling about irrelevant topics, and laughing at each others lame jokes in the most patronising way. It was difficult to join such a crowd...
The 5 year olds, on the other hand, where fighting for a wooden stick to whack the fake halloween pumpkin for candy. I will NEVER join that bunch of monkeys... The sight of 15 kids scrambling over spilt candy is simply repulsive.
Just as I settled on some orange juice in a peaceful corner beside an antique fan, this bog fat guy with a beer belly, mad scientist glasses and unruly moustache somes along, and starts to claim that he knows my boss and that he is some great man with great advice to give.
Without the least bit of consideration for my willingness to listen, he started to lecture me and a fellow school mate of mine (I was fortunate to have at least a canoeing junior in the midst of the greying crowd), on how our mentalities of protecting our interests with a slight play of politics is wrong, and how he was an honourable man who would never compromise his policies even at the cost of losing his friends / allies.
He then goes on about how I should plan my career path after I leave the forces, and that he has some fantastic lobang for me to become some security guard at a security firm set up by some retired LTC and a bunch of condemned WOs.
That seemed to be not enough a self introduction, and he had to go on about his fishing escapades. Oh how I wish I could grab a chair and grind his disgusting face with it. Maybe I should grab all the trash in the bags and ram them down his stinking throat. Of course he loves fishing, A PERSON LIKE HIM HAS NO FRIENDS! He can only talk to fish...
ugh...
