I should update it again since I can access it tonight and also because I’ll be heading to Tianjin and Beijing tomorrow evening. Tickets are purchased. It’s a private room in the train for four people, so I think it’ll be quite a comfortable ride – gonna be an eye opener because it’ll be my first ride on a train in comfort. It’s also gonna be my first long ride – we board the train at 8pm and arrive at Tianjin at 6:30am the next day. Heh.

A lot of interesting things happened. I remember Melodong telling me once that my life is interesting but I always tell her it’s always because of perspective. I believe life is about making the mundane extraordinary. Well, for starters, I was up earlier than AKZZ and AZ today and I managed to spend some time with AM (Ah Ma) over my breakfast of soup. Incidentally, today was Gong Gong’s (GG) 17th death anniversary. As she reminisced, I was suddenly filled with nostalgia. I remembered how much GG loved me. I remembered I was the most favoured as I was the firstborn amongst the grandchildren. I remembered how he, in the later stages of his multiple cancers – lungs, liver, throat, nose – still found ways to pamper me.

You see, GG had a literal hole in his neck/throat – the doctors had to remove his voice box (the Adam’s apple region) completely and it left a gaping hole the size of a fifty cent coin smack in the centre of his throat, where the Adam’s apple was located. He couldn’t speak of course, and had barely any energy to walk. I will always fondly remember how he got out of bed when I came home from school, knotted a handkerchief around his throat with frail arms and made it kinda look like a scarf (so that he doesn’t scare people with the hole), took my hand with purpose, and without a word (obviously), he brought me out to the mama-shop at the opposite block downstairs to get my favourite ice-cream – Paddlepop rainbow. We did not speak, neither did we make much of any eye contact – I was oblivious to what was going on then. But he held my tiny hands and I held on to his big weathered hands, and as a grandfather-grandson pair, he took me out – proud as a peacock – as if it was the last time he was going to parade in the neighbourhood with his eldest grandchild.

I was eight-years-old when he passed away – too young to remember full details but old enough to remember how much he loved me.

I listened intently to AM as she shared with me anecdote after anecdote and when her voice started to get shaky, I looked up at her face and realised that tears had already welled in her eyes. I gave her an assuring pat on the back and I calmly said, “我也很想公公，不要哭了吧”. She said GG would be really proud to see the man that I have become. Actually, I thought he would be really proud to see all his 14 grandchildren grow up. He passed away too early. I would have kicked ass with GG, I know I would. Suddenly, I really miss him, though I never really knew him as well as he knew me. And these are things that you can’t change. It is true; when someone is in your heart, they are never truly gone. They can come back to you, even at unlikely times. You really can find something truly important in a minute.

And that minute with AM and GG was probably the best minute I’ve had since I arrived.