Haven't read Xiaxue's blog in a while and I just did. Her blog always sets me thinking about certain things. This time, it's about this 'The Secret' thing she was talking about. About how after watching a movie, she's a great believer about the Universe and stuff. I always thought of her as the skeptical sort and didn't think she'd believe in this kinda things. But I guess, good things happened to her so she had reasons to believe in it. I would love to believe in The Secret. But these sorta things scare me. It's just like believing in God but not really sure if such things exist? It's all about faith and thinking positively. It's really back to the 'God' question and I remembered her talking about having to have faith in these things. It's the same, no? I get scared thinking about it. It's like, if you don't believe in it, then what you would have is shit in your life. So the best (and only) option would be... To believe in it.

I will only get answers to these when I die. That's what I always tell myself about things I would never know. Like the Bermuda Triangle, if that really exists. Whether there really is heaven/hell, angels or not? Did Dinosaurs really walk the earth like whatever billion years ago? On smaller-scaled contexts, who killed the little girl, Madeleine McCann? And on a more personal scale, maybe I'd finally realise who my grandfather really was, since he's the one person in my life whom I've heard so many stories of, yet never met before.



And the most interesting person as well.

Coz guess what? He used to be a grand prix racer of his time. I find that quite amazing. Not even quite. It's these things you gotta dig/ or find out about and you'd probably have a whole new level of respect and admiration for your grandparents.



I freakin had to stealthily steal this from my dad's thumbdrive which was tucked away lol lol. Remembered seeing them stored in a thumbdrive somewhere.

My grandfather is obviously not one of the angmohs. Front row left.
The other 2 photos are of my grandfather's friend. Whom we visited in the UK last year, in April. He's the tallest man you see in the first photo.



Unlike my Yeye who died at the age of 52, he's still very much alive!



I know you can't see SHIT here. Since his back is facing us haha, but I think you get the sense of how old he is. Not the one on the right, coz that's my dad. But yeah, he's like 80 plus or something. A very quaint cosy house he has, as you can see, along the road deep in some forested area. London, Sussex.


We had lunch in his house, and he really is the most Chinese Angmoh I've ever known.


LOOK at all the Chinese things he own. If you can see, there's this small Goddess of Mercy statuette on the top left shelf, and the most obvious overhead Chinese board.

Oh, and to add on to that, he has a Chinese wife. Hahahahaha.


My family and I had a good afternoon chat with him and I listened to him as he spoke of kind words about my grandfather. He was the one person who knew a lot about him... having been in the same racing career as my grandfather was.

The one thing he said about my grandfather that stood out to me the most was, that he was an extremely loyal friend. So much so, that he was always taken advantage of. He never knew how to say no and would always carry out favours asked by his friends and lent them things he'd never get to see again. It was nice to know that both my grandfather and I shared the same virtue, loyalty. Only it wasn't much of a 'virtue' in his case.

My dad would always tell me, "If yeye were alive today, he would dote on you very much. Because he loves kids, ESPECIALLY girls". I know, a lil favouritism going on there, but how can any granddaughter resist not wanting to know a man like him more after hearing that!?

Even so... After having heard so much about this man, his career, his personality, I still feel like I don't know him... It's just the kind of thing that you need to meet this person, otherwise you don't actually really know the person you've heard so much of.

And what led to his untimely death was probably coz he was a heavy drinker. An alcoholic. Drinks for breakfast, day and night. And didn't eat properly. Problems must have surfaced in his life. And he lived almost like a hobo, sleeping in his car or his workshed. He fixed cars for foreigners then as well.

My own dad never lived with him as a boy. He didn't live with his mother as well. He lived with his grandmother.

Listening and learning to a whole lot of family history would then lead you to understand why your own parents are the way they are. Why they have certain traits and quirks. It's a whole chain of realisation. And it really does feel like an a-ha! moment. Like you finally understand your parents. Why they're like that. And maybe why they treat you the way they do. What they teach you. And why certain values hold so meaningful to them.

Like how I started to understand my own father better.


I've always wanted to have a grandparent RIGHT NOW. I became grandparent-less when I was primary 5. My parents became ORPHANS. LOL! Ok, not the time to joke. But having grandparents really does give the family more... depth? Like there's a past. Someone so bloody old to anchor the family. Have always wanted to communicate with an old person. And seeing an ah ma or ah gong holding on to a lil kid's hand would always make my heart flutter ever so lightly. Oh, it is true. What's more, your ability to communicate in dialects would be so freakin good. I'm a teochew, yet I know no teochew. In fact, I know more cantonese, well a little, coz of my grandma who used to live with me a decade ago.


Ok, what a sudden ranty post. I just wanted to do a short para, but look what I'd done? Haha. It's always the case! I always have ideas about stuff but end up with writer's block. And when I write about something, I'd go on about something else! Ah well. Doing this at such a time. K, gotta meet Alicia at 10.30am!