Family.

So far, I’ve seen 2 types of family besides mine.

Family No.1-

Family of the friend of mine. Her parent does not understand her at all. They got two daughters. One of them is a bit handicap where her left eye is fake, which is her younger sister. She came from a quite rich family but unhappy family. The only person that is very dear to her is her grandfather who give her much much money to spend with no question ask. But as she predicted, after her grandpa’s death, her life won’t be that pleasant anymore. She used to came to our house very often and usually overnight here for many days.

My mom is fine with it since she is also a good girl and not the wild type. She doesn’t like to go home as you know. Okay now her parents. His father is a part time lecturer while her mother is um…not sure…all I know is a boss. Her mother is the worst mother I ever seen on Earth. Why? Accuse her daughter for being ‘broke back’ while she isn’t. I still remember what she quoted when she came to our house and complain about her ‘naughty’ daughter.

“If I have the time, I would like to work all day long rather than being at home.”

What the heck she mean? It means that she don’t want to take care of her children and work work work. All the time is money money money to her. All she can do is give her daughter money and buy what they want. Another one is when her sister bully her, her mom just ignore but when she bully her sister and one word ‘Mom’ from her sister will get her into deep trouble all right. Once, her sister bit(bite) her, and she complain to her mom, and guess what she said,

“Is none of my business. Take care of the problem yourself.”

Of course she don’t dare to bite her sister back or she will be in deep trouble. So she call my sis up and well… fetched her here. Now an example of what she did to her sister. Once they were arguing about TV where she wanna watch a movie while her sis wanna watch Disney Channel. Her sis just complain to her mom and she has to let her sis to watch the Disney Channel and get scolded badly too. Now what the heck does the quote, “Is none of my business” now eh? Now she came less often cause of a BIG argument took place in our house. And worst, her mom refuses to listen to others and like to blame others for what happened to her daughter(s). She blame my mother for letting her daughter stay at our house and ‘corrupting’ her and ‘converted’ her into ‘broke back’. What the heck? She can blame anyone and nearly everyone but not my mom nor family (except my dad) for what we did not do. Me and both my sis was so furious with what she said and eventually shouted her.

What she did caused her daughter to runaway from home and was lost don’t know go where for 2 days. From that incident onward, she dare not phone my sis anymore nor my mom cause well, I think she herself know that we are furious. My friend’s father is more or less the same. She don’t care about them either and well, lecturer lectures right? That’s what he did. All he does is talk and talk.

Family No.2-

This also refers to a friend of mine’s family. She came from a rich rich family and can be considered as millionaire. Big bungalow, big cars and big land. Her dad is very um…ego and very bold and his rule is simple, ‘You obey me and you can get what you want.’ So, friend and her two other siblings never disobey their father. Why? She’s quite out going while her brother is a bit like me. Game game and more game. He’s my very good friend too. Know them since I was very small. Way very small. She is the eldest followed by brother then sister again.

Her youngest sister is the most lucky one. Cause her father’s ‘Golden Child’ (direct translation from Hockien) is her. Until now she is standard six and her father just scold and beat her once. Back to the elder sister. Once she disobey her father and she was not allowed to eat, watch tv or do anything for a total 24 hours. Even her mom have to obey her father.

Then my good friend. Well I think you guessed it. Was disallowed to play games for some days and well, weep weep and weep. His father is quite abusive too. Last time, he used to abuse his wife. Beat and slap. No he ain’t no drink beer nor take drugs. Just ego, plain ego. But now he’s a better person. On the olden days, he’s very furious and doesn’t smile. I don’t even dare to talk to him. But nowadays, he’s a better person. Take jokes and tends to make fun of others too. And he never abuse his wife anymore too. But the golden rule is still there. Once, I ask my friend why she don’t dare to rebel once in a while. And this is her reply.
“Oh no no no. I rebelled once before and I was (like what I mentioned in the upper part). Besides, I have all the things I want and everything is perfect for me. So why rebel?”

My family-

To me, I consider as a perfect family if I have a better father. We siblings too tend to argue but now I am the youngest, 16 and my sis are both 19 and 20 yrs old. So less fights and arguments of course. Three of us have the common thing in family. Respect mom like superhero and dislike dad like he’s ‘Mr. I Know Everything” MIKE for short. I came from a moderate family. During my grandfather’s generation, we are from a rich rich family that came from Fukien. Our whole family migrated here because of something I don’t know what but we are not the ‘slaves’. We (my ancestors) came here using their own pocket money during the British Occupation.

Some conflict happened and my gramps was not one of them to obtaining parts of the ‘treasure’. My gramps has 15 siblings including himself. He’s the eldest male in the family and yeah, I know I have a BIG BIG family. Until now, me myself never even met some of my own relatives before. And there’s a saying that if our whole Oung family gather together and try to take a family photo, we can’t even fit in. Another one is that, whenever we see someone with the surname Oung, it must be one of ourselves. It is really rare to see people with the surname Oung. And for your information that occurs many times before, when one of us met another unknown person with surname Oung, it was surely our own relative. Okay back to my story. There’s a conflict happened and my gramps was not one of them to get the things like antiques, lands, golds and money from my great gramps.

Therefore, he started anew and viola, a moderate family. Now my father. He is a very bold person too. What he said is always correct and never wrong. And from that, we (siblings) always ended up arguing with him. We love our mother very much but not our father. But well, since my family is a mixture of Taoist, Confucius and Buddhist, we the child are not allowed to argue with the elders and therefore, we ended up losing. He will always say ‘wa…big d hor, can take care of yourself d hor, have wings d la. Bo dua bo seh’. Means that we cannot or I shall say musnt and never fight with parents. Parents is always right. And well, like I say before I am agnostic therefore those are rubbish to me. One last thing, ‘Think first before you say and you do.’ Cheuh… crap. He doesn’t even take this concept in his mind. He doesn’t even think first before he do and when he talk. Is just like what I told him before, don’t be like the crab ask his son to walk straight. Is a direct translation from a Malay proverb.

9 th October 2006.
1932 Hrs.

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