My kids are only in primary school and they've already figured out I'm a dunce. Just because I have no idea how to do their homework. Modelling mystifies me.
My mother is an idiot simply because she wants me to be fat.
It all started a few months ago when undergoing a medical check-up, I was told I had high blood pressure. I couldn't believe it.
Now I was no Michael Phelps or even Michael Learns To Rock, but I did try to keep fit by working out and watching my diet in the most cursory manner I could muster.That blood pressure result shocked me out of my complacency. So I went on a decidedly less cursory health regiment - basically exercise more, eat less.
So even though weeks later, the follow-up medical revealed that I didn't have any hypertension at all, the good was done. I had shed a few kilograms.
My pants became loose. I could pull the waistband so far away from my tummy that I could pleasure myself effectively without unzipping.
Needless to say, I was happy with my weight loss.
And then my mother came to visit.
Roughly translated from Hainanese, this was her appalled reaction: "What happened to you?! Are you sick? You're so thin! You're not my son anymore!"
I tried to explain that I was actually fitter than I've ever been, except I didn't know the Hainanese word for "fitter".
"Look at your cousins Ricky and Chee Seng! They're fat, happy and successful! Why can't you be more like them?"
To my mother, "prosperous" is not merely a polite euphemism for "fat", but a literal equivalent.
The irony is that my mother herself is overweight and taking medication to lower her blood pressure. And my father died at age 58 from complications caused by his fatness and hypertension.
Knowing all this, she still wants me to be fat? And that is why my mother is an idiot.
Now if I can only get my kids to finish their rice...
- Published in The New Paper, 17 August 2008
