Memories are made of this

One gift (or curse!) I think I will leave Alex and Sophie is this blog, where they can see their own lives and changes contemporaneously recorded. Maybe it's nice for them to look back on this (when they can actually read!) to see what their mom was thinking on various dates which have no significance to anyone but ourselves.

I spoke to my parents yesterday on the phone, and it seemed that my grand-father's funeral went well, and it was a good send-off. They spent time remembering him, and for the record my contribution was this - that I used to chase him around the house to read me a story. The carpet on the staircase was red and it was the same shade as my red potty (weird how you remember these details!) and the ground floor was marble cut in large square pieces. Ah Kong was usually wearing a white singlet and blue striped pajama pants. He sometimes used a typewriter on balcony on the second floor of the house.

On the ground floor were the 2 large fish tanks where Ah Kong kept his arowana fish. They were scary and ate live prey (usually tadpoles and baby frogs). There was one time I saw a baby frog in the tank swimming for its life, so I scooped it up in my hand and released it in the garden. Where it was promptly eaten by a bird. I think I was quite traumatized.

As he grew older and his hearing started becoming bad, I didn't speak to him as much anymore. I didn't call him on the phone as often as I wanted and it's something I sort of regret. I've resolved to call my parents and grandma more regularly. Actually the person whom I almost never phone is my brother, but then we tend to use facebook and email more often. He's pretty lousy at more traditional forms of communication - I've never received a letter from him, but partly also the time-difference makes phone calls harder. Maybe we'll visit him next year in the US, with the currency depreciation, it makes sense to travel.