It was a revelation that dawned on me in the Lee household just yesterday.
Mrs Lee was in her usual hostess with the mostess mode, shuttling between her kitchen and our living room which looked like a brothel.
As usual, my mum had overdone it again with the Lunar New Year décor, going all out to paint the house red.
In one corner of the house sat a knee-length vase that supported dozens of pussy willows which fanned out in multiple directions.
In another corner was a short and stout pot of kumquat plants.
And of course, festive stickers that depict a pair of plump children - one boy and one girl with rosy cheeks - each holding up a scroll of auspicious greetings.
"Where is Barry Lee," my mum demanded. "He's late for dinner," she said, looking pointedly at the family clock which said 3.05pm.
"Better hurry. CNY monster stirring to life," I typed in the sibling group chat.
"Yes, the Queen is about to explode," my sis added.
"Just to be clear, which queen are we talking about, asked Barry, who can't be entirely blamed given that the title can be shared among my mum, sis and myself.
Every CNY, the Lee household gets very tense.
First, there is Mrs Lee who is always afraid that people would leave our home hungry.
So there's always overcooking to be done. Overfeeding to be carried out. And of course, overeating to be suffered.
That puts some stress on Mrs Lee.
And because every CNY is held at the Lees, my mum would take it upon herself to recreate the dishes of my late-grandmother because she needs to please the palates of her siblings - my aunts and uncles.
That too, is not an easy task.
Every year, Mrs Lee starts her reunion dinner preparation one week ahead of the event.
The high-grade mushroom needs to be soaked and then stewed over a pot for one week for its slow death.
And then there's lots of pre-chopping, pre-slicing and pre-marinating to be done.
A day before the grand dinner, my mum gets working on the soup.
And not just any soup, mind you.
Granny's Cantonese soup recipe which calls for boiling not on the gas cooker but over a small charcoal stove.
Yes, we are serious like that.
Every year, my mum would also make everyone's favourite dish for reunion dinner.
Sweet and sour pork (my brother's favourite), 'Dao Kok Lap' - deep fried cubed tofu, peanuts, char siew, radish and chopped long beans (my sis' favourite), deep fried chicken wing (my brother and sis' favourite), stir-fried prawn in tomato paste (my brother's favourite), braised sea cucumber with scallop (nobody's favourite - but my mum assumes everyone likes it), mushroom and chicken feet (my mum and aunt's favourite) abalone with lettuce (again, nobody's), and roast duck (the favourite of Uncle Weng, my mum's unmarried brother).
Why aren't there any of my favourites, you ask?
I love them all - anything Mrs Lee cooks, I love.
But back to the Lee household.
There was a lot of food prep, and I was deemed to be of no help whatsoever, so my duties were to stay out of the kitchen and watch Netflix.
My sis on the other hand, was the de facto health minister who would comment on the nutritional value of my mum's cooking, driving her nuts.
And so she was tasked to sit on the couch and watch Netflix with me.
At that moment, anyone who is gifted with the sight of cosmic energy would start seeing dark smoke consolidating and starting to swirl around the Lee household.
Every CNY, there was one duty I did best: Keeping up the festive spirits.
So I loaded up on whisky (Uncle Weng and my brother's favourite), red wine (for myself), beer (for Uncle Chee) and soft drinks for the ladies (my favourite aunt and my sis).
But the festive spirit was about to falter.
"Where is Barry?" my mum enunciated as she laid out her festive table cloth the colour of fresh blood - a grim reminder of my brother's fate if he still chose not to respond to mum's text.
"He's at work and on the way," I said, making stories up along the way.
My sis shot a look at me and rolled her eyes, but decided that she shouldn't be the one to stir the hornet's nest.
Meanwhile, a few streets down the road, the Ongs too are busy preparing for their yearly dinner.
Except that in Stanley's family, it's the dad who wears the apron.
Stanley's mum, the formidable Mrs Monica Ong, wears the pants in the family, calling the shots in the household.
My sex bunny friend Stanley is the total opposite of his mum - he doesn't wear pants.
Rather, he drops his pants at every opportunity.
But today is not the day to talk about such inauspicious stuff.
In Stanley's three-storey house, their reunion dinners are surprisingly - but intentionally - humble.
According to Stanley, his dad had once been very, very poor and although Mr Ong was a rags-to-riches case, the elderly Ong had never once forgotten his humble beginnings.
And so for the Ongs, reunion dinners are always made up of very simple dishes - stir fried vegetables with garlic, omelettes, lean chicken, as well as a small dish of dark soy sauce which Stanley's dad explains, represents extreme poverty (because when he was a child, on some days, dinner was really just rice and dark soy sauce with a dash of oil).
Oh, and there's also this preserved tofu cube dish soaked in vinegar which in Stanley's words, tastes like dick cheese.
But Stanley's family - who enjoys the occasional extravagant dinners outside - would take every CNY as an opportunity to be thankful. That they have food on the table, and to remind themselves that no matter how wealthy one is, all it matters is that the entire family sits down and eats a meal together, simple dishes or not.
Some 15km from Stanley and my house is the Changs.
The family of our dense friend Carl Chang.
For them, their reunion dinner tradition has always been steamboat.
Carl's mum, a career woman who has several fruit stalls to manage in various parts of Singapore, has absolutely no time to cook on a daily basis so her cooking skills are, you know, a bit rusty.
According to Carl', "my mum says no way are we going to have Filipino food for reunion dinner although our helper Aunty Rina is a great cook - so our best bet is steamboat."
So for Carl, his yearly dinner involves putting random things into the hotpot and into his mouth - an activity Stanley would be well acquainted with.
And every year after reunion dinner, it's become a habit that the three of us would meet.
It all started in the late 90s, when Carl, Stanley and I were sweet young things, all of 20 years old with smooth lean bods and so, so much virility.
The 20-year-old Stanley had famously said that we needed to maximise our youth and show off our brand new clothes so we had to party after reunion dinner.
Oh, those were the happy days.
I remember rushing through dinner and while my family and relatives were all gambling after a hearty meal, I would quickly change into my CNY best and scoot out of the house to meet Stanley and Carl, along with some other friends.
We would spend our night at Niche - a defunct gay club in a Chinatown shophouse which gays who grew up in the 90s would be familiar with.
There was a lot of dancing, screaming and drinking.
Of course, being young and energetic, we could all bounce back bright and early the next day to face our respective pesky relatives.
This year - as all of us hit the big four-O - Carl, Stanley and I stuck to our tradition of meeting up.
But instead of clubbing like we used to, the three of us opted for a more sensible outing: At Carl's home.
Stanley dug out his 2015 Rioja while I lugged a bottle of 2014 Amarone to Carl's.
Carl supplied CNY snacks and his cosy balcony and we chatted from 11.30pm all the way till 3.30am last night.
There and then, at Carl's place, we realised that we stuck to this tradition not because we were friends.
But because we are family.
Happy Lunar New Year, everyone.
---------------------------
Adam's stories are based on real life events and inspired by real people
No comments:
Post a Comment