(Click here for layout & credits.)

As the title suggests, I have a very mat salleh son in my household. Ivan is an English speaking kid. Sometimes I regret not speaking to him enough in our mother tongue ie. Cantonese and Hokkien. Even my mum who’s Hokkien never speaks to him in Hokkien, she also speaks to her children only in English. The only person who’s teaching Ivan something other than English is his Papa, who ONLY speaks to him in Cantonese. But that too does not help much, as Ivan is stuck with me most times.

These days, I try to speak to them in Chinese whenever I remember, but with my lousy memory, it kinda seems to be a lose-lose situation *heh!*. So knowing myself, I got my SILs to help. I told them to speak to Ivan in Cantonese and try to get him to repeat after them.

::::::::::: IVAN SAYS :::::::::::

At KTZ having red bean dessert…

SIL#1: Ivan, say hoong tau…
Mommy: Ivan, quick, say hoong tau…

Ivan: ……
Mommy : Ivan, say hoong tau laaa.

Ivan: Mommy, you want this? *showing his fist*
Mommy: *puzzled* What is that?

Ivan: Mommy, you want chop? *still showing his fist in my face*
Mommy: *stunned but amused, wondering if he is pissed because we’re forcing him to say hoong tau* Whaaaaat?!

Ivan: Mommy, you want CHOP?? *bashed my left arm with his little fist*
SIL#1 & Mommy: *laughs*
Mommy: Ivan. You cannot hoong (Cantonese slang: challenge) mommy ok??

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

I just hope that he’ll pick up at least some our many Cantonese and Hokkien conversations (and not only those used for swearing, mind you! *haha*). The funny thing is this: he knows we’re speaking Chinese and selectively refuses to repeat. Hrmmm…

choo choo! choo choo!

This year for reunion dinner we went to Ah Yat Abalone Forum Restaurant in Genting. Anticipating the crowd, we reached Genting around 5.00pm and booked a table for 5 adults and 2 children at 9.00pm (normally I would’ve kicked up a fuss regarding late dinners as the kids would be very grouchy by then). Since it is Chinese New Year, I thought I’d forego getting the kids to sleep early and moreover, we can always let them have fun with the rides and time would fly by fast enough. Additionally, hubs brought a suckling pig for his friend who works there to roast for us and they needed time to prepare it.

see my buck teeth?

Little did we expect people to flock to this particular restaurant and seeing that it’s reunion dinner, people seem to not eat and go as quickly. Everyone was waiting around the entrance and complaining that they are not getting their booked table on time. Understandably, we couldn’t expect the waiters to shoo people off when they are still eating or drinking. By the time we got to our table around 9.40pm, with all the waiting for food and all, we finally ended our dinner way past 12.00mn! SIL#1 jokingly told the waitress that we started eating last year (Lunar Calendar) right through to this year.. *LOL!*. Now that’s what we call bringing “eat, drink and be merry” from last year, all the way to this year!