Living a life

Tired of being the good person.

You are nice, and considerate and try to make everyone feel important and loved and cared about...

... they are self-centred, angry, irritable, shout and...

Yeah... often they get their way and you don't.

the devil

Just the other day, my meow encouraged me to confess on all the bad things I’d ever done to my brothers as a kid and the recollections caused me to wonder if, as a child, I was a little demon sent to destroy earth.

OK, confession time, if only to return me a clearer conscience and a better chance at going to heaven.

I have 2 younger brothers, 2 years younger, and 5 years younger. We were wee kids. We invented fun games… we thought they were fun games… our parents banned them, at least, if they were to know about them, they would… we played them anyway… sigh… OK.. Here goes…

Regretful Incident No. 1
We had this game where we take turns being the blind man. One other person would hold the hand of the blind man and walk a great distance. E.g. from bus-stop to home. Being older, and therefore, more cunning, and less trusting, I often had my eyes only partially closed.

One day, my youngest brother was the blind man and I was the guardian. As a banned game, it was played on the silent and we walked behind our parents on our way to our granny’s. After a great many “step up, turn left, cross drain”, my mom suddenly turned to talk to me. Struck by guilty conscience, I totally forgot about my 4 year old “blind” brother and allowed him to walk hard into a wall! It was a very hard knock right on the forehead and he even bounced back a little.

As it was a game played on the stealth, he didn’t dare to cry. Being the chicken I was, I told my mom I didn’t know why he was so stupid to walk into a wall…

Regretful Incident No. 2
The family went to the shopping mall and parents had to do some serious (read: boring) shopping. 3 kids decided to hang around. Us 2 older kids decided that the escalator looked like a great toy to play with. Upon encouragement by the big sister, me, the toddler joined in pure innocence: the running up of a downward escalator.

However, in the excitement of the moment, the 2 older kids decided to do a race and the good sister, me, forgot all about the baby. Toddlers don’t have good balancing abilities. So it should not have been a surprise when he rolled down the escalator… and got all cut up. Being the chicken I was, I told my mom he ran by himself to play on the escalator and 2 of us did not manage to stop him in time.

There are a few more.. well, next time.

knitting episode 3

Sometimes I wonder if I will be able to knit when I’m really really old. I’m looking forward to old age when nobody can get me to do anything other than knitting. Ha ha. And it would be really sad to find out when I’m at a glorious 65 that my hands are too shaky or my eyes are too unfocused.

Anyhow, knitting episode 3…

I was primary 6, and had a music teacher Mdm Lim. She’s fifty and a knitter too. After our PSLE, we had too much time and she started to bring knitting into the classroom to get us girls started. Everybody tried, but most didn’t succeed. I introduced this teacher to the yarn shop from which my mom bought my 1st pair of knitting needles and she became its regular customer. When I was much older, I bumped into her once at the shop but she no longer remembers me.

Life got too interesting in Secondary school and for 3 years I stopped knitting altogether. Those were dark days. Would like to say I mixed with bad company… or that the other kids mixed with me, the bad company. Haha. Either way nobody around me was a knitter and it wasn’t cool to knit.

Junior College, I started attending lectures. Sometimes the lecturers were going too slow, sometimes their voices were just a boring monotone. In any case, I found myself dozing off everytime I hit the 10th minute. Couldn’t help it. Attention span was too short. Results started to tell a tale and it was simply too embarrassing to carry on like that. Amidst all the agony, inspiration struck. Knitting in lectures saved my future. It got me through the grueling 2 years, passed me my “A” levels and brought me steadily through University and Honors year in philosophy.

Without knitting all those rubbish that I eventually tore out, I couldn’t have read through all those long long philosophical papers on capital punishment, definition of ren, yi, li, Utilitarianism and books and books of references.

Everyday now, knitting serves as my tranquilizer. I carry a project around as an antidote to waiting and traveling “hypertension”. When I’m waiting for a shoot I knit, when I’m on the plane for hours, I knit. When I’m at the bus-stop, I knit. I’m exerting great self-control not to knit at traffic lights.

Heh heh… I should petition for my company to allow me to knit while waiting for the computer to start up and shut down.

Good night.

Knitting History II

Humble Beginnings

Saturday, I gave away one of my favorite pair of circular needles, a 4.5MM grey needle, to my younger brother’s girlfriend who wanted to learn knitting.

Which brings me back to knitting history episode 2.

With my pair of sharpened wooden chopsticks, I knitted hairbands after hairbands and had my first handicraft business! Due to my using leftover yarn from my mom’s collection of crochet yarn, selection was small and a girl classmate of mine bought a bright orange hairband from me while another bought a cream coloured one.

Before I could “expand” my business, my uncle’s 2nd wife (to date he’s been divorced twice and married again… must be quite a charming guy) with whom I’ve now lost contact, chanced upon me knitting… and taught me how to purl. (purr purr purr.. that should have given me a heads up on her opening a cat shelter in the later part of her life.)

Anyway, after learning to purl, life was very very different. I started doing little patterns like Christmas tree, boats etc. hairbands were just too little to satisfy my hunger.

Surprises surprises…
1 night, my mom left me waiting to see the Chinese doctor while she allegedly had some shopping to do. When she came back, she gave me a surprise: my mom bought me my first pair of bamboo knitting needles.. $3. Amazing how I remember all these prices… but to a kid who brought $0.60 to school everyday, any amount more than a dollar was a wow.

One fine afternoon, doing my primary 2 school homework, the aunt who taught me purling called and said she was downstairs and have a present for me. I went and nearly fainted at the sight of 7 balls of the most beautiful yarn… $5 per ball, totaling $35.

Till today, I can’t forget that gesture… and having lost touch with her I can’t do much to repay the kindness. She is a nice lady and my uncle was probably in the wrong anyway so what the family owes her, I cannot face alone. Ha ha. That’s why I give away needles and yarn. If I cannot return the kindness, I will perpetuate it.

As for my mom, oh well, she will get that cardigan she ordered… no matter how thin the yarn and how tedious the lace pattern.

global warming

Email sent to my NZ colleague:
Yesterday I went to my parents' for dinner. was a big crowd, with my uncle's family as well. the whole family had a long (half hour?) discussion on how global warming is melting the ice and how Singapore's going to disappear one day due to the water level rising.
Think my dad freaked the little cousins out. They vowed to use less paper, less plastic, to recycle when they can, etc etc.. haha. It's worrying isn't it? Maybe we can invent a way to transport all these water onto Mars so that we won't flood over. Before that happens, let's invest in a new Noah's Ark.

knitting history

Recently I've been teaching a couple of children how to knit. 1 of them my 8 year old cousin and another is a 10 year old child of a friend. to each, I gave a pair of spare needles and a ball of extra yarn.

Which brings me back to my first pair of knitting needles...

I first learnt how to knit from my maternal grandmother. She's actually not my real grandmother, but rather my grandfather's first wife, men being allowed to marry a couple of wives back then. She was a meticulous, smart, medicine shop heiress ex-communist feminine movement village group leader. She knew how to sew stuff on pillow cases and knit complicated sweaters. Too bad the only thing I managed to learn from her was knit (not even purl).

It was a once a month event that my parents would bring me to the huge bungalow house that my grandmother stayed with my uncle and his family. I had 4 cousins from that uncle and 2 of them girls and knitters. Between the 2 girls I learnt how to start a row of loops and my grandmother came in to teach me how to knit.

When I got home I was so intoxicated with the new knowledge that i searched high and low for some twig that i could substitute as knitting needles, not daring to ask my mom to buy me a pair.

That was how I started knitting my first hair band... with a pair of disposable chopsticks. I'm the lucky one... living in the right time and the right place where such commodities were easy to come by... snigger snigger.

too many projects...

... too little time!

Bought these meal replacement muesli bar things (very tasty!) and ended up having 1 whole hour of lunch with nothing to do! Heh heh...
went for a walk to the library at Taka and pulled out some books on knitting. WOW... regretted buying a $75 knitting book from Kinokuniya, our library really has a lot of stuff.

Salivating over the idea of knitting an afghan.. they are so pretty! K... have to finish up the $17.50 per ball shirt, my mom's little cardigan, grey and white big sweater before I can start getting my hands on those afghans!!! aaahhhh...

Went down to ArtFriends. They don't sell woolly, but they sell knitting needles and thin yarn, which has finally caught my attention after all these years.

Used to be impatient and can't handle thin yarn and thin needles and 20 stitch per inch knitting. My mom's cardigan requires just that and its so rare that she request for any knitting that i make myself start on it. Now i'm hooked... there are a lot more lacey stuff you can do with thin yarn!

oh oh.. more possibilities, more projects, not enough time!



somebody help me...