La Familia

As happens every Chinese New Year, I’ve seen every relative within driving distance.
This year’s reunions have skated quite close to the line marked ‘overkill.’ Rainy weather, food poisoning and an unusually patient sister have conspired to turn my house into The Truckstop for Family Solidarity, with rellies arriving one family at a time instead of all at once.

Any more Family Togetherness and I’ma slash my wrists with Mom’s kitchen knife.
As such, I won’t bore you with re-runs of 53 Reasons Why I Love My Big Happy Family.

But I will tell you who makes up the cast, some of whom have moved on to that big TV show in the sky.

• Someone who’s won a car.
• A gang leader. He had a territory and henchmen and cronies.
• A mother who’s buried four of her children.
• A guy with three thumbs.
• A guy with only one ear, the other one completely severed in a car crash.
• An ex-call girl. Quite a few doctors said her former profession was the reason why she can never ever have children. She now has a son.
• A guy who taught math to his math teacher, who then proceeded to teach it to his students and had to be corrected.
• Six kids born out of wedlock.
• A guy who’s been carjacked twice and kidnapped once.
• A man who was beaten because he was accused of being a Japanese sympathizer during the occupation. He never recovered but hung on for more than a year, shitting blood every other day til he died.
• A premature baby, so tiny she spent two weeks in an incubator and then a month in a small drawer. The cot wouldn’t arrive for a while because there was no money.
• Someone who’d had a threesome.
• A guy who’s had the shittiest luck with maids. One kept stealing his wife’s knickers and writing ‘I love him’ on the crotch, the other somehow managed to do some light prostitution when he wasn’t home.
• Someone who learnt Dutch one week, and moved to Amsterdam the next.
• Someone who used to – briefly - sell pirated movies on VCD.
• A guy who used to work at Disney illegally for eight years.
• Someone who’s jumped on my stomach, bruising it and rupturing my bladder.
• A guy whom I’ve punched in the stomach.
• Someone whom I’ve left waiting in the rain for a full two hours because she said my house was ‘like a pigeon hole.’ I told her there was no space for her and her ‘bitching’ family. My dad told me it was wrong to do that - say ‘bitching.’
• Someone whom I caught stealing money and kept quiet about it.
• Someone who has a mail-order bride. Ok, maybe not mail-order. But definitely one in a series of options. Honestly, she’s too good for him.
• Someone who’s eaten dog meat.

Oh, they're not bad.
They’re family.