I’ll be away, for two and a half days. (:
Seaside bungalow with my bestest SMU friends, and my girls at National Service Resort and Country Club for three days.
Aplenty of stuff to handle still, despite it being 3.02 A.M. in the morning. Managed to finish the list for tomorrow (tonight?) night’s barbecue, and realized that the amount of food we’d be getting far supercedes the budget. Oh, and do we count guys as one person or two? (Fellows have voracious appetites, don’t they?)
And I finally got myself off my lazy arse to actually pack.
In the past, I’d be all excited that I’m heading elsewhere other than staying at home for once, such that even bag-packing can be so fascinating. Well, all that seems to have fizzled out now and I’m beginning to leave things like this till the last minute.
Hoping to squeeze quite a bit of things during the next three days - get some exercise (make that PLENTY of exercise), get some sun, and spend loads of quality time with my girls.
And I swear those people at Wordpress have a vendetta against me. Exactly two days after I upgraded this weblog to 2.5, they had to release 2.5.1, which means I have to upgrade again.
Not that it’s a bad thing. But well, upgrading is rather time consuming although it’s a small price to pay for better security.
Ah, anyway.
One last thing that is waaaay overdue - was tagged for some meme more than a week ago (gasp!) by Daniela, so here goes.
A case of misplaced gender identity?Apparently, it was my relatives’ first time seeing my new haircut - even though it’s been more than a week since I decided to chop my trademark ponytail off. (And regretted the decision since.)
Aunty Olive walked into the room (where I happened to be frantically working on a report), saw my hair and exclaimed excitedly, “Brenda! Your hair! I like it! It looks so funky!”
Exclamation is an understatement. She was practically squealing.
I simply raised an eyebrow at her, mainly because well - I wasn’t exactly fond of my hair at the moment and all I wanted it to do was to regrow at top speed, pronto. So that I can tie a proper ponytail again and get it out of my neck.
I doubt she noticed my expression, as she was out of the room in an instant, announcing to everyone else in the house that “Brenda cut her hair, it’s so short now!” like as if they didn’t notice it before.
I heard the murmurs of my relatives from the room I was in, most of them expressing their approval at my new hair, commenting that I looked nice and well, full of spunk.
My mother’s voice was distinct in the background, though - I don’t like my daughter with short hair.
So typically her. So critical over my looks.
But that aside.
“What made her decide to cut her hair all of a sudden?” Aunty Olive was curious. Apparently, the conversation in the next room about my hair was still going strong.
“Well, she said she wanted to look manly,” muttered my mum, directly quoting what I’ve said to my hairdresser when she asked me the same question on Haircut Day.
Well, I was just joking, wasn’t I?
There was a sudden silence, apart from the sound of mahjong tiles hitting the table.
———
Decided to play with my visiting aunt’s (she lives in Canada and will be Singapore until end March) mind this evening.
She’s the only Chinese speaking aunt I have, and often likes to refer to cousin David and I by endearment terms in Chinese such as 小弟弟 and 小妹妹. (Translation: Little boy and Little Girl). Unfortunately, David and I weren’t quite used to it since we were usually referred to by the aunts by our names, and were growing more irritable by the second.
That was then I decided to be a little cheeky.
“Don’t call me 小妹妹 (little girl). Call me 小弟弟 (little boy) instead,” I quipped.
That was when my visiting aunt looked at me in horror.
“Why would I call you 小弟弟? 小弟弟 will be him (gesticulating wildly towards David). You should be a 小妹妹,” she exclaimed.
“Well, not so. Don’t you think I look handsome?” I grinned at her with a wink.
At that moment, the expression on my aunt’s face is just indescribable - it was a mixture of horror, bewilderment, confusion and to a small extent, amusement. David, on the other hand, already had his hand over his mouth and was trying his best not to reel with laughter.
Seriously, my relatives are sooooooooo gullible.
Ignorance, ignorance, ignorance.Considering the lack of English education foodstall handlers have, trying to talk to them is a real pain in the ass.
Even more so when you have a food allergy, and you have to attempt explaining to that auntie behind the stall why you don’t want this or that in your food while she stares at you with a perplexed (and annoyed) expression, as if implying that I’m a picky person.
Take today for instance.
Lotus Thai Viet - was the stall’s name, at the food court at the top floor of Tampines Mall. Yours truly was craving fried olive rice, and thus placed my order with this blank-faced auntie at the stall.
I watched her garnish the dishes ordered before me, and noticed that she had sprinkled crushed peanuts over most dishes. That was when alarm bells started ringing in my head, and I quickly informed her that when she came to my olive rice, I strictly did not want any crushed peanuts over it.
No response from her.
I reiterated everything in Chinese and she seemed to understand - well, at least that’s what I thought. Because she nodded.
Eight minutes later (which is quite a long wait for a food court), my olive rice finally emerged from the kitchen behind the stall and said auntie began garnishing it. Before I could react, she had flung an entire spoonful of crushed peanuts all over my food.
That was when I yelped.
“Noooo, didn’t I tell you not to add any peanuts?”
She stared at me, blankly. I began to hastily convert everything into Chinese.
”
我不能吃 err … peanuts! I have an allergy to peanuts! 我对 peanuts 有过敏!”
It’s rather obvious that this auntie was clueless about food allergies, since she only seemed to understand the first part of my sentence where I mentioned that I did not want peanuts. She then proceeded to scrape the peanuts off the top layer of my rice using the same spoon which was previously dipped into the bowl of crushed peanuts which still had peanut crumbs all over it. There was still quite a lot of peanuts (which was more difficult to remove) on the rice when she was done.
“Nah. Like that, can or not?”
I felt like screaming. I have a fucking allergy! Didn’t she understand? Is she like, dense or what? Little or a lot, it does not change the fact that the damn rice still has peanuts on it.
“I HAVE AN ALLERGY, DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND? 我吃 peanuts 会死的!”
(The last sentence translates into: I might die if I ingest peanuts.)
Another lady who happened to be standing next to me at the foodstall understood my plight and she too, tried to (unsuccessfully) convey the seriousness of the situation to the still bewildered looking foodstall auntie who was still waving my plate around in mid-air (yes, with peanuts intact).
We spoke to her in English, to no avail. We tried translating everything in Chinese and still, we couldn’t wipe out that blank look on her face.
Is a food allergy such a difficult concept to understand?
It’s hard to miss considering how there is much emphasis on allergies splattered all over the newspapers these days. Ignorant fool.
The good Samaritan lady then offered to take my original plate of peanut-contaminated olive rice on my behalf since she intended to place an order for that as well, while she ordered the foodstall auntie to whip up another plate for me, peanut-free this time.
I was too flustered to thank her properly. Can’t remember her face either, since my head was seriously pounding at the ridiculousness of the situation (and the foodstall auntie’s stupidity) to concentrate on anything. But whoever she is, wherever she may be - a middle aged, medium height lady with short curly hair, wears spectacles and a white t-shirt, thank you so very much for your help.
Seriously, I am not the only individual with multiple food-allergies (especially peanuts) in Singapore - and I sympathise with any other person with the same condition as me.
Likewise, I doubt she’s the only ignorant idiot in the whole island of Singapore - there’s bound to be many more, which means that everyone else with multiple allergies are at risk of bumping into idiots like her (and struggle to make him/her understand how potentially severe food allergies are).
Allergies are not meant to be taken lightly. Even a couple of peanut crumbs is liable to set anyone with a more severe form of peanut allergy into a full-blown anaphylaxis shock.
I’m still fuming over the whole incident even now.
Ignorance is not an excuse. If someone suffered or dies from an allergy shock due to your negligence (i.e. your lack of knowledge about allergies, or any other medical condition that has food restrictions), it doesn’t change the fact that you’re still answerable and liable to the affected and his/her family members.