sentimental softy

2007-09-02T20:52:00

Apparently when my mum traded in the Tercel for the Corolla I made her feel like a heel for selling an unofficial member of the family into slavery. She reminds me of this from time to time, but I can hardly be held accountable for my actions (I think) because I was only like 12 or something at the time, and it was years ago and I am pretty sure that the statute of limitations on that sort of thing has long since expired.

When grandma passed away this year, mum inherited her house in Gosford. It is a tiny fibro hut with poor insulation and is very cold in the winter. I wonder how grandma, grandpa, mum and my namesake uncle Graham all fit in there. Somehow it is still home to me, even though I only barely remember living there before I moved to America^[1]. One day I will inherit that property, I am certain.

Mum told me today that she and Don had decided to knock the house down (I know they don’t do this lightly) and put up a bungalow. Although I will be perversely sad to see the old house go, I am also quietly breathing a sigh of relief, because, as I told my mother, I don’t think I could bring myself to knock it down or sell it or anything when I inherit it.

Sentimental, I know.

I usually mark my first memories with coming to America, but I do have faint glimmering memories of that house from back then

Dinner with the rels

2006-08-19T02:45:00

Tonight I had dinner with some long lost relatives. Actually not really; I hadn't seen them in about a year and a half. I see family on my dad's side (aside from Dad, his wife and the kids) so seldom that when I do see them it feels as though they are long and lost. I’ve never lived so close to so much family. It’s nice.

Also: my dad bought a new car. It was about time that old clunker was way too small for the size of the family. It’s so weird to think of my dad driving a car with those modern curves. I instinctively think of his car as being a boxlike refugee from the 1980s. Apparently Lara misses the old car. Reminded me of how heart broken I was when my mum sold the Tercel. That was years ago.

It was actually even pretty nice to talk to my step mother tonight. She treated me like shit when she first started dating my dad (that was years ago), but I’ve tried not to hold a grudge against her, as I think that would just hurt my dad, and solve nothing.

She is ethnically Chinese, so I got to ask her intelligent questions about which dialect of Chinese that her family spoke (she is herself essentially a native English speaker), and where her family originates from. Before I started studying Chinese input methods I was aware that there were many subtle regional differences in Chinese languages and culture, but totally ignorant about what they might be. I’m still pretty ignorant, but at least I am learning. I tried to get them to show me Tristan and Lara’s middle names, which are Chinese, and so have Chinese characters that correctly represent them. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get my laptop out of simplified Chinese mode, and my step mother only recognizes the traditional variants.

I’m pretty sure that “David”^[1] is a jerk. He came by tell me that I was working on the wrong thing today and that the resolution on my monitor reminded me of the cruddy old days when X Windows was all the rage. Hello, if you didn’t give me shit to work on then the shit that I work on wouldn’t look like shit. Blah, whatever. Either it will get better, or I’ll be gone soon. I don’t much care which.

guy at work who offered me the position that no longer exists

The Twilight Report

sentimental softy

Dinner with the rels