I've always been rather afraid of balloons, and now I know why.
much <3 to Don Hertzfeldt

It was my grandma's 9th death anniversary three days ago, and I spent it churning out a new abstract, introduction and conclusion to my thesis. She would've been proud to have known I'd done that, I think. After all, she was the one who brought me up with phrases like Eat while you eat, and play while you play. That's the way to be happy all day. Mealtimes were pretty long drawn out sessions while I'd read at the table and pick at my food. But my grandma was the patient kind, bringing her knitting along while she sat as the passenger of a train I'd drive out of an old bedframe. She'd amaze me by bouncing one of those plastic balls (I had a thing for coloured balls as a kid. My mom would leave me at the toy department while she went to try on her shoes, and when she came back, I'd still be mesmerised by the huge! array! of! coloured! balls!) for more than a hundred times at a go, while I could only manage three or four. But at least, I could count to a hundred.

My grandma told me nap-time stories each afternoon, each began with 一个婆婆，有一个乖孙... (There was once a grandma, who had a obedient granddaughter...). She'd fall asleep soon after, but I'd bounce around the bed and jump from the window grilles across to the bed. The spoilt selfish cretin I was, far from the sweet little girl the teachers encountered at school. Or the obedient girl in her stories, for that matter. It's amazing she never woke up to give me a good walloping, really. I would've deserved it. But when she did wake up, it would be late afternoon, and I'd accompany her to the garden to water the plants. She'd tend to 3 mango trees, hibiscus, a pomegranate plant, okra, roses, ixoras, plenty of leafy plants I never learnt the names of, and shitloads of orchids growing out of coconut husks she'd hung from a pergola in the garden.

A devout Christian, she'd head for prayer sessions over in church, and regularly volunteered her services transcribing sermons. I remember hearing the tapes, with some Chinese pastor's voice droning on and on about... well, religious stuff. She's rewind the tape, press play, stop, and repeat the process. She never used the pause button, for fear it might damage the tape somehow. Those were the days without mp3 recorders, or mini cassettes. Bless her - she'd lug the whole tape recorder, with extra C batteries with her for each sermon session. Looking back, I think those were times she was especially proud of her ability to read and write. An asian woman with a university degree in the 1940s was rare, or so I gather. She told me about recording sessions at Rediffusion, Singapore where she'd read stories in instalments, and I imagined countless kids and housewives tuning in weekly to find out how the story progressed. I was really proud of this particular achievement, though I'd be scared shitless if it was me who had to read and re-enact a story with all the voice-things going on on air. Ratings would plummet for sure, because I had inherited none of my grandmother's story-telling talent.

She was a regular crafter too, with ooodles of yarn (literal as well as figurative) and a lovely old Singer sewing machine that would whirr to life every now and then, usually some mornings just before lunch. My grandmother had a penchant for origami, saving old calendars that were printed on thicker stock to use for folding. While she waited outside for me to finish my piano lessons, she would occupy herself with step-by-step documentations for folding animals, or flowers. I wonder now where those records have gone. But I fear the worst.

Wish I'd learnt more from her when she was around. Her cooking was legendary - at a time when all I cared about were for hamburgers, I challenged my Chinese grandmother to make one, and by god, it was good! Homemade burgers are just different somehow. And homemade burgers made by loving grandmas are, well, just all the more heavenly.

It's creepy, but I still keep the cardigan she was wearing when she took her last breath at the hospital 9 years ago. It hangs from a plushed hanger in my cupboard at home. It was a sickening Wednesday morning I remember only too well. The 5am call from the hospital, the mad rush, the bad waves of nausea that hit me in the car, reaching the ward to find her freshly dead and my aunt crying. My grandfather's howl that followed was unbearable... And the car refusing to start in the hospital car park after that. The rest of the day went by in slow motion. How I managed to make it through the day, I don't know. And all the people who came to pay their respects that night, and the following night, and the next. And how I'd played the piano for the services, hating every minute of it and wishing those people would just go and leave us alone, just the immediate family to be with her. God I bloody hate how insensitively idiotic some people can get wake services.

That said, I have to concede, had I any other siblings, my relationship to my grandmother might have been a different one. It might have been much more diluted if any of those siblings had been male. My grandma was still a traditionalist at heart. She presided over my mom's childhood in a manner befitting of a bigoted tyrant. Age must've softened her. I was her favourite, at least, one of her favourites. If she's still alive today, I'd make sure I would be the favourite. Because I'm competitive that way.

The photo on the hearse, and on her tombstone was cropped from a photo that originally included me as a baby in her arms. It was the nicest photo they found, possibly because she was happiest when she was holding me. Perhaps they shouldn't have cropped me out of that photo. For a part of me surely died when she did.