Hungry Ghost Festival

Hungry Ghost Festival 2023 beckons to me. Not in a ghastly way but more like my ancestors (or so I assume) took advance leave two weeks before Ghost Fest and sent me a dream in a manner that sounds like a long-drawn complaint. “Hey, your kids know nothing about us, Chinese Ghosts, it is a disgrace. Are you doing something about this?”

Er…. Yes, the Chinese do have a long fine history of ghosts, proudly haunting me since 1978. I grew up freaking out over shadows in curtains and too scared to put my feet in places my eyes cannot see (for example below a seat) after watching 鬼拉脚. This is why I sit cross legged on the floor all the time. It is a miracle I picked up diving.

M&M are certainly sheltered. Never been scared by the known, unknown, themselves, me. I have failed as a parent. Project Hungry Ghost we must embark for the whole month. 

1.     1. Watch Chinese ghost movies. 僵尸道长，开心鬼，画皮，倩女幽魂

2.     2. Visit Haw Par Villa - full of 妖 not enough鬼

LX insisted that spirits and ghosts are in the same genre. Dude… what if the spirit does not identify as a ghost? This is 2023 and we got to respect their feelings.

3.     3. Know your Chinese Ghosts.

I asked around what 牛头马面 and 黑白无常 do. Everyone assumes they have overlapping job scope of bringing newly deceased to be sorted. See? Everyone needs a refresher on your ghost folklore. 

16 Aug 2023, Wednesday - The Gates of Hell opens.

The restless, frustrated ghosts, unsatisfied in their living life are all released from Hell for a one months’ break. Technically, everyone is out… 

Introducing the few Key Ghosts - Character Creation

Not going to develop 牛头马面 further because horse and cow are too hard to draw. Started on Sadako holding a video tape then realized she is Japanese, which is a NO NO. 

Gates of Hell drawn. 

Lily said it looked too 仙门 rather than 鬼门. 

Lx complaint “Do something about the pink! Your door hinges are falling off! You drew the door too heavy!! Why no imagery of death? Why no overhanging eaves on your walls? Why….”

Fine Fine. I add more details. Morgan! Get some funeral lanterns done please! Door hinges is a user problem, mad rush of ghosts bursting out, do you expect the hinges to hold?

“Aiyah, lanterns should be hung with metal chains!!! Where is the fire? Need flames. Hell is all about fire. Make it burn!”

Ok fire. This is just a backdrop guys, do we need to go into so many details? With this amount of effort, I need to recycle this backdrop for lantern festival next month then Halloween next next month. 

I learnt from M&M today not to judge a ghost from their looks. Side track, both their ghosts are simply disappointing white bedsheets, totally non-Chinese. Sigh. Formal education on Chinese Ghosts features absolutely necessary. So. Turns out that Megan’s happy looking ghost is bad, she claims. Need to go to 18 levels of Hell. While Morgi’s totally out of scale, evil looking ghost is “Mum, he is a good ghost, heaven please”.

Morgi’s ghost then gets channel to Grandma Mengpo to drink the soup of forgetfulness so that he can reincarnate into the next life without the burdens of his current life. He is ready to cross Naihe bridge to the living realm. 

“To Heaven?”

Gee… not quite sure. Din prep anything on heaven but don’t think one can be rebirthed into heaven. Let’s just stick to the plot, ok?

Pick a piece to discover what animal you will be rebirth into! 

Mimi, Morgi and me are all coming back as humans! Hurray. Meggie is coming back as a pig. Hahahah. Do more good, daughter, do more good. 

Jiang Shi

If a human dies but refuses to die, he becomes a 僵尸 (Yippe, my fav!!!), hopping around to suck the qi of the living. Only a Taoist priest can stop a Jiang Shi! 

Education on Bagua. 

The Art of drawing talisman using chicken blood, or your own blood is a must. First the action of biting your finger then in one swift stroke, draw a talisman to protect yourself. 

Megan, you be a priest and Morgan you be a Jiangshi running wild. Now do your job Megan! Despite reminders that Jiangshi can only hop because they are stiff corpses, M&M just ran wild trying to escape being immobilised by the talisman. A mad ending to a whole month of ghosts. 

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

June Holidays

June Holidays is over. 

Not an exaggeration to say M&M each clock 10 hours of screen time daily. We squeeze in some leftover hours for other activities like:  

 

Patching

Register Mother and Daughter in a “How to Patch Holes in your Clothes” workshop at the National Gallery. Thought this is like Kintsugi, a broken object can be repaired with Gold and make useful again. Celebrate the cracks! Reality is more banal. Workshop is exactly what the name suggests, the practical skill of mending holes in garments instead of throwing them away! Oh… somehow this feels less cultural. But hey, we have no idea how to patch holes so let's do it. 

M&M wear hand me downs and my average garment is 10 years old so plenty of holes everywhere to patch. From where Megan is seated, she can even see a hole in the groin area of the jeans I am wearing!!! Is it bad? … Yah… You helping me mend it at home right?

 

Little do we realize, my jeans have two holes!!! 

It is a warm feeling walking by her room to see her mending my jeans. A typical scene should be this: 

Loving mother straining her eyes by the candlelight to mend clothes for her kids. Well done YY, I have completely reverse the scene to daughter laboring for the modesty of her mum. With Love. But tsk tsk, Megan sews really well in the class but obviously all skills forgotten once put into practical use at home. Refer the case to grandmaster and after inspecting the sewing skills of her granddaughter, declares this garment not worth saving.

Oh mum come on! Jeans are supposed to last forever and this is my third pair already!!! FINE, she says, she will take home to machine the whole area… In the meantime, buy a fourth pair! 

 

Staycation

Bought tickets for the Immersive Van Gogh Exhibition. Ally is gonna punch me for saying the exhibition is ok only… not spectacular…. But, anything to keep kids screen time within 300hrs a month. 

Ken tags a Staycation to the exhibition since “we travel such a long way to Sentosa already”.

Best Best Best pool fun ever. 

Universal Studios. Not easy to cater to a teenager who is starting to enjoy cool rides and a Morgan who needs to learn how to scream out loud in fear. I am too old. I cannot scream so I just cry. 

 

端午节 

Coax Mimi to make zongzi. 

Shopping with her for ingredients is super fun, especially seeing her call the old vegetable stall uncle “小弟”. Classic Act of the Grandmaster. 

So many things to prepare. She mulls over buying cotton strings vs twine as we are not skilled enough for bamboo strings. That is before she finds left over raffia in my storeroom. This woman hates nothing more than left over bits and pieces of stuff tucked in corners of the house. “If I buy new strings, you are going to have 2 ball of leftovers strings for the next 10 years! And what is this 7cm bit of ribbon doing here?

So raffia becomes the wrong but eventual string of choice. Mimi spends a dedicated day of boiling them to rid the chemicals and washing every blade of bamboo leaves (which allegedly is done by Morgi – so hard to believe).

Fast forward to THE WRAPPING DAY. Kids are excited. 

 

Megan, being her 2^nd or 3^rd time wrapping zongzi, is already a skilled labor.  Morgi does not need the figuring out process for his first time and goes straight for it. With courage and little hesitation, he does amazingly well, except for tying.  Amazingly well until… eating time when Ken bite into a zongzi with 90% rice. Where is the meat? Morgi did you wrap meat inside???

M&M make origami zongzi to distribute.

Meggie goes on a Dragonboat rowing trip during school camp! Morgi and me are totally left out so we can only draw with imagination. 

 

Then suddenly, June Holidays is over. Morgi says "Mummy, I am so depressed". I know he is certainly not referring to all the fun activities that are ending but that the internet hours are going to be severely cut! Back to the grind children! 

Family issues

Winds of change comes faster than my lousy mood. Was complaining about rain in the last blog and the latest trend is Hot HOT HOT. Natural air is so bloody hot that merely stepping into an aircon car or a mall send me sneezing. 

 

SEE SEE SEE! Wearing sleeveless and sneezing again! Ken concludes I sneeze when my pits are unprotected by tank tops. “Cover up! Your pits are catching a cold!” Impressive observations and such indisputable correlation causation… I like. 

My husband is indeed a person of Science. He even conducts a scientific experiment to prove his hypothesis by blowing on my pits and command “SNEEZE!”. Unfortunately, my pits dun understand English. Chinese Ed, as my mum will say…

 

I like to believe I am a person of Science too. For example, these days my feet feel heavier, am totally struggling to lift them up to walk to office. I sense Mother Earth evolving. This freak weather even exerts greater gravitational pull than usual. I share my exciting observation with Dotter. Was roasted.

 

“Mum, I think it is more likely the increase in your mass causing greater Pull of Attraction.” 

 

Burn. Teenagers can be so mean. M hurt. 

 

Ken dismisses the blatant misinformation by explaining that “gravitational pull is constant, does not increase with mass. She is using bad science to body shame you!”. Damn it… who to believe? Meggi complains that my Architecture degree is not helping her at all in school science, BUT she is not asking that Chemistry grad in the house either!!! Chain of suspicion and lack of trust… we need to re-visit some old family issues.

Studious and inquisitive me, borrow tons of library books, turn on the aircon, notebook at my side then struggle to understand Newton or the whole logic of it all, diagrams and sentences. Eventually I yearn under pressure of late charges on every single Physics library book, clocking at a whooping S$9.70!!!! 

Honestly my feeble brain can only understand Youtube videos like “computer scientist explains Zero Knowledge Proof in 5 levels of Difficulties”…. I mean I can understand up to the first 30%.... hahaha… Google and ChatGBT, you are not helping much!!

Da most beautiful face in Chinese period drama is on Netflix again… invite Dotter to enjoy the view together but watching period dramas with her is so exasperating. “Why he cant’t just tell her he likes her?!!... everyone can see through this disguise… why all the old people have so much hair?... why she….”

 

Wait a minute… old people with so much hair … yah you are right!

Ancient Chinese men figured something out… Is the formula lost? 

Because one day I reach home and puke on Kenneth’s new look. Call me Oppa. Sorry, no, Cannot look at you for the next two weeks. Why oh why? Gives it more oomph, hide the receding hairline… Yahhhhh… But so oomph that neighbor's son notice woooh and come asking where he gets his Korean perm done. Wah…

I shall spend more time with people who make me feel better about myself – MORGI, WHERE ARE YOU???

He is in the world of CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS now. And he has his first crush – Erica Wang. It is quite a serious crush because mention the name and he blushes and shy away. Then he starts asking me for her phone number. Who is she? New Chinese neighbor?  What do you want to tell her? … “I want to tell her she looks good. Her hair looks good”. 

Oh… there you are. Erica Wang…. Nice Hair…

 

And yes, such beautiful mother and son bonding session will suddenly see the other nice hair person wedge himself right in the middle. He declares himself CAPTAIN UNDERSTAND with the snap of the fingers. Tra-lah-laaah! 投其所好也不用做到那么low吧。

 In other news, I have nothing else to do in my life so I eat eat eat…Captain Understand too.