;Saturday, August 9, 2008
I've been waiting a long time to write this. I promised Greg, like last month, I would write an article for him. But I've been waiting, waiting for something to happen so I can feed off the emotions and channel it into here. I think having acupuncture needles stuck into the side of your face counts.
To put it simply, and I swear to you I'm not lying, Traditional Chinese Medicine, is a pain to the left testicle (not that they ever attacked that body part yet). As I'm typing this, my face looks like a victim of a shark attack and dusted up with white paint spray.
Okay. Let's settle a few matters first. My name is Ming. Some of you know me, some don't. Some know that I have Traditional Chinese Parents, some don't. So to those who have heard me rant about my parents and rant bits of random material about my parents, this will sound familiar.
I have Traditional Chinese Parents (TCP), and this naturally means (unlikely as it sounds) that I have a Chinese upbringing. Or at least I must claim I have. I was born in England (I kid you not). How much Chinese can I pick up from the supermarket lady, that dried up town librarian who looks like she walked right of the set of The Mummy, and Carol Voderman from Countdown? Up till I was 5, the only Chinese I knew was my name.
But still, things were manageable. Then, it just got to the point where both of them suddenly got into this bizarre obsession for Traditional Chinese Medicine. Like - I don't know, 4 years back? Things, I do not need to say this, have never been the same since. I can't even think where to begin.
I guess the good thing about having parents who are versed in Traditional Chinese Medicine is that the medication is free, and you don't need to spend hours queuing up in some polyclinic (which, for some reason, can afford millions of chairs but not a single table to do work on). The bad thing about it however is that their medication never works. And to put salt on the wound, I have no M.C. to show teachers. I've been penalized for that just a bit too often.
I know, it's death being in my family. Pity me. I've become my dad and mum's little biology project. Yay.
To start things off, let's talk about my Dad. My Dad did a PhD (Pig-humping Degree) on Computer Science and always tells me he originated the concept of a SuperComputer.
My dad is also a self-righteous little prick.
and um... yeah, I think that pretty much says it all.
The only good thing of having a dad who's good with computers is that he helped me do all my C++ and html crap last year for InfoComm. (I can't handle technology at all, that I will talk about later.) He is eternally proud of that fact that he produces exceptionally bright children because he himself is exceptionally bright, yet he fails to see that his exceptionally bright children think that he is as bright as a brain tumour.
He's obsessed with Traditional Chinese Medicine. The bad thing about it is that he's not very good. He's convinced he is, and neither my mother or I have been able to talk him out of it. Believe me I tried. It is stuck firmly his head that he is a brilliant Traditional Chinese Doctor, despite the fact he failed more than just a few exams. Once for his mid-year exams, he spent the afternoon practising acupuncture on my back and lower limbs. That was a Sunday. Conveniently, I also had to hand in my history essay the next day. It's hard to type at a computer when you have 12-inch needles stuck to your thighs and you discover that the whole leg's paralysed.
Then you discover, you need to go to the toilet. I can't quite describe the experience, because it was just too disgusting - but I'll try. All I have to say is that, well with needles rising out of your limbs and a half-asleep leg, you're not real specific. Since then, I have been always very careful to lock my room after I've taken dinner. Even if he's home already when I haven't eaten, I still have emergency sandwiches buried somewhere inside the piano.
My mother extends her healing ability to the kitchen. My mother is one of the worst cooks ever. She was passable before her TCM period. Then, she just cooked separately: proper (as far as she could manage it) dinner for us, and dinner for herself. (Her dinner exclusively consists of vegetables and I suspect she plans to go on this diet until she gets pollinated.) After she made the decision to commit the rest of her life to herbs, you got screwed up crap for dinner. She once was fascinated by Turmeric powder, because she watched on the news that they could prevent cancer. This meant that ALL OUR FOOD had to be seasoned with Turmeric powder. For those of you who don't know what Turmeric powder is, it's this:
It, simply put, is a yellow powdery substance that tastes like weedkiller (not that I ever tried it). And - I swear this is true- she put it with everything. Everything. From fish, to chicken, to pork - Once she even put it with porridge. I had that for Saturday a couple of years ago. I tried it. It tasted like weedkiller that just gotten lumpy. It was uneatable. I tried putting soya sauce in it, I could still taste the Turmeric through the saltiness. And by then after spooning soya sauce into it so many times, it looked like a bowl of steamed diarrhea. Once you think that, it's not possible to eat it. You can't even look at it. I sure didn't, I emptied into the toilet bowl when she wasn't looking. I'm glad I did.
My parents don't talk to each other that often, my father works late, my mother has a busy lifestyle outside picking herbs and mushrooms in the mountain forests. The only time they really get together in the same room is (of course) when Da Chang Jin comes up on the television. That's the only time I know it's safe to eat outside my room with them there. I'll be at the dining table with murderous fates for them rushing through my head. Since the series stopped, they've found another programme to watch and dinner is way before that so I've stopped conjuring vicious thoughts for them although I occasionally toy with the idea of signing my dad up for euthanasia.
My parents also enjoy getting together to heal what they think is wrong about me. They do that when I tell them I'm ill, or when they grab me by the wrist and take my pulse. When I'm ill, you know what happens. They spend a few more minutes chopping up herbs and leaving it to simmer for hours before making me drink it under protest. But when I'm not ill, they're still convinced that there is something wrong with me. They have not let my generally acceptable health get into their way of thinking that I might just die any moment. Honest. They've tested me for just about every disease there is, from syphillus to breast cancer.
Weight is another problem my parents try to help me with. I've accepted my fate that I will always be trotting towards the heavy side when it comes to weight. I've tried everything. My friends tell me to go to the gym more often and I took their advice. I went there once at 10 am in the morning, and at 10.30 am I gave up and went home because I couldn't even fit through the doorway. Of course Greg, who asked me to write this article in the first place, will never know what it's like. Greg, if you never seen him before (highly unlikely for that matter), is unbelievably skinny. He's so skinny that if he got any skinnier, he'd only have one eye. It amazes me all the time. Really, one time during History Tutorial, I was looking at him and was wondering absently whether he could fit through my faxing machine.
But no, acne is still at the top of the agenda. People tell me all the time I have bad acne. I look at them and am like: You mean you think I don't know that? How do people expect to react when they tell me this - I will never understand the logic of it. And the needles I was referring to just now (thank god they're gone now), were to get rid of them. My father spends tireless and inordinate amounts of time skewering my pimples, ignoring my muffled pleas and patching me up. After that, it's herbs and weedkiller-tasting medicine. My mother collaborates with him on that. And they see miraculous changes to me that no one ever does. No one ever goes "Wow Ming, your acne has improved a lot! What happened?" because that never happens. If anything, they probably made it worse. And my friends suddenly took the decision on the first day of term 3 to offer the advice and critique my acne. It was a depressing day. I'd type out the whole routine I performed for Eugene (a friend from third lang) in the MRT train but it won't sound funny when it's typed out. (That's the limiting thing when you type stuff out, it's difficult to stay funny or even be funny. All you're left to support yourself with is a very dry sarcasm. Another bad thing about it is having to use brackets, which really just annoys the hell out of me.) It was irritating because even during the recess - no, especially during recess, people were finding excuses to sit down with me at the tables and offer their latest tips on how to improve my acne. At the end of the day, I felt like I was trapped in some Before and After TV commercial for skin products. I was envious and down the whole day. Seriously some people's skin are so smooth, they probably got them laminated.
On the sidenote, it's interesting that for all my personal faults, my parents haven't tried to cure me of my curly hair. The only fun I get from having parents who practise TCM is when they try to perform acupuncture on each other. I tell you, it's hilarious. It's like a Celebrity Death Match featuring George Bush and Sadam Hussein.
I shall ramble on while you and I hope that I will find an appropriate, smart and witty conclusion to ram the whole article home. I, so I can finish this off and that it will get accepted unscathed by the editing people, and you, so you can go and do something else. If you haven't already. What is there to do anyway? Teacher's day is coming. ( Have you guys prepared for it? I have. I've made a card just for my Geography teacher. It's the perfect card. Honest. On front cover is the picture of a rotting corpse I drew by myself, on the inside I wrote "At least you can still attract flies.")
I guess what I'm trying to say after all this mass of words is that, is that this is something I'll have to live with. For the next three years at least, until I get to England for Uni. Or I might not go straightaway at 18, I might just rent a flat, work as a waiter or librarian to earn about - I dunno - what? 100 pounds a month? 200 pounds? 500 would be great. I'd love that money. As long as I have a bit of leftover after paying the rent. Then I'd retreat into this small flat, hopefully it will have a window overlooking the street. I'd look into it, at day, at night, and I'd write. Prose. Poetry. Songs. I write on the piano, I'll see how long I have to save to get 20 grand to afford one. Or perhaps I'll just get myself a keyboard. And I'd like electronic synthesizer to come with that. I'd write, and I'll support myself. Maybe I'll enter Uni at that age. Maybe I'll be like my sis, travel around another country for half a year. Maybe I'll even get married, at 19 (unlikely as it is).
But for now, I'm off to McDonald's. That woman's been at my food again. I'm not exactly sure what she's going to turn up with but I just re-read this article and I have a suspicion.
Swirled Memories; @9:18 AM