Friendship

A Hello! A handshake!
A scoop of sheep pellets.
We are now friends.

I have new neighbours,
An elderly couple from Sri Lanka,
He was busy clearing the ground.

I see his tomato and chilli plants.
I go over to say hi.
He says,"I no speak English!"

I asked if he had fertiliser for his plants.
He says, "I no speak English!"
I go back to my garden.

I show him my bag of sheep manure.
He smiles and understands.
I give him a scoop of sheep pellets.

We have become friends.

Hi Grandma

Hi Grandma,

You are invited to my birthday. Come back soon.

Nicole.XXXOOO

Nicole shares her grandma with two cousins in Australia. Everyday, she rings her. Soon it will be her birthday.

Nicole's birthday

We, the Chans belong to the Kwang Ning dialect group of people from China. We have this unusual tradition. When a child is a year old, on his DOI SOI, meaning double birthday. ( The Chinese consider the nine months the child is in his mum's tummy as one year) we go through a special ceremony.

Put in front of the child are all sorts of goodies, a chicken drum stick and tools of the trade, eg, books, hammer, abacus (replaced by the calculator), a pen, a wad of cash, and so on.

The poor kid is to choose the right item which will depict what his career will be. Naughty Uncles and aunts will tease that the kid is a greedy kid if he/she chose the chicken drum stick, when in fact, it means he/she will have plentious to eat.

A poor mum would not be happy if the kid chooses a hammer which means he will be a labourer.

A wad of cash is self explanatory.

My husband doesn't belong to our same dialect group, and he thinks this is mumbo jumbo. So we didn't have this kind of fun with my kids.

***Here is Nicole choosing her "fate". Her parents were happy. She chose books given by me when she was a baby. They emailed to tell me. May be when I become a published writer, I will say that Nicole chose a good career choice."

A sad story

The following news article from the New Zealand Herald reminds me of my late Aunt A. She was a teacher and she lived in a small town where the people knew her as Mrs. Teacher. She told us when she goes marketing, she would buy brinjals that have worms. She says those beautiful fruits or veges have been sprayed with harmful pesticides and if they killed the pests, they would kill us too. She would rather cut away those holey parts where the worm has eaten.

In New Zealand, parents and children buy swan plants to encourage monarch butterflies. (See My post on scarfs). I wanted to grow some in school, and how disappointed the kids will be when I tell them we can't grow them.

How insidious the garden centre operators are. They spray the plant to make them sturdy looking, kids grow them in anticipation of attracting the butterflies and the larvas die because they are poisoned.

In Singapore, my butterflies come to my lime trees and my kids at home and in school enjoy seeing the butterflies grow. Then we sing Jim Ed Brown's song,

"Butterfly, My butterfly, wait for me don't fly away."

Plants pose risk for butterflies NZ Herald
5:00AM Tuesday Dec 30, 2008

Butterfly lovers are being urged to be careful when buying swan plants (milkweed) from garden centres.

Plants affected with pesticide residue will kill the caterpillars that eventually turn into monarch butterflies.

"Every year it happens," said Jacqui Knight, secretary of the Monarch Butterfly New Zealand Trust.

"People are desperately looking for food for their monarch caterpillars, and end up buying plants affected with pesticide residue. We hear from adults and children distraught to see their caterpillars dying."

Rocks

Where there are rocks, Sam will climb.
You can imagine his blistered and calloused palms.
That's our monkey,
Up he goes and down again.

Elephants

This is a model of an elephant given by my Sri Lanka friend V in NTU in Singapore. It is very elaborate with beads and fold trimming. I brought it over to NZ with me. Once, they had a green grass snake in their balcony. They just left it alone.

The first elephant model I had, my Dad bought it in India in 1958, he was sailing in a P & O liner from London to Singapore. When the ship stopped in India, he bought a black teak elephant. Dad was a collector, he bought a souvenir every where he went.

In 2000s, we went for a holiday in Bangkok. The Tuk Tuk taxi driver took us to this duty shop. He said, " Please you just go in for 10 mintues, and I will get a petrol voucher. You don't have to buy anything." It turned out, I saw a brownish teak elephant, I remembered my dad's elephant. So I bought one. The water engineer took it to his office. He must have left it in his Office at Nanyang University, because we don't have it anymore.

It's good to have things to remind you of happy events, Don't you think so?

Weir

These are weirs, says the water engineer.

I only knew a weir in theory that there is such a word when I played Scrabble.

A weir (IPA: /wɪɚ/) (also known as a lowhead dam) is a small overflow-type dam commonly used to raise the level of a river or stream. Weirs have traditionally been used to create mill ponds in such places. Water flows over the top of a weir, although some weirs have sluice gates which release water at a level below the top of the weir. The crest of an overflow spillway on a large dam is often called a weir.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weir

I used to grit my teeth when we had to drive miles and miles, and walk miles and miles to see an engineering structure. Not any more, we met an engineer's kid, and he descibed the same feeling as me. Much later, I met an engineer's wife, and she too, talked about the same thing. Now, I just follow along, as we drive and walk miles and miles.

There is a Chinese saying, JIA JI SUI JI, meaning, marry a chicken, follow a chicken,
JIA GOU SUI GOU, marry a dog, follow a dog.