meals are not exactly my family's forte. my parents have lunch with each other all the time. but for my parents to have their two sons to sit down and have lunch together is indeed more challenging than the President's Star Challenge.

all this boils down to two reasons actually:
one, both sons are not very keen on having lunch with the parents because of the terrible table-top conversations the family have. they always ask the same general questions about their son's lives. and we end up giving the same general answers. and then we proceed to shut up for the rest of the entire lunch knowing that they run out of questions (even though they've only asked no more than 4 questions during the entire meal). what sort of questions, you're wondering? examples include: 'Have you paid your handphone bill?' or 'How's your studies?' or 'How's (name of limited number of friends that they know of)?'. it's sad enough that we don't open up to them already. sometimes, my brother and i would try a tag-team approach to keep them talking. and talking is something they love to do. it's really helps those awkward moments whittle by. but what's sad is that almost every answer that they have to our questions is seemingly formatted around God and christianity. in the end, the answer to almost every question would involve prayer and trust in the Lord. it's Christian to be practical. but it's not practical to always be Christian. or a rigid Christian, that is.

second reason being that nobody in my family has the guts to speak their mind. a simple question like 'where do you want to eat lunch?' illicits the very safe and consumer-friendly (a pun! a pun!) answer of 'anything lor'. for 20 years, both my brother and i have been giving the same answer and it never fails to decide where we end up eating most of the time. come to think of it, for the past 20 (18 in the case of my brother) year's worth of sundays, my parents have been eating at the SAME few places, seemingly rotating on a 5-6 week basis. they are apparently terrified of change. but then again, most Singaporeans are. that's why our gah-men is having an easy time gah-men-ing all of us.

however, the post-brunei me seems to have a mind of its own. i've been joining the parents for awkward sunday lunches ever since i've returned from brunei. most of the time, it's not a out-of-free-will kinda thing but more like monetary issues. sundays are usually days of poverty for me, having partied on friday and saturday. plus i don't really fancy sunday brunches anyways. it's a day of rest and respect to the Guy up there who made sundays like that. my brother, who apparently had to spend 13 months of miserable sundays alone with the parents, had already given up on meals with them. too awkward. and it doesn't help that the brother is not much of a conversationalist. so for the past 5 weeks coming, i've been lunching alone with the parents. it's not that bad lah actually. i just try and look busy, stuffing noodles in my mouth and taking extra chews for each mouthful.

so for the sake of variety, i suggested something out of the ordinary the previous week: Let's go to Holland Village for Lunch. They have good nasi lemak (coconut rice) and western food over there! You should have seen the look on the mother's face. it was as uncomfortable as an MRT seat which someone just sat on. like i told you, the parents dislike change and anything out of the norm was not well-received. Holland Village for nasi lemak is definitely going against the grain (a foodie pun!).

thus as i added pepper to my laksa, the parents were trying to strike up some form of conversation. and as usual it was all very awkward and peppered (can this be considered as a food pun?) with questions that the parents already knew the answer to. we talked about church people and updated ourselves on what happened to these church people 13 months post-brunei. plus the fact that my chruch is currently embroiled in a legal battle against a rich tycoon, it was all exciting and absolutely scintillating to the ears. but the highlight of the lunch wasn't the spicy hot (i seriously need to stop these food puns) gossip.

it was when we were looking for tables at the laksa stall. there was an outdoor table that somebody had just vacated. and of course, all the dishes were waiting to be cleared. a very nice and elderly uncle came by and cleared the dishes. i offered to help him stack the bowls up nicely. and for some reason or other, he started to get what i initially thought was protective. he told me to leave the crockery alone. i told him THANK ANYWAYS and he said in this scalding tone of voice 'No need to say thank you, i'm just doing my job' (he spoke really eloquent english). and my dad, wanting to avoid another of life's many awkward moments, kept saying thank you to the uncle. which i think irritated him more cos he started stacking the crockery with a tad bit of violence.

looking back, i don't know whether to feel offended or to feel sad for the elderly guy. he seemed so bitter about life. bitter enough to reject an offer of help to make his job easier. maybe he felt that everyone scorned him for being someone who cleared plates and wiped tables for a living. or perhaps he hated me for sorta pitying him and deciding to help him. i wouldn't know. though i think my dad really pissed him off. i felt awfully embarassed. librans hate conflict.

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