the Chua children of the paternal family never seize to surprise me every sunday. i mean, John Chua is a queen in the making (he's reading the entire 'Hardy Boys' series now) and the parents are supposedly armed with child psychology degrees. and now Grace Chua is venturing into the arts scene by selling her little impressions of the world to raise funds for her church. i bet that's the child psychology thing working their magic in her as well.

so it was while over dinner in some random Peranakan restaurant that Grace Chua started hawking her wares to all the adults. normally at these paternal family dinners, the adults would sit at their own table while the children will all take up their own. John and Grace Chua were with the children's table. for some reason, Grace Chua kept heading over to the adult's table to pester them into buying her random pieces of art. she would plonk her transparent A4 folder of art and a coin box in front of them, let them browse through the art while she went back to the children's table to finish up her dinner.

it kinda reminds me of those illegal, deaf and mute hawkers of trinkets and tissue packets at the food centers. they would dump a key chain of a furry animal on your table together with a plaque card stating their disabilities and expecting you to buy something out of compassion. i saw someone shelling out six dollars for these things before. Grace Chua did a horrid job out of milking everyone's compassions. she didn't even interact with her patrons and was in fact screaming at one of the cousins to help her shell her prawns. what a haughty little... well, thing.

and if the artist doesn't want to speak, at least the art should say something. but out of the ten pieces that she was trying to sell, seven of them were really amateurish and done for the sake of completing them. randomly drawn STICK figures of her family members which actually looked fat. and there was no coloring done at all. just two fat stick figures depicting her parents (and both parents are actually rather skinny). the only three that i could see some effort being put in were the colored ones. one fine example which i bought was shown above. i asked Grace Chua what the picture represented, she simply shrugged her shoulders and gave a nonchalant look. i'm assuming it was some carnage she must have seen after she watched some violent flick on the telly. and the truly intriguing bit was the back of the picture which had the words 'blank page' printed on them. ooooh... artaay!

i poured out all my coins and separated them into their various denominations: the fifty-cents to one side, the twenty to another and a single one dollar coin. then i asked her, so which bunch of coins do you want: three fifty-cent coins, six twenty-cent coins or a single dollar coin. she picked the dollar coin. kids... how to not love them and hate them at the same time? i made up the difference by giving her another fifty-cent coin. to which she pocketed without even a word of thanks. once again, what a snotty little... oh well, thing.

i decided to then help her sell her wares by being her charming e-bay auctioneer. so i sat her down in front of all the cousins, instructing her to describe each and every drawing in detail, starting with her shittiest one first. so for a few minutes, the various relatives were entertained with her varied answers when asked to describe who she was drawing in the pictures, from 'my parents' to 'this is me when i get married next time'. who knew that such a wee young lass had such depth to her thinking. her two best pictures which looked really impressionist at best and just splotches of paint at worst were really charming. she claimed that they were fireworks when i thought that they actually looked like a brutal crime scene of a murdered Hawaiian pizza. we managed to sell those paintings for nearly $1.50 per piece.

Grace Chua even had the guts to ask for an extra bit of donation after seeing the puny amount of coins she was receiving from one of the cousins. she milked him for another fifty-cents. this little girl eh... what a greedy little... oh well, thing.

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