Love and New Year’s Celebrations

The past few days have been hectic at work. It’s not very bad, just that they screwed up and thus, we as the staffs suffer. They accidentally misjudged the crowd that might come in to celebrate new year’s day early, and only put one dude in the bar to handle drinks, and only 4 girls on the floor with 6 sections to manage.

what was great was that we managed to pull through that one day. what wasn’t great was that Wyla went from hayfever to real fever and sniffing and stressed out. the poor girl ended up making 2 big mistakes today, and felt even more shity thereafter. =/

But new year’s day, this bring alot of memories back to me. partly because of angel’s post about favouritism in the family, and partly because of all these family festivities i see in the restaurant, it reminded me, somewhat sadly, of how i used to crave for parties and celebrations when i was young.

my family was poor. no matter what my mum may act like, and may claim she earns, we were poor poor poor and more poor. the only few celebrations we had, were the first birthdays of our lives, meaning my 1st birthday and my sis’s. to this, my dad often claims it’s because we are chinese and chinese do not celebrate birthdays.

then you look at my cousins, and they have cakes and eggs (a chinese thing) on their birthdays, while mine was slowly forgotten. it was only when i was about 8, i got curious, because a classmate invited me to her birthday party. i asked my dad, what is a birthday (oh yes, that did happen), and then started wishing i COULD have some form of celebration.

then i asked when was my birthday. and every year, i waited, and plotted, and wished, for birthday presents and surprises from my own parents. to this day, even when people give me presents on my birthday, i linger between gratefulness, happiness, and asking if i was worthy of this present. because i just didn’t know back then WHY my birthday wasn’t celebrated, and simply concluded that it was because i wasn’t worth it.

and because i was chinese.

don’t ask me how it’s related, but i just came to that conclusion from my dad’s little rambling. so from the time that i was able to differentiate between race, i wanted to be blonde and white, with damn sea blue eyes.

and from a very young age, i was damn independent because of the way my parents treated me and had their own busy lives. they were barely home, and i had to live with a constant barrage of maids… that were different from month to month.

you may ask then, “if you were poor, how did you afford maids?”

let’s put it this way, maids back then were quivalent to half of my dad’s pay. my mum was earning quite a bit, albeit not as much as she claims to, and she definitely did not contribute much to the family, if at all. so, they weren’t all that hard to afford.

then my sister, she had everything. from maids, to my parents’ attention. like i said, i was jealous.

until a few years ago.

i saw how clingy she was. how she couldn’t live without my parents. how she needs my parents to even perform the simplest task for her. she reminded me of the very type of people i dislike and do get jealous of occasionally.

the little miss princesses. those who get blown away by the wind if they step out of the safety that’s their parents.

a few days ago, dad called me to discuss about something. then he mentioned something else. “your sister didn’t quite make it to ITE. she did pretty well in maths though, and was given a whole range of engineering certifications to choose from.”

“that’s good. what did she choose?”

“well, we chose aerospace for her…”

“uhm.. she’s supposed to choose dad. she’s old enough.”

“well, she wasn’t interested, and kept running around.”

“so?”

“anyways, your mum will be making her quit school and take private o’levels so she could go uni.”

“that’s not the point. and who the hell is she to choose which school to take or drop anyways? she may be our mother, but she hasn’t quite got the right state of mind OR the qualifications to decide the courses. hell, she can’t even pronounce aerospace.”

“eh.. don’t be rude”

“i am stating the fact. it’s time she let go of lishan”

“well..”

“it’s your money dad. you do what you want. i don’t see how 2k a month would help lishan get anywhere near what she wants to do. of course, if she fails, it’s ALSO your money.”

“well.. i ain’t going to pay it.”

“cool. so where’s the money coming from? the sky?”

“well uhm… lishan’s going to work this holidays.”

“with her language abilities? which customer is she going to talk to?”

“…”

i don’t intend to be rude. but i guess it’s high time my parents face the facts and the flaws that they have created in my sister. if they had be less soft on her, as they had been on me, perhaps she wouldn’t have turned out as someone who can barely even hold a sentence, much less a conversation.

and now, even at the age of 16, and with all those failures behind her, they still want to choose and BE her, when she does not even know what are her responsibilities in life. sure it’s not a mature age, but neither is it the age where they should still be holding on to her so tightly.

of course, if it was me… i would have been terribly harsh. i am kinda on the other end of the spectrum when it comes to being a “disciplinarian”. as in, i am terribly terribly “let you experience it and then cry” type of person.

meh. whatever. at the end of the day, my parents expects me to look after my sis. we will see how things go from there. i am not there now, and i can’t stop things from happening. i am having issues of my own, and that derived from me being too independent perhaps.

there should always exist a balance, as i can feel from all these. a balance in love and dependence.