On Sunday night when I thought my golden week of DVD watching had just started, I had a video conference with my grandma n aunt. They were at my relatives' house in Teochew and asked me to join them there. My grandma's older brother's family is in Teochew (my grandma ran to singapore from teochew when she was in her teens I think). This was a huge hiccup for me since I was still in the midst of my prison break. Fortunately, there was no flight on Monday, which is the actual national day here. So I could only go on Tuesday afternoon. I chiong-ed my prison break and finished both seasons by tuesday morning, then started packing my luggage to swatow.
Everything that happened in the 4 days following my trip there is pretty drama. My new-found big cousin came to pick me up from the airport that night with my grandma, aunt and my cousin's mum n kid. On the way back, my cousin got a call to say tt his wife got into some motorbike accident. The next day, we were booked on a full-day tour from like 8am to 10pm. OMG. It was damn tiring n super-hot. My aunt n me were literally sleeping throughout the journey, except the few times when we were asked to go down to sight-see. Don't ask me what i saw cos i dun remember at all.
Day after, we went down to the farm area. Apparently, most of my relatives were still staying there and all of a sudden, i was introduced to so many aunties and uncles, and 8 other cousins. For my whole life, I thought i only had 2 cousins. Now, i'm told that i actually have another 9 in teochew, with the potential of some more..?? Not to mention that they had complicated names. If you know me, you'll know that my forte is definitely not in human names. But yeah, i was totally overwhelmed by my relatives who were so excited about my arrival. The only reason why i went there was cos i knew my grandma missed me. Somehow, it felt like the people whom i never knew existed also missed me??? Even though i didn't understand their very fast n chim teochew most of the time. Geez...
Then last night, my aunt told me if i realised tt my 3rd aunt had a motive. I'm like, huh? I mean, i know she's damn nice to me like even sheltering me from the sun and giving me all her tea treasures and all, but having a motive sounds a bit extreme. My aunt's theory was that i'm expected to help her kids... The people there don't earn a lot. Seriously, it's one of the lowest incomes in china. The entire household (including my cousin, his wife n his dad) income is just enough to pay my rent in beijing (without tax). So when they heard how much i'm paid (which i oredi under-declared to them), they felt it was unbelievable. Maybe cos i look like i'm 20 years old? Yeah, i look a lot younger than most of my cousins. Apart from the cousin who picked me up from the airport, the rest are all younger than me. I feel damn old lor! Then when they knew i was paying someone 300RMB a month to clean my house once a week, they all wanted to come here n help me clean my house.
I'm so glad to be back in beijing today (woke up at 5am to catch the morning flight). Luckily i'm going to xi'an tomorrow so i used that as my excuse not to stay another day longer. So tired.. and the first thing i did was to download my bleach! Woo-hoo!! I'm so looking forward to neverwinter nights expansion coming out next Tuesday, even though i've already gotten the beta version of it... Heh.
