Back on the Homefront: Encounters with Elderly Eccentrics

I'm back in Singapore!

Ah, Singapore! Oh gritty, super-developed, cosmopolitan port-city of Asia! Your mornings filled with the stink of decaying fish and the hearty cries of the coollies! Your evening thoroughfares jam-packed with jingling horse-carriages and the vengeful downtrodden masses clamouring for the heads of the French aristocracy!

Or as Carl Sandburg so eloquently put it when his second cousin twice removed showed him a postcard picture of this quaint and bustling Southeast Asian seaport:

Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders

But enough with high falutin' poetic references and dramatic, exaggerative descriptions ending with exclamation marks!

I always forget when I'm away from Singapore how many elderly eccentrics my family seems to be acquainted with. "Real characters," as my family likes to put it. The morning before yesterday, my mother and I were eating breakfast at my grandparents' house (which is just next door to our house) when all of a sudden the dining room door burst open and in staggered a portly, old Chinese man in polo shirt and shorts, bearing a huge cardboard box of pomegranates.

"Wah! What is this?" my grandmother exclaimed in shock.

"Pomegranates!" he proclaimed. "Very good for the health! Got antioxidants! Season's almost over, so around this time I usually buy and distribute to friends!" the elderly man said, setting the box down in the corner of the room before setting himself down on a chair for a breather.

"Hi Uncle!" my mother said, and then noting my confused (and amused) expression, introduced me. "Tiff, say hi to Uncle G.K. G.K. Goh."

He reached across the table and we exchanged a brisk handshake before he got back to the serious business at hand: the bountiful health benefits of pomegranates (to which my grandmother kept saying, "anti-oxi-what?") and, "Where's Piet? Awake yet?" (Piet is my grandfather.)

"Already, already, Uncle," my mother said. "He just bought breakfast from the market. Uncle already eaten or not?"

"Already eaten! Been up since six, you know!"

"Wah! How come Uncle is up so early?"

"Got things to do! Pomegranates to deliver!"

At this point, my grandfather enters the room. "Oy! I knew it was you! Who else can be making so much noise? Real troublemaker, this one!"

"Oy Piet! I'm just here to drop off pomegranates! Very high in antioxidants!"

"Anti-hah? Thank you very much! Eat breakfast! I just bought porridge!"

"No, no. Sudah makan. Sudah makan. [Already eaten, already eaten.]"

"Try a bit! This is famous porridge, you know! From Tiong Bahru."

"Eh, thanks Piet, but really sudah makan."

Many more exhortations and refusals to eat later, Uncle G.K. Goh drove off, presumably to spontaneously bear more pomegranates to various acquaintances.

As the front door closed, my grandfather chuckled and turned to me. "Real colourful, that one, G.K. Real character."

Of course, my grandfather isn't exactly the most uncolourful old man himself. He is peculiarly obsessed with food, and has no qualms making his children and grandchildren go through hell and high water to procure him a food item he's been craving. For a period of time, he took to using the term of endearment, "pussycat," for all of his grandchildren, until we told our grandmother to tell him the...uh...slightly shady connotations of that word and to please stop using it.

Also, he really likes to bite cute babies. I've seen him do it! We were standing in line at an airport and there was a mother holding a chubby little baby standing in front of him. With a diabolical glint in his eye, he exclaimed to the mother, "What a cute little rascal!" And before the mother could say a word, he grabbed the baby's leg and sunk his teeth into it.

That was memorable, to say the least. These kind of hijinks have earned my grandfather the title, "Naughty boy," from an elderly eccentric friend of the family who is also ignorant about the various dubious overtones possessed by certain words. Mr Hui (whom we often refer to as "Old Man Hui") is originally from Cambodia, has a heart as big as a house, and eyebrows that look like they're going to take over the world. When he jokes, he will frequently tell my grandfather that he is a "very naughty boy," and my mother (more scandalously) that she is a "very naughty girl."

A typical phone conversation between Old Man Hui and either me or my sister will consist of the following:

Me/Sis: Hello?
Old Man Hui: Hello? Wendy there? (Wendy is my mother.)
Me/Sis: Oh. Hi Mr Hui. She's not in.
Old Man Hui: Oh.
(pause)
*click*

Once, when I found a stray kitten on the street outside our house, I called my mother to ask her if she knew anyone who wanted a cat. (The SPCA here has very limited facilities, so cats don't have very long to find owners at the shelters here before they're put to sleep.)

"Does anyone want a cat? My daughter found a cat." I heard her ask the people she was having lunch with.

"Call the SPCA," someone suggested.

"She said they'll kill it."

Then I heard Old Man Hui's voice. "Don't kill the cat! Don't kill the cat! I'll take it!"

Another voice asked jokingly, "Mr Hui, what are you going to do with it? Eat it?"

"No! Not for eating! You naughty boy!"

Later that day, I went to deliver the cat to his house and was greeted at the door by his wife, Mrs Hui.

"Hello Mrs Hui."

"Oh! Hello!" She peered into the cardboard box I was carrying. "What a cute cat!"

"Uh...yah. It's for you."

"HAH?!? For me???"

"Didn't Mr Hui tell you? He said that you would take the cat."

"No! He didn't tell me!"

At that point, Mr Hui came bustling out in his pajamas exclaiming, "Ah. The cat!"

Mrs Hui: She said, you said, the cat is for us?

Mr Hui: Yes! The cat is ours! Otherwise they kill it!

The cat is fully grown now, and is named Baby. It gave birth to two kittens a few years ago, who have been named Carrot and Celery.