The Elephant in the Room

Last week, my daughter asked me what "Nobody talks about the elephant in the room." means.
Is there a real elephant?
Are there real people?
Is there really a room that can hold people and an elephant together?

This made me laugh, it reminded me of myriads of things I have been discovering as overseas born Chinese.

- Match Making
Love does not equal marriage, nor does the other way around.  You marry when she ticks all your boxes and she marries when you tick all her boxes, too.  Match maker gets paid, everyone leaves happy.
Love = something you have with mistresses
Marriage = boring old wife that once ticked all the boxes (nah, that's fixed with Korean face filling/lifting nowadays, so wife will always tick all the boxes, just gets a bit boring after a while.  We don't eat the same thing everyday three times a day, do we?  Huh?  Huh?)

- Mistress
Didn't the emperors from the Song Dynasty have a lot of concubines?  And two or three favourites because they would've bore sons for the emperor?
So should the men of today.  See, the first point of "match making", will eventually lead to this point of "mistress".
Since it is in woman's fate to either have a husband, or be a mistress, then the men will always thrive in this kind of tradition.
Give me a son, or else, I take in a "sister wife".
Give me a son, or else, I'll only make you as my mistress.
Give me a son, or else, don't call me again.
Then he says: "Sorry, you have a mistress fate, so I can never marry you.  But I will live close-by so we can stay friends and I can always fix your laptop even when your son in law is a computer whiz.   Because I love you, my mistress.".

- Calculating
If all of the above doesn't give away this third category, then I think you just never going to notice the elephant in the room.
You see, the one child policy (male heir) has proven to be burdensome to society now.  But back in the day, it was a much proven proud policy (discounting the endless case of female fetus found in soups or gutter).
See, if you have a female child, you'd feed her from child to adulthood, only to find her leaving to follow the husband's family.  In accounting, that's a big imbalance to the financial statement.  All these expenses, yet you lose the capital in the end.  That's why you need a son, then you'll gain another capital through the woman he brings in.
Don't forget the monthly installments to the parents for all the things they've done for you when you were young, jobless, wondering if you exists at all since you get praised for not speaking and smacked for telling them what's in your mind.

I pondered these points for a while now, since my parents had always been independent from my grandparents but yet they insisted on installing almost all points on me.
Did it skip a generation?  Because unconsciously their parents tried to force those upon them but failed as they got down to daughter/kid number 10?

So did anyone ever talked about the elephant in the room?
I did, I said, "Hey y'all, didn't you notice this thing in the room is huge?  Like maybe it's an elephant?  Let's talk about it!".

I tell you what happened next.  My mom shuts down (physically and mentally), my dad storms out of the room (almost all the time, even when I shut the door, it brought the Thor in him, out!).
Me, I took one look at this elephant, made it pink, and usher it out with me.

Ode to February

   A realisation came into me in the past few days.  To teach love, one will make the student fall in love with him.  But in the end, the student realises that it is she who is falling in love with herself all over again.  There are so much misconceptions on love itself on earth, they make the love within us that is of the source, unrecognisable, forgotten, and even misdefined.   

Are You On Auto Pilot?

Is that a dummy smothering the pilot???

The title perhaps need to be elaborated.  It is no surprise that most of us are on auto pilot for the entire living days we are on earth.

When one is born a Chinese descent, you know that on Lunar New Year's eve, you'll see so many people you don't know, that you call something or rather title (apparently related somehow to you), they'll be eating the food that your mom slaved over for days to prepare, and goes home only to appear again the next day, wearing new shiny traditional Chinese clothes (or red in colour), bringing their entire family (the more kids they have, the bigger headache your mom has) and talk loudly with your parents while their kids receiving red pocket called 'angbao'.
Then your parents would nudge you to say that Chinese lines that you've practiced over and over again, fold your fist together and expects to be given an 'angbao', too.

From then on, every year approaching that Lunar New Year's eve, you'll hear your mom stressing out on how the house should be painted over outside, then inside, then outside, then inside, then new furniture is imperative, then new dining set is a must and the list goes on.
As she gets older and we get more mobile, she'll start telling you to stop sweeping the floor on New Year's day, don't cut your nails or use scissors on New Year's day, don't work on New Year's day, and a bunch of new rules to follow on and on and on.
Then your mom goes through a phase of acquiring new skills, Chinese art of Feng Shui and other Chinese metaphysics topics.  The bunch of rules for New Year, became more exact and calculated.  It becomes a hard line doctrine.  Stars are flown every year and plants move accordingly.  The repainting and redecorating becomes even crazier, because apparently you're a Goat, she's a Snake, and dad just shook his head thinking oh boy what are we arguing about!

This is the auto pilot of a well versed overseas Chinese.  Perhaps some other can tell me their version of auto pilot before Christmas.  Thankfully, I'm not on auto pilot anymore.
In fact tomorrow, I might just start my day by sweeping the floor, washing my hair, and working all day.  Let's see what happens to me this year.

Fly horsey, horsey, doesn't matter if you're a wooden horse, I know you're made of cloud, so, fly.....