Grandma

My grandma is an interesting lady. As much as Grandpa has influenced my life in many ways, so has Grandma.

To me, Grandma has always played the motherly role, making sure that we were well fed and taken care of at home. I remember the time where we stayed at her place for a few months when I was about 10 years old. I had to get up at 5-30am in the mornings to take the school bus to school and Grandma will be the one making sure I woke up in time, had breakfast and waited with me till the school bus arrived.

Grandma is also well known for her wonderful cooking. During the festive seasons, either Christmas or Chinese New Year, she will be cooking her famous dishes; Vegetable Achar(pickles), fried meehoon, Ju Hu Char(Hokkien: some turnip dish to be wrapped in lettuce leaves, filling similar to popiah), devil curry and many more. Due to her weak health over the years, Grandma will still insist to cook these dishes but with the help of her maid. If she leaves us today, none of us will know how to cook her dishes.

About 4 years back, I actually took the effort to spend several hours with Grandma just so that I could take down her Salted Fish Achar recipe while she cooked. Grandma cannot write so all her recipes are in her head. I love this dish of hers, I've not come across any like this before out in the market which was why I decided to better get the recipe from her or forever regret when she is no longer with us.

Grandma has wonderful green fingers. She loves gardening and till today, her garden is always full with plants, flowers and local herbs. She has fully utilized every space in her garden as well as her backyard. She's that type that knows how to take a little bit from a plant and grow that again beautifully in another place or pot. She actually dyes her hair with the henna leaves that she grew a while back from a small section of the plant that she took from a roadside.

She also has a belimbing (Malay: not starfruit but very small fruit that is sour) tree in front of her house and she will make sambal (a Malay spicy dish) or achar out of the fruits whenever there are plenty. She is very handy when it comes to these things too, she knows how to make full use of whatever she has.

Grandma is also an avid gambler. She loves her empat ekor (4-digit lottery) and it was through her that I learnt about the whole existence of the 4-digit world. I remember when I was young, I will see Grandma searching through her lottery "bible" - the one whereby it shows you pictures of what you dreamt off and there is a 4-digit number that links to that picture. It sure amazed me then that there was such a thing!

I know I just mentioned that my Grandma cannot write. She is not 100% illiterate especially when it comes to numbers. She can write numbers alright, so I'm guessing that through her gambling ways, she had mastered how to remember and write numbers down. Anyway, I believe that she can read also although I've not seen her reading books before (her lottery bible and also checking the newspapers for the results of the lottery don't count).

How obsessed is she into numbers? Well, till today, whenever anyone of us leaves her place and into our cars, she will be standing by her gate, observing our car plate numbers. And if she can't see the numbers, she will ask us for the numbers, all the time!

And how many times she won the lottery? She had but they were all not huge amounts and we always nag her that what she had spent so far outweights what she had won. And her response "I bet small amounts only, RM1 each time!"

During Chinese New Year, for sure you will see my dear Grandma joining us for our gambling sessions till the wee hours in the morning. You can see that she is so sleepy and tired but still want to gamble.

Few years back, before I got pregnant, my brother, cousin brother and I took my Grandma up to Genting Highlands for a day trip for her birthday. She was really happy as she is too old now to travel on her own there (yes, she had several times before by taking the bus up alone during her healthier days!). We were there for several hours, perhaps 5-6 hours and during all that time, my Grandma was really glued to her seat playing Roulette. I had to remind her several times whether she needs to drink/eat or go to the toilet. She won several hundreds that day.

My Grandma favours boys more than girls. Till today, she will deny this whenever we bring this up (pretty rare these days as you do not want to get into an argument with her) but it is very obvious in her actions to my uncles or cousin brother (I say cousin brother as I know she favours one more than her other grandsons - "I", if you're reading this, you know that this is true!). There are many facts to prove this but I'm not here to go all out to diss my Grandma ok?!.

One thing about my Grandma as well is that you would not want to get into a fight with her, she will win no matter what! She is that type that must have the last word and no matter how hard you justify to her your strong facts, she will always have the last word and you, in the end, will just surrender and keep silent.

She is not the MIL (mother-in-law) you want. Haha, I dare say this as she is my Grandma. But really, I myself would not want her as my MIL and Thank God that my MIL is not like her. ;)
Having said that, because I'm part of her flesh, I know she will defend me if someone were to talk bad about me in front of her. She's like that. Period. She will go all out for someone she loves dearly and who is especially part of her flesh. So you can imagine what she will do for those that she favours!

Why I want to post about my Grandma is because I want to share on the interesting relationship she had with my Grandpa. If it is not obvious enough yet, both of them are actually totally opposites. There were recent events that actually drove me into wanting to post this up first. I will share on their relationship and of the recent events another time.