My Longkang

All’s fine and well in Bengbeng’s household today. Benghui is so excited. The Shaolin troupe is coming to Sibu. He absolutely insists on seeing their performance. He probably doesn’t even know what Shaolin means. All he knows is that his friends will ‘all’ be seeing it. He is a potential ‘kiasu’ ( afraid to lose sort of person ) in the making. I have to dig deep into my pockets but I have no heart to say no. After all he doesn’t ask for much from me anyway except for an occasional ice-cream.

The pic shows the brochure for the performance.

The festive season is definitely in the air. I have been busy preparing my place for visitors. How has it been for you all? Before benghui, it was just another day. But now we try to make it a grand occasion for his sake to give him some childhood memories to accompany him to his adult life.

This pic shows some nice new year decorations. Of course I cannot make these but I wanted to make Benghui feel involved in the preparations. I didn’t have much time anyway since I was busy the whole day and the whole night.

So, I came up with this idea. I looked at the decorations again and thought out how it was done. I drew some pineapple shapes on red packets and asked him to cut out the shapes. Fold them into halves. There are two sides to a red packet so paste two halves together. Tease out the other two ends to make a three sided figure. Voila..instant new year pineapple decoration. He was very pleased. See the result for yourself.

The mail came today with souvenirs from Bengsim, my sister for Benghui. He was very pleased.He was materialistic enough to ignore the present first and asked for permission to open the ang-pow. RM20.00 isn’t much but it is a king’s ransom for him. He seemed overwhelmed by the sudden wealth. The last I heard he wanted to buy some VCDs.

Suddenly it seems the trauma of giving him a beating a few days ago, the crying, my guilt feelings as to how he will deal with this crisis , how it will influence him with his own children in the future seems so ‘unnecessary’. He is so happy now and seems to have forgotten it already.

Only one stain on the whole day. Before he went to sleep, he asked me if the thief will steal his new mechanical pencils ( the gift ). He remembers how the thief looks like now. He described him to me again. For a few months after the incident he shut out all memory of the thief. Even when the policeman asked him, he said nothing.

Maybe this is a sign that he is recovering. Anyway he has stopped sleeping with a ruler in his hand 3 weeks after the incident.

Happy preparing for your Chinese new year.