Notes from Stephen, Wan, Kweilin, and Li

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Singapore, Kuala Lumpur: bus; Popo; tsunami; SS2

We took a bus this morning from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur. We'll take the train next time. Traffic in KL turned what should have been a three-hour bus ride into a five-hour trip. We inched along through bumper-to-bumper traffic for a few hours and then the congestion disappeared with no evidence of why traffic was backed up in the first place. In the congested area, four lanes formed where there should have been two: cars clogged the left and right shoulders. I don't know what an ambulance or police car would have done to get through.

We arrived at my grandmother Popo's apartment and spent the evening with her, my aunt Oongie, my cousin Sook Yin, and Popo's maid Annie.

Popo suffered a mild stroke since I last saw her but she's generally healthy. She slurs her speech a bit and is more confused than before but she walks on her own and laughs and eats healthily and gets regular visitors. She gave each of us red packets.

Whenever Popo sees Mommy, Popo always says that it might be the last time they'll see each other and she asks Mommy to administer a lethal injection if she becomes a vegetable. Mommy always makes light of it.

I'm happy that I can communicate on a basic level with Popo in Mandarin. I asked her about her grandchildren. She still remembers everyone and knows whether they're married or have girlfriends or boyfriends.

Oongie told us about her tsunami experience. She and Uncle Allan were on the beach in Phuket when the wave hit. They got swept over lawn chairs, trees, and roads in the first wave. They were lucky that some Europeans pulled them from the water before the second wave hit. Oongie and Uncle Allan climbed through windows and jumped over gaps and generally scrambled to get to higher ground when they heard that a second wave was coming. Oongie thought of the people she met during the trip who might have died in the second wave: the people who rented her the lawn chairs, the Europeans who were pulling people from the water, and the people who were eating breakfast on the first floor of a hotel, oblivious to what was happening.

Oongie drove us to the SS2 hawker center to eat dinner. We had chee cheung fun, ice kacang, mango sticky rice, laksa, sugar cane juice, and soya milk.

posted by Li at 9:08 PM