My parents are home and the ecosystem and equilibrium that is our household is now restored.
No longer do I have to manage my parents' affairs or do all of the chores. Nor do I have to curtail my time with friends to prevent Chiara-related guilt. And, best of all, I won't have to deal with any more homestay drama (or at least be at the epicentre of it)! My mom said I should never have gone grocery shopping with them. At least I have now learned my lesson.
Mom is now unpacking all of her luggage, slowly bringing me more and more unexpected gifts. I must say I am quite impressed with her taste this time. I love all of the five pairs of shoes she bought me (3 pairs of InBlu flip-flops - my favourite brand as they're both comfortable and affordable; 2 pairs of leather heels) as well as two leather handbags. She also got me a cute top and dress. Exceeded expectations!
I think it's funny though--my mom, being a woman of the traditional Chinese generation, got me shoes. She has always told me not to buy shoes as gifts as the Chinese word for "shoes" sounds like a sigh, and you don't want to give people sighs. I just questioned her about this and she changed the belief to apply to "birthday presents". And then she said she got me shoes when I was younger too so it doesn't count. So there we go, you can buy shoes as gifts if you are the parent and/or if it is not a birthday gift. This changes everything.
I could write a book on my cultural ancestry without any true historical knowledge (Ming Dynasty? Chiang Kai Shek? Chairman Mao?). But instead, I will leave you with an interesting discovery I made independently during my third year at UBC, thanks to one of the most memorable courses I took, Linguistics 101: Languages of the World (and my apologies to friends who have heard me talk about this before). The Chinese words for animal names are the sounds that the animal makes; i.e. 貓, pronounced "mao" in Cantonese, means "cat". My people knew how to name things, I'll give them that.
I would so have been a true daughter of China had it not been for my abysmal math (un)skills.
P.S. The rest of my cherry tomatoes were missing when I came home. It was about half of the pack. Not pointing any fingers...
yay welcome home to your parents! they bought you a lot of presents, how did they fit all of that in their bag?!
ReplyDeletethanks! yeah this trumps gifts from their past trips in both quality and/or quantity! and i kept telling them they didn't need to get me anything!
ReplyDeletei really don't know how everything fit...they ended up only having 3 checked luggages...and tons of carry-on bags.
My mother warned me against buying people shoes as presents, but not because of the way it sounds--but because it means they'll walk away from you! haha...I think that is hilarious.
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