Does Not Understand English!

My grandmother is quite fond of telling people that she doesn't understand English. If someone attempts to talk to her in English, she will smile and nod and then make some kind of a humorous retort in Chinese that she has absolutely no idea what that person is saying to her. Though she had spent quite a bit of time in California (not to mention that English is one of the primary languages spoken in Singapore), she will still maintain that she has no command whatsoever of the English language. In fact, she will really play this to the hilt whenever she comes to the US as a means of trying to get the Customs inspectors to wave her by (see "The Real Reason for Confiscation").

In fact, she had been so adamant about her not understanding a single word of English that my mom and I had pretty much believed her. On one of our trips back to Singapore several years ago, our whole family had gone out for a day of shopping. My mom and I started walking ahead of my grandmother and my aunt and uncle and had started teasing my grandmother in English.

"Make sure to really bargain your butt off with the shopkeeper if you're going to buy those things. Especially in front of grandma," my mom said.

"I know," I replied. "She's a bargaining machine. She gets so angry when she's bargaining to get the best deal it's absolutely scary! It's like the shopkeepers have to pay her to buy their items. I always get so embarrassed whenever she gets like that."

"I know," my mom said. "That's why we call her 'The Dragon Lady'." We started laughing rather hysterically.

"I heard that!" My grandmother yelled in Chinese from about five feet behind us. "I understood every single word you said!"

In disbelief, my mom and I asked her what we said. In verbatim, my grandmother recited (in Chinese, of course) everything we had said about her.

Needless to say, if you're going to talk about somebody in front of said somebody in another language, you better make damn sure that somebody REALLY doesn't know the language!

The Sagacious Granddaughter?

When I was a child living with my grandmother in Singapore, we used to take the train to Kluang, Malaysia almost every vacation to visit family. It was such a huge highlight because the train tracks would actually go through some of the more rural parts of southern Malaysia (as well as the obvious urban parts) where you would actually be passing right through people's backyards. One got to see laundry hanging on the clotheslines and even people bathing in their bathing area in the back of their house. One of my favorite sceneries was going through the farms with cows, the rubber plantations, and even the jungle.

It was during one of these trips that I noticed that there were different colored cows. Namely, there were black cows and there were white cows. I turned to my grandmother (because to me at that age, my grandma knew EVERYTHING) and asked: "Grandma, why are there different colored cows?"

"I don't know," she said. "They probably make different kinds of milk."

I remember having thought really hard about her response before asking her:

"So do white cows make white milk and black cows make chocolate milk?"

I also remember my grandmother pausing for a moment before saying: "Yes. Yes, they do."

I am a Sagacious Grandmother-in-training.

Poo Explosion Reason #2

Exploding poop in infants is an awesome thing. Several of my mom friends have packed several outfits into their diaper bag only to go through each outfit in a matter of a few hours. It's really nothing to be concerned about, although cleaning up can always be an adventure ("how did poop get over there?!"). This being said, we've never really chalked up exploding poop to the amount of ice in one's drink (see Poo Explosion #1), nor have we really attributed it to the foods that we nursing mothers consume. Though foods can certainly have an effect on the quality (and sometimes the quantity) of milk produced for our baby, it would take something really special to produce breastmilk that would act as a laxative. More often than not, the way the poop can come out (and the amount) is usually due to a constipated baby. Nary a mom will venture outside her house if her baby hasn't pooped in a several days.

This being said, after yet another lovely poop explosion upon my grandmother, she scolded me. "Why is this always happening? What do you eat when you go out for lunch? Junk food???"

I rolled my eyes and attempted sarcasm: "Yes, grandma. I eat McDonalds EVERY DAY for lunch."

"You see? Too much junk food! See what happens when you don't listen to me???"

"Grandma! I was just kidding!"

"No you weren't! You need to eat better, okay? No more junk food! That stuff is so bad for your baby, he's going to get diarrhea!"

Note to self: do not practice any more sarcasm with Sagacious Grandmother.

The Earring

At a cousin's wedding in August, my grandmother and I were seated at the same table as my cousin's other relatives. These relatives have pretty much known me since forever and I'm still in awe of the fact that their eldest children are about to graduate from college when I still think of them as being little toddlers. Two of kids at our table are brothers with a bit of an age difference, with the younger brother not in his teens yet. The elder brother is quite affectionate towards the younger brother, and is very patient. In fact, my husband and I made a note of how wonderful it was to see that between siblings.

The elder one is about to graduate from college and actually presents himself very well. A very good-looking young man who carries himself very well around others, Joe and I felt very sure that he was going to do well in whatever he wanted to do with the rest of his life. My grandmother also felt the same way and started a conversation with the young man. She asked about his school, what he was studying, and what he wanted to do. She praised him for being so loving and attentive to his younger brother and also praised him for being such a good son. She of course then asked him if he had a girlfriend and if he didn't, to not worry because she knew of a few very available young women back in Singapore and Malaysia. He replied very courteously that he wasn't attached to anyone.

"Well then you shouldn't wear that earring, young man," she declared (maybe a little too loudly), referring to the little stud he had in his earlobe. "Wearing an earring only shows that you're a troublemaker. It shows that you have no respect for other people. You should take that off!"

Mortified, I tried to stop my grandmother from berating the poor young man in front of his parents but it was like trying to stop a runaway locomotive. I quickly apologized to my poor young cousin (because technically, he IS my cousin even if the only way we're related is through our cousin the groom) for the fact that my grandmother speaks without a filter. I then made a mental note to NOT give my grandmother any more wine (she had 1/4 glass of white wine) at parties. By the way, have I mentioned that the happier my grandmother is the louder her voice gets? Rest assured, she was quite the happy great-grandmother who was only made happier with a little bit of alcohol. I definitely caught glances made in our direction by guests seated at other tables several tables away.

It was definitely during that time when I wished I was a part of the Southwest Airlines commercial for "Want to get away?". Where's my "ding", dammit???

It's all about presentation...

I have to confess... I love food. I love the smells of food. I love the taste of food. I just love the very look of food. Which makes it all the harder for me to be the kind of foodie I want to be (sigh... I will sadly never be an Iron Chef judge) because of my allergy to certain foods, though this actually makes my husband quite happy on account of him being able to eat more of what I can't and won't eat (I've only lately started eating cilantro again and it's barely... LONG story there!).

I've never quite possessed the taste buds necessary to be a badass chef, nor have I the skills (though I'm very proud that I made little flowers out of carrot slices for a particular clay pot once). Suffice it to say that the food I cook is definitely edible and considering I haven't had much time to really indulge in fine cooking, the fact that I can put anything together at all has been a feat in itself. Fortunately for me, my grandmother being the awesome cook that she is, gave me a great lesson in cooking. I had made dinner one night in an attempt to NOT consume the usual grandmother-fare (see "Hazards of Salad") which was very simple: steamed rice, steamed chinese sausage, steamed eggs, and stir-fried cabbage with dried shrimp. Granted, two out of three were steamed and didn't really require any extra effort on my part but I DID cook the cabbage (stir-fried with some garlic and a little bit of chicken broth)! In fact, my husband and I agreed over dinner that night how nice it was to have a simple dinner and how refreshing it was to eat a plain vegetable dish. I had made quite a bit of it that night and was, in fact, the only thing remaining as leftovers.

The next night, I had come home a bit later than usual and even though I had told my grandmother that I would cook dinner, I had returned to find dinner already made. One of the items I saw cooked and ready to eat was my leftover cabbage, only it wasn't really my leftover cabbage. It resembled my simple stir-fried cabbage dish of the night before except that this one seemed to have huge chunks of chicken in it along with a visible layer of oil coating just about every nook and cranny.

"Grandma, did you recook my cabbage?" I asked rather incredulously.

"Yes, I added some chicken!" She replied happily.

"Why did you add the chicken?"

"So the dish will look prettier!"

So there you have it.

The Real Reason for Confiscation

My grandmother has a tendency of trying to bring things, either from or to abroad, that she most likely shouldn't be bringing. For instance, on a trip up through Malaysia and to Thailand, she bought a bunch of fruit in a market in Thailand. Why? Because they don't have that kind of fruit in Singapore. On a trip to Japan with her friends from tai chi, she smuggled in some flowers that she found to be rather pretty and wanted to grow in front of her flat. Most of the time, she actually gets away with this because she pretty much plays that whole "I'm just a poor old lady" bit and the Customs Inspectors will just wave her on. I would even say that prior to 9/11, she got away with that quite often because she didn't speak nor understand English (which isn't 100% true) and she'll just smile and nod and look every bit the "little ol' lady" (which is a bit hard, considering she's still taller than me, and I'm 5' 6").

When my husband and I arrived at SFO to pick up my grandma, we waited by the gate for quite a while. We soon realized that all the people who had arrived two flights after her had already picked up their respective luggages and on their merry way out of the airport. I started hoping and praying that my poor grandmother hadn't fallen ill or was detained. Close to two hours after the arrival of her flight, we soon found her.

It turned out that she had come out through another gate (oops!) but had only just come out and had been waiting for half an hour. So what happened with the first hour and a half? It seems that the little ol' lady had indeed been detained by the inspectors. And what did the inspector confiscate?

- Zong zi (they're like Chinese tamales. Good stuff!)... about 20 of them
- Instant noodles (yes... I know what you're thinking, but the ones from Singapore are apparently better)
- Chicken essence (Chinese herbal chicken stuff that's actually very good for overall health. Think of it as potent chicken soup)
- Some other foodstuffs that I can't remember anymore

My grandmother was quite irate at having lost so much good food, especially since she had been the one to make the zong zi with her own hands. She was trying to do her best to salvage the remainder but was quite unsuccessful.

"She took all my best things!" She complained once we fetched her and were walking back to the truck. "She took all the instant noodles and wanted to throw everything away. I kept telling her 'no no no' but she said that I couldn't bring in."

"Well," I said, laughing. "That's what happens when you try to bring food in, grandma. It'll get confiscated."

"No," she huffed angrily. "It's because she knows that I'm such a good cook and wants to keep my food to herself."

"That's not why your food got confiscated, grandma."

"It's true. She just wanted the food for herself. I know she just put it aside so she can bring it home for dinner later. She must've taken a look at the food and thought 'mmm... looks good!' and decided to just keep it for herself."

So there you have it. Sagacious Grandmother says that if your stuff ever gets confiscated while travelling through airports, it is because the local inspector wants it for him/herself.

The Hazards of Salad

I know just about everyone will say this about their grandmothers but MY grandmother is, hands-down, THE BEST cook alive. There really wasn't much in Chinese cooking she didn't know how to cook, which was especially good for us when we moved back to California. It's not as if one could get a bowl of laksa or a plate of chicken rice by walking down to your neighborhood hawker centre so I was definitely at a loss when my grandmother moved back to Singapore (this was when I was in middle school).

Once my grandmother came to stay and had started cooking meals for us, I had come to realize that things just weren't what I had remembered from my childhood. I hadn't quite remembered the food tasting as oily or that there was always a dish with some kind of meat in it (chicken or pork, but no beef on account of my grandmother being a devout Buddhist). I quickly found out what made her food taste so good. It was lots of sugar, salt, oil, and good ol' MSG. In fact, my husband and I had just bought one of those big bottles of extra virgin olive oil from Whole Foods and while one bottle would definitely last us for a few months, that bottle was almost depleted in a little over a month! Needless to say, though grandma's cooking is still number one, my husband and I were repulsed by all the extra ingredients on a daily basis.

In an effort to start eating healthier, Joe and I stopped at Whole Foods and picked up a salad from their refrigerated shelves. We brought the salad home and ate alongside my grandmother, who was eating leftovers (being the old-school Chinese person that she is, she does not eat raw stuff).

"Salad for dinner?" She exclaimed. "There's no vitamins in that! How are you going to be full? You're going to starve your son!"

I quickly pointed out that salads had vegetables, and that the particular one I was eating had a hard-boiled egg, mushrooms, and an avocado. All very healthy ingredients which will definitely give my body enough fuel to do whatever it is I need it to do, including milk production. Of course, this all just fell on deaf ears attached to a stubborn mindset.

"You're starving your son. Eat some of this instead," she says, as she plops down a portion of one of her famous dishes into a bowl with some rice: stewed fatty pork.