Month: January 2008

Today, my bio-units and I went to morning mass, home to change clothes, the post office to drop-off one piece of mail, McDonald’s for breakfast, and walked around the Great Mall in Milpitas, CA. After the first circuit walk of the place, Paw and I encountered the slower Maw whom we found talking to “Minh” and her husband, Ben, after the second run.

This Filipino couple had discussed their situation about their ungrateful son and how he married a pregnant woman (from another man) against their wishes. To his bio-units’ regret of not being there to protect the boy prior to this marriage from hell, they not only paid for the couple’s wedding but had the sentiment of cutting him off completely.

These types of encounters (as I’ve previously mentioned in my blog) are meant to provide us a path to make decisions, for example, on the fate of Brat. After buying chicken chow mien from Jade Restaurant and more food from Valerio Bakery, we ate lunch at Rose Restaurant and ordered three lunch specials at $5.75 per individual plate. Our mission was to give the boy an ultimatum to his affair with Twit.

And after chewing the rest of our lunch and with my cellphone on hand, Paw called and instructed the boy to come for dinner tonight as this was a very important discussion. We waited until around 05:00PM, when Brat had arrived. He claimed he had an important project at work and must return by 06:00PM.

Besides greeting the boy with ‘I Love You’, I sarcastically replied, ‘Yeah, right’ in regards to this ‘urgent project’ of his. He got mad as usual because I sensed this as another lie to escape the truth of why he was summoned to eat dinner with us. My plan of ‘love’ is to tell him more hurtful truth: I personally won’t accept her into the bio-units, period.

Good thing I rehearsed my scenarios with Paw earlier while frying the left over steamed rice from last night to mix in with today’s left over fried rice from lunch. I knew what to expect of the boy upon his arrival based from our conversations in the past. And knowing how limited the ability of my Paw to express himself clearly in English, my coaching did wonders for him.

I told Paw to properly ask Brat how he was, wait for an answer and then ask how his relationship with Twit – to which the boy answered, ‘Ok’. I heard Paw tell the boy, ‘I don’t think so’. And the discussion ensued with Paw slowly but surely supporting his argument why Twit is VERY disrespectful to our Filipino culture and more importantly to us as future in-laws.

The truth, based on today’s encounter in the mall as with other horror stories from other elders with similar problems, is that the Chinese folks stick to their OWN KINDS. And out of their tradition totally ignore us OUTSIDERS, by the way. We simply didn’t understand why we were ignored by the ungrateful Twit when we visited Kim at the maternity ward. We know now.

The rebellious boy continued to defend that girl and the fact that if anything should happen to him, he will ‘loose’ whatever ‘gift’ I had suggested Paw put as down payment for the house, if the boy is not legally and financially prepared. He insists that he will marry her despite the OBVIOUS sentiments of bio-units, relatives, friends, us and PERFECT STRANGERS, seriously! The signs are all around — thank you!

As a sad result, Paw had given him an ultimatum that if he decides to marry her, Brat is on his own. The boy got mad, slammed the utensils (lightly) upon the plate, got up from his chair rather hastily and showed himself out the door with some remarks of love and thanks for our discussion at around 05:35PM, which was too early since he is only five minutes away from his work.

We talked a little more about processing other stuff later on with this new arrangement, cleaned up the place, did the dishes and decided to find out if his car was parked at the work place. So both Maw and I left around 06:08PM and sadly, not surprisingly, did not locate his vehicle. We knew he had lied the moment he arrived from dinner. I guess our spider senses do work, after all.

Maw cried on our way to where he worked after I reported having a second rare migraine headache, which I believed was sustained from tonight’s conversation at dinner. Maw cried about how she felt sorry for herself and not having anyone support her during our growing years. I think she worried about my health and not being able to take stress in the form of heated debates like tonight.

We arrived home, danced to burn off our meal and relaxed the whole night – showering, watching television, eating ramen and keeping to ourselves mostly. I tried to busy myself with the repair of my broken magnetic bracelet and broken jade necklace but can’t help but think about how each generation will continue to do whatever they want – leave the old behind. Well for some outmoded followers of TRADITIONS, that won’t work. Y’all know this for a fact, eh?

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