Cousins

My mother hailed from a very big family. She was born as the eldest daughter and has other seven siblings in the family. Throughout my personal observation, I realise that the two biggest weak points in having such a gigantic traditional family being:

1. The family is always poor.
2. The siblings do not care about each other by heart.

My father came from another huge family, too. And, the saddest thing is, I don't know how many siblings my father owns. He never gets along well with them due to some family conflicts that I would never understand. So, this proves the second point as stated above to be correct.

Anyways, what I want to talk about here is my cousins. I am not sure how many cousins I have got from my father's side but I familiar with my mother's. If I am not mistaken, I think I have altogether 15 cousins from my maternal family. Most of them are around my age, which allowed me to have a lot of playmates back then. Yes, we were really close. Though, unavoidably, we all know that things changed tremendously in the process of growing up. Without me realising, we move away from each other eventually after losing the purest childlike innocence. Sometimes, I couldn't help but wonder-is this some kinds of price that we have to pay to grow up?

In fact, there are ongoing issues among ours parents, which might be one of the factors that drift us apart. However, I just couldn't help but wishfully indulge in the dreams of 'Maybe'. Yeah, maybe we could do better, if shits did not occur or we tried harder. Well, what done cannot be undone and nothing can be fixed through a one-way street. I am just going to rearrange my memories, update the data and then perhaps, seal off part of the old recollection.

THEY used to be my sweetest brothers and sisters... But now they are merely strangers whom I could barely recognize.

I. Ngee
He went to UK two years for study. His parents sold out two double storey-houses to sponsor his luxury life over there. Besides, he 'borrowed' 80K from my grandpa as school fee but we all know that he would never return the money. He would not even visit the grandparents after getting back from UK. He got a job now in KL and seems to be doing pretty good. I haven't seen him for years.

II. Fen
She failed in college for several times and then changed to another college to continue study. I heard some rumours that she did not graduate from the other college, too. Now, she is tutoring kids and might be running her own tuition center?! She teaches piano, too. When she was old enough to know that her family is rich and others were poor, she started treating others in a cold manner. She was brainwashed by her mom completely and treating everybody as her enemy.

III. Ming
He is a very good looking kid. He did not do good in school so after high school, he started helping out at his parents' store. He was spoiled in someways and intended to run some illegal business as a way to get rich. Owing to his gifted appearance, sweet-talking mouth and generous spending behaviours, he was able to change his girlfriends on a monthly basis ever since he was 17. He cheated on most of his previous girlfriends and currently he is co-habituating with a girl who has been dating him for like 4 years. This girl had abortion for three times and wanted to leave him. Though, the girl's mother injected her with the idea that sticking with a rich guy is the remedy to happiness for women. So, she is still staying with him, driving a big Honda car given by my cousin's mother.

IV. Na
She got a certificate in tourism and had worked as a tour-guide for a while. She used to lead the trips to China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. She is not the slim type but she is very attractive I shall say. She used to tell everybody that there were a lot of guys went after her or hit on her whenever she goes. Though, none of us could understand why she would once be with a jobless physically-challenged guy who took her car and cheated on her. Anyways, she learned a lesson and after that and now dating a rich dude who owns three boutiques in the region. According to my relatives, this rich dude is running a lot of illegal business underneath. Na resigned from her tour-guide job, drives a 'Waja' and became the lady boss of one of the boutiques. Many relatives who went to her shop complained that she shows people's attitude when they tried to get friendly. Her mother was upset about her frequent sleep-overs at the boyfriend's. She told me that she wished that the daughter could get pregnant someday and got married as she feels painful to witness the things going on everyday.

V. Jo
She is a teenager and she has no interest in whatever that relates to academic. After high school, she works at her sister, Na's shop. She likes nothing but buying new clothes, putting on make-up and taking pictures of herself. She was in some sorts of beauty pageant contest before but she did not win. She is just 18 but I heard that she has changed plenty of boyfriends ever since she starts dating. She spent like 600++ to perm her hair and has made up her mind to be a barbie doll, as if it was a blessing for eternal happiness.

Frankly speaking, I have not seen or talk with any of them for years. Asides from my personal encounters, the rest of the information were given by some other relatives. As such, the data might be biased or inaccurate. Besides, they can talk about me like the way I did to them here, since I have a lot of my flaws, too. Nonetheless, believe it or not, I am not trying to generate a very bad picture of them. It's just that part of me wished that we were still a group of kids, holding each other hands, playing games without judging anybody.

Let's turn back time...