Peter was telling Cate and me about his trip to the ministry of manpower last night. Our entire family was on its way to Fair Price to shop for groceries then. Suddenly he broke off in midsentence, saying, “But I shouldn’t be talking about this.” “Why not?” Cate and I asked. “Because I should be reserving this for the ‘how was your day’ portion over dinner.” I just had to laugh at that.
Eversince we moved into our flat, we have been acting like a family unit instead of just a bunch of housemates. Of course our “parents” or our Carlisle and Esme are Joey and Gelle, the couple. Cate is the Ate, Peter is Ditse, and I am Bunso/Shobe. I’m not really the youngest in the group…so why? I’m not sure, really. I’m happy though. I realized, just now, that I’ve never been a bunso, or acted that part, ever, in my entire life before now. I’m the eldest of two siblings, and in all the groups of friends I’ve ever had, I’ve always been nanay-nanayan or lider-lideran. All my life I’ve always had to be the mature one, the responsible one, the one who had to take care of everyone else. Surely an exhausting way to spend a life. What a time to have an epiphany.
Anyway…back to the topic. Like a regular family, we have our night rituals. We watch kapamilya “television” on the laptop set atop the living room table while our daddy, who is a very good cook, whips up dinner. When it’s done, everyone helps set up the dining table with the dinnerware that Peter and Joey scoured all over Singapore before eventually finding them – tasteful yet affordable buys – in Ikea. During our first such dinner, I looked around the table at this my new family and asked Joey, seated at the head of the table, “How was your day?” Round robin, everyone took turns talking about their day, and the tradition began.
So how was my day? It was a holiday but I had to report to the office as one of the skeletal force that had to be in place for global users who do not celebrate this holiday. My teammate said I did not have to take the MRT today – cab fare was reimbursible, along with lunch. I discovered that it costs 10 bucks to get to the office by cab (more than thrice the amount by MRT), and takes less than 20 minutes. And since I also had thrice the budget I would normally allot for a meal, I splurged on two favorites – oil-based pasta (prawn aglio fusilli) and chocolate mousse. On the way to the restaurant, though, I saw that a shoe shop had a sale of shoes in odd sizes for only 5 bucks a pair. I found a pair in my size. Eeps, so that means I wear an odd size? T.T Then Cate met me at Suntec after work, and we bought a rack and a bunch of bananas (to mix with the ice cream Cate bought for us from her first salary which she received yesterday) and rode a Mercedes benz home. It was actually a cab; yeah they make cabs out of Mercedes Benzs here. We passed through the KPE tunnel, the longest tunnel in Southeast Asia. That last bit of trivia was shared by the cab driver himself. Pretty educated cabbies here, huh?