I wanted to post this yesterday but I couldn’t cos I had an advertorial up 🙁

But better late than never T____T

Happy Birthday Ooib / Brother Ooi / Bra wtf

(I call him “Barry-ah” in a very Chinese way and over the years it evolved into Bra wtf)

(He also once thought he was grown up already and tried calling me Audrey WTF instead of Cheh-cheh but I refused to answer him so he reluctantly had to revert to “Cheh-cheh”)

You’re 23!!!

You’re probably asleep now, after a night of seaweed, vinegar and rice, and hopefully a hard night of partying? wtf

Since it’s your birthday I was going to write a post reminiscing about all the touching sentimental moments we had as siblings.

But none come to mind WTF.

What I remember is… you used to read my diary!  Asshole!  Well if it balances things out a bit, I tried looking for yours too WTF.  But you were too smart for me, had it under lock and key all the time.

We’re only a year apart so we did everything together growing up!  Mum would dress us up in identical clothing except mine was pink and yours blue and I had a skirt while you had pants so we looked like twins.

Our voices sounded exactly the same (before you hit puberty anyway) Even our parents had a hard time telling who was picking up the phone, and once this very funny thing happened!  Ooib called his best friend Kenneth on the cordless phone, and unbeknownst to him, I used the phone after that to call Hsin.  Then Ooib took the phone and pressed redial and Hsin picked up wtf.  She was asleep so she didn’t really hear when Ooib said “Kenneth?” but she heard his voice and thought he was me and said “ya?” and Ooib said “Kenneth what happened to your voice?” to which Hsin promptly hung up hahahahaahah.

Some of our fights were quite terrible!  I remember once chasing him around the house catching him and swinging him around by his arm wtf then releasing him and hitting his head with a hard cover children’s encyclopedia WTF I’m sorry Baz T______T

But then there was also this time I remember we had Chinese class after school (not that it did me any good wtf) and Barry was sitting with his friend whose name is Lee Koon Seng wtf.  I walked by their desks and for some reason Lee Koon Seng (who btw is now married and a DVD seller wtf) said “Barry, why your sister look like alien wan” to which Barry (in the dumbness of youth) dutifully laughed “huh huh huh”.  *heart breaks.  And so I called Lee Koon Seng an “asshole” and he slapped me and I slapped him back.  Then I went home and told my parents and Barry got the shelling of his life for not sticking up for me wtf.

But because we were so close in age and it was just the two of us, we also got along like a house on fire.  We had huge imaginative games where we’d take up half the house with our setups.  Our favorite games as kids were “Babyland” and “Turtle Maze” wtf.

Babyland featured Lolo as the mayor of a country called Babyland and all our other stuffed toys were citizens.  We’d build houses for them all over our rooms and the living room sofas and stuff.

Turtle Maze was back in the time where CDs didn’t exist yet (yes people there is such an era don’t look so shocked wtf) and people used VCRs and video tapes.  We’d line up all our video tapes on the floor to form a maze and then put our pet terrapins at the start of the maze for them to find their way out.  The terrapins would be scared they’d pee and shit all over the floor and our poor maid was stuck cleaning turtle poo wtf.

Btw my terrapin was called Alfie from Roald Dahl’s “Esio Trot” and Barry’s was Paddington cos he liked Paddington Bear wtf.  Then our cousins also gave us their terrapins because they didn’t want them anymore so we called theirs Jonathan, Alexandra and Alyssa after them WTF.

But Paddington died one day 🙁 We were on our way out for tuition when we realized Paddington had his eyes closed and he was all bloated so that his head and legs and tail were all sticking out at angles 🙁

We buried him in the patch outside our house.  And Mum grumbled about us spoiling her garden wtf.

Anyway when we grew up of course we stopped fighting as much.  Because we are so close in age and also maybe because I’m more than a head shorter than him wtf he took it as his responsibility to eye all my boyfriends with suspicion and dislike them upon first glance hahahahaha.

We don’t see each other as much cos we studied at different schools in the US and he’s still there right now finishing up his final year and contemplating grad school *proud

But every time we come home we both get a little teary when we hug albeit awkwardly wtf and we hang out more as adults than as kids although we still bicker and I still sometimes get tired of him wtf.

Last year when classes were all over and I was just waiting for my graduation ceremony, Suet and Shanshan had gone back to Asia, Angela, Mild and Jeannie were touring the US with their families, and my parents were touring too but by themselves FML my brother came over to Moho and we kept each other company just like when we were kids.  Replaying old Beatles songs and singing out loud, watching movies, going down to the Odyssey for whole afternoons so we could read for free wtf, challenging each other to terrible quality foosball games on rundown tables at the student center.

Now we’re both old and I have a job in KL while he’s slogging away at final year at Wabash we don’t have the chance to hang out like that anymore but please take care of yourself ok Bra.

Remember that I love you a lot even though we don’t say things like this.  I’ll always be there for you and I’ll always have your back.

Have a wonderful year and I’ll see you when you come back.

Love,

Cheh-cheh.