Chinese New Year's Eve

And so we have agreed to spend Chinese New Year together as a family - possibly for the last time. It will have to start with the Chinese New Year's eve celebration. I was home early after a rather quiet day at the office. I was went to the office to have my computer notebook fixed. But instead of fixing it, they loaned me another computer to get buy with my work. And after that I took a long drive to Chinatown, hoping to get some BBQ Pork (bak kwa) from the famous Lim Chee Guan brand. But there was no such luck as the shop was already close when I reached there. I had no choice but to head for home. The children were all in when I reached home. It was still early and with time to kill, I started to "repair" the Windows XP system on my Personal Computer in the study room. Just a couple of days ago, while trying to revert to a older "restore point" - the system just refused to operate properly. I have done all sort of tricks but everytime it booted up, it will just show a blank page with the mouse cursor. And that was why sometimes I hated Microsoft so much - there was no choice but to do a repair installation or worse, a fresh installation. There was no other way - as even the command line mode refused to start properly and the recovery console was quite useless as well - it would not allow me to choose an alternative restore point - which if there was a way - would allow me to restart the system properly. To cut the story short, even a repair installation was not working. Even after the repair in which all the files were reinstalled - that bloody blank page was still there. I wasted a couple of hours and still she was not back yet. I was wondering why was she so late in coming back - on Chinese New Year's eve. At long last, she returned. And I started to get the children to have their bath and be ready to head to my brother's house for the reunion dinner. Since the death of my mother a couple of years back, the reunion dinner has somewhat lost its lustre. But still, we tried to gather together on this particular day - all the brothers and sisters - whenever possible - to get together just for dinner. And this year it will be traditional steamboat - just like what we usually had - when mother was around. Our contribution this year will be a couple kilos of prawns and I have already instructed the maid to de-frost them. At long last we were all ready to go. The bloody PC still refused to start properly and I will have to leave it as it was. It was just a five minutes drive to my brother's place and when we reached there, everyone who was supposed to be there were there with the exception of eldest brother and his family. He gave some crap reasons just a couple of days back, replying in email why his family could not join the reunion dinner - some crap reasons like: have to work on the eve, need to pack house, need to visit the next day. I have never seen more crap reasons. Everything looked so normal at the reunion dinner that it looked so unreal. She was at her usual best - there was no trace or any hint of the problem that we were having. I was a lot more subdued and introspective as I knew that it could well be the last reunion dinner with her joining us. My brothers and sister (2 other systems was not round) have totally no clue as to what had happened. And the usual banter continued. It was a joyous occasion, so to speak. But to me there was no joy as what was ahead was a long and ardous road - a path that I will have to take my three children with me as I embarked on my last portion of my journey in life. Dinner was over and stayed for a while longer. The children were getting restless and we made our way home. I retreated into the study room and she slept in the master bedroom together with the kids. As usual, I did not sleep well. I have not been sleeping well in the study room as it was a different bed - not quite the same as the bed I was used to. But nonetheless, I did sleep. When I woke up it was almost 7am. I woke up looked out of the window and realized that her car was gone - she was out. She told me the day before that she was going to the temple in the morning. I washed up and went for my morning walk - even if it was the first day of the Chinese New Year. I did not take the long walk, and it was over in about 30 minutes as I rested in the park. It was unusually quiet in the park. Not a single soul was in sight - that was something to be expected on the first day of Chinese New Year. But I was there sitting on the bench and staring at the empty spaces. And I thought of where she could have been to. A hour had passed since she left the house and she was still not back yet. I was quite sure that she was not back yet as I believed she would call me if she had reached home and realized that the car was gone and I was not around. I had park the car at the other end just in case I needed to use it later. Then she called and the ringing disturbed my thoughts. I did not pick up and call and she called incessantly. I knew I had to make my way home.