Cancer

Finally, after 10 years of break I manage to pull up my courage to write this part of our lives. Though it hurts a lot and tears still running. Aly is now 13 in secondary school. 

We were about to move out and rent a condominium when cancer strikes. It started with an ovarian cyst the size of 1.5cm, we found out on routing checkup at the gynae, I was very worried and ask Eugenia to go take it out immediately, but she was reluctant. Then the gynae says most of the cyst will disappear by itself so just wait and see without checking with Eugenia her family history, her mum got ovarian cancer but was treat early. Eugenia's younger brother told me that on her funeral day, if her younger brother knows that she as older sister should be aware of her mum's condition too, but she didn't tell the gynae. Furthermore 2 of her cousins and another aunty also had ovarian cancer, one died in her 40s. The history was so obvious, and we missed that very crucial period of stopping the cancer. 

We waited 6 months for the next review at the gynae hopping for the best, but the cyst had grown to >5cm. Gynae told us we need to go for the opt to remove the cyst, so we did. The moment they did the opt the gynae found she was stage 3 ovarian cancer with a survival rate of 20%. My world just collapsed, I lost my mum 2 years back and now I was about to lose my wife. We didn't tell her parents what happened as we didn't want them to worry but can't really hide such big problem.

The next 3 months was the hardest time of our lives, to say it was hell will be an understatement. Everyday we had different problems popping up and running in and out of the hospital. We started chemotherapy with the so call gold standard for ovarian cancer, a combination of Cisplatin and paclitaxel through IV. She needs to have a catheter inserted on the right side of her collar bone and stay there throughout the course of treatment, it was very uncomfortable and even more painful to look at. I tried to put on a strong face but inside me everything falls apart I was sucking up tears throughout the whole 3 months and beyond. I made a vow to keep her warm, love and take care of her in good times and bad, I will stay with her till the last day no matter what. Eugenia didn't want to see anybody but just want me to stay by her side, so I quit my job and take care of her 24 hours. She just want to be with me and nobody else.

The first chemo is in the morning and saw her condition getting better, we were so happy, but all the symptoms came back in the night, and I started to call her oncologist by mid-night, he told me to come to his office the next morning without Eugenia. When I saw him, he told me point blank, the chemotherapy is not working, his hands are tight and he doesn't have any more solution for us, he is good enough to tell us the truth and asked us to go look for other solution fast. But we have no idea what to do. 

It came one problem after another, we struggled to find answers, pray and cry everyday. I was desperate to help her, she knows how I felt and she said to me, the day the gynae told her about the cancer she went to Novena church and sat there praying for very long, 2-3 hours, while I was on my shift work, then she felt a spirit came and wrap around her, seems to be telling her everything will be taken care, and everything will be fine. I didn't understand what this means until much later, I was still thinking something will appear miraculously and the cancer will be gone. I was so wrong.

Her condition was getting worst by the day till the last month when her blood pressure shot up the roof, 270. We have to admit her into the hospital to manage her condition, her stomach was bloated like a pregnant woman with ascites water just to find out later it was actually cancer fiber instead. She even went into an epilepsy fit due to the high BP and I was running all over the ward calling for help. She couldn't take any more food because her intestine was jam up with tumors. The cancer was very aggressive, something that even the oncologist had no experience.

That last month we cry a lot, hug a lot and keep telling each other how much we love one another. We discussed about the arrangement, I told her to take a rest, I'll take good care of Aly and bring her up. When the time comes, I'll go and look for her, and she said ok. When the nurse heard that she went out of the room and cry, we didn't mean to make anybody cry, we were so sorry. I even tell her that I'll stay around to look after her parents, but she told me not to force myself if I can't take it, just take Aly and move on. 

The oncologist gave her an even stronger but older chemo drug which he regrated so much, it worsens her condition to the point that she was throwing up blood and we have to give her blood and platelet transfusion. And even that didn't stop her internal bleeding and she continues to throw up blood.

On her very last consciousness she asked, is it over and all the nurses and doctor replied yes, it's over and she felt into a coma for the next 2 days. On the very last hour, her blood pressure dropped, and the ECG machine was giving out warning alarm, and I was crying my heart out for her to come back. Then everything went silent, Eugenia left peacefully. 

Aly sitting on the coffin knocking at the door shouting "mummy wake up, mummy wake up"

Aly asked "daddy why you put mummy in the box?"

This is my family, my wife and our little girl.

The last journey.

Eugenia was placed side by side with my mum at the church

Hope Aly still remembers her mum. 

Eugenia wanted to write a diary of her cancer journey, but I wasn't comfortable for her to write knowing that I will have to take over the diary and finish it for her. I told her not to do that but regrated immediately. So this blog was created to fulfil her final wish and solely dedicated to her. Till we meet again. 

Always loved by:

Hugh, signing off.

Alyssa

We wait four years for a house to come so that we could have kids but unfortunately it did not happen, no thanks to government, they squeeze the supply so much that at its height the balloting was 10 applications to 1 house. We were quite worried as age is catching up and I was still hoping to have three girls, so we decide to go for our first baby without a house. I was hesitance but Eugenia wanted so badly so I agreed with the thought of no roof of our own still on our mind. We were staying in my brother’s place and after Aly was born, we moved back to Eugenia’s place knowing that there will be conflict with her parents. When we moved to her house her specific instruction for me is stay in the room and shut the door while she goes to work, I was doing night trading at that time; this was how bad it went.

 

We tried for the first month and failed but on the 2nd month she was pregnant, we were very happy but worried because Eugenia was 38-year-old, hers was considered high risk pregnancy. The first trimester was very unstable; she had bleeding just outside the womb and had to leave her work and stay home quite frequently, she had to go through extra test to see if the baby has Down syndrome and it was a very stressful moment for us. What if it’s tested positive, how are we going to handle that and are we going to end the pregnancy? Her gynae was recommended by her good Catholic friend but he seems to suggest an abortion if the baby was bad which was our greatest predicament as Catholics. We pray so hard and fortunately the test came back negative, it was a great relieve. Then there were other things like viruses which she had that will cause meningitis to the baby.

 

After the 1st trimester it was smooth sailing all the way to birth, Alyssa came right on time on the end of the nine months. The night before Eugenia felt the pain but wasn’t sure if the baby was coming, this was our first time and we were asking each other the same question, is it coming? Since she felt the pain my first reaction was let’s go to the hospital even if it was a false alarm. The moment we reached the hospital the pain got even more, and we knew this is it, so we asked for the epidural, she slept through the night with the epidural without any feeling and her gynae woke us up at 8am in the morning. He humorously asked her if she wants to give birth now, I was still in dreamland and reluctantly said OK let’s go for it, but Eugenia seems to tell us get my baby out now, she can’t wait to see Aly and hold her by her arms. The birth was very smooth and fast, he burst the water bag with a scalper follow by three pushes on the tummy and Alyssa was out.

 

My first reaction was no reaction; I was stunted and didn’t know what to do, then the nurse asked me to say hello to the baby and guess what, I wave to Aly said hi baby and that’s it. I didn’t know what to say to Aly, introduce myself? Hi this is your dad nice to meet you. I felt so stupid standing there snapping pictures didn’t know what to say to Aly to the point that I was avoiding her. Seeing a life came out of Eugenia totally stunted me, luckily the nurse took her away to the nursery. Then came the worst part, Eugenia was calling for me and I turned around both the gynae and she was laughing at me, I nearly puke when the gynae held up the placenta in front of me. I jokingly asked him to pack it up so that I could bring home and cook it for Eugenia to eat, I could still remember her reaction after that. That’s probably how much fun we had together.
 

When the nurse brought Aly to us for breast feeding, we realized that she was having menses and the doctor told us it was false puberty due to high level of growth hormone called estrogen in Eugenia’s body which later found to be part of the cause for her cancer or at least the reason why her cancer spread so fast. We didn’t realize that and the gynae also overlook it until it’s too late. Eugenia had vitamin D deficiency and super high level of estrogen when she was diagnosed with cancer, in fact, she had a cancer marker even before we got married but we just didn’t know what was that until the oncologist explains to us that it's a reading for the cancer. I’ll go into more detail on the cancer chapter.
 

On the day of discharge, sister Benedict brought us to the hospital chapel to pray over Aly and off we went. By night, Aly choked on her milk and we panic, at mid night we were back in the hospital A & E. The doctor check her up and found nothing but she was crying the whole night, so we went back the next morning, turned out she stopped crying when the pediatric gave her some milk. So much for parenting, how we wish this girl comes with an instruction manual.

 

As Catholics baptism is a big thing for us, my definition of baptism is the acceptance of the Christian faith and I wanted Aly to decide for herself if she wanted to be a Catholic, that means baptism will have to wait till she’s old enough to decide but Eugenia had a different ideas, she said baptism is a blessing from God that he recognize this is his child and will look after her but to me everyone on earth are god’s children baptize or not so why is there such things as membership privilege? Anyway, I’ll go along with Eugenia if this is her wish for Aly but we wanted to make it good for Aly, she was born just before Easter and we wanted so much for her to be an Easter baby. The Easter baby title will stick to her for life and it’s a once-a-year event, either you are an Easter baby or not for the rest of your life, doesn’t matter if there are more infant baptisms on that month but this title of Easter baby will be with her for life, so we were looking forward to it. Who doesn’t want the best for their children? I want my god son’s parents who are our friends from the same perish to be Aly’s god parents during baptism, but Eugenia wanted her god sister to be Aly’s god mum because they book her before she was born. She chose them on a first come first serve basis but I’m very different, I was thinking along the line of guardianship if something happens to us. I felt that my god son’s parents are more suitable to teach Aly about money and survival since they stay in Bukit Timah area and belongs to the higher income group, we probably have the same beliefs and attitude about money since they said they are interested to invest in our childcare center. 


We didn’t have a fight over this, but I could see Eugenia was very disturb with my decision, she was more like obligated to her god sister’s request so in order not to put her in a very difficult position I agreed to it which later turn out to be a big disappointment. Aly’s god parent wanted to go on a vacation and persuaded Eugenia to postpone the Easter baptism so we delay the baptism for two months but come baptism day the whole family were quarantine for H1N1 and we had to ask a proxy to stand in for them. We were so disappointed that we screw up our only child’s baptism and Aly was baptized without a god parents.

 



Weekend out, Aly was very sad.

On the brighter note when Eugenia was very sick, we couldn’t look after Aly and it was the god parents who were kind enough to look after her for those three very difficult months. We only get to see Aly during the weekends, we would pick her up and go for lunch and shop around at the mall and after that the god mum will pick her up at the mall. Naturally Aly will cry when she had to leave us and god mum has her own idea of stopping Aly from crying, she’ll approach us and snatch Aly away from us without giving Aly a chance a say goodbye to us. One time we could see Aly crying very badly behind their car calling for us while they drove off, it was so painful for Eugenia that she started to cry after the car was out of sight and I had a hard time trying to calm her down.

 

Eugenia was so happy to have Aly, I have never seen her so happy in that 10 years when we are together. It really broke her up in the last 3 months without Aly and every weekend incident took the toll on her, it has affected her condition so much that if I could do it again, I would just keep Aly by our side and employ a maid. Until the day she dies her main concern is still Aly.

 

Aly staring at whatever left of mummy

Immediate after Eugenia’s funeral I took Aly back and for the next two weeks she had nightmares in the middle of the night, she'll start kicking her legs and crying so bad that I had to wake her up and hold her in my arms to calm her down to sleep. I send her back to God mum again when I had to attend a meeting in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia for and week and when Aly came home the two weeks of nightmares started again. Aly was very uncomfortable with her God mum till today, she doesn’t want to talk about it even though she still calls her God mum and has phobia towards her. I was very puzzled and still can’t make Aly talk about it. Fortunately, when Aly was much older she finally told me, God mum made her sit in the kitchen crying while the family enjoys their meal. Aly was made to sit alone in the kitchen, scare and without us by her side at 2-year-old, this will be my regret that I will bring to my grave. 

The Wedding

We got married without a house but before that we have to go through engage encounter run by the Catholic Church; it was a weekend stay-over session for couples planning to get married. We had a hard time trying to answer some questions about how we’re going to coup with her parents as both are equally domineering in her life, it was very stressful for her as she had no answers for those questions, by the end of the 2 days session she even asked me if I wanted to postpone the wedding. In my mind I need to prove my commitment to her dad and try to set her free, so I decided to go ahead with the wedding. The question is will you allow your parents to get involve with you couple's affair? It's actually very simple to answer, it's all over the bible. Genesis 2:24, Mathew 19:5, Mask 10:7, Mark 10:8, Ephesians 5:31, man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. So NEVER get our parents involve in our affairs, period. 

I just started working after 4 years of studies and our finance was stretched to the max, we didn’t want to have a wedding dinner, at 34 wedding dinner seems to be a chore than a celebration. We were planning to do a church wedding followed immediately with the honeymoon and when we told her parents about our plans her dad nearly had a heart attack, they have so many friends and relatives that to do a simple no dinner wedding will be over his dead body, he believes he need to announce to the whole world that his daughter is getting married, a marriage without dinner will not be a marriage. Eugenia explained to him that we wanted to save our money for the other aspects of the wedding like photo album and our honeymoon, besides we are planning to invite everybody to the church, to us the church is more important than the restaurant but to them is the other way round. The issue dragged for weeks and her mum will ask several times if we are sure about that, so I told the mum both Eugenia and I were just earning enough to survive, we hardly have any savings, if they wanted the dinner we’ll have to give up the honeymoon and some other things but in actual fact we are just too lazy for the dinner. Eugenia was staring at me and seems to be telling me she wants her honeymoon, words got to the dad and he decided give Eugenia $10,000 as her wedding gift, he make it a point to tell me at my face the money is for Eugenia not for me but we could use it for the dinner. Probably because of this my impression for them was very bad. We had about 15 tables at $550 each, paid 50% deposit. I have 3 for my family and friends, no colleagues or relatives, Eugenia took the rest for her friends, colleagues and relatives. We used our credit cards for most of the payments and by the end of the dinner we busted all our cards, we had to go to the ATM machine to draw out $4000 cash to pay the restaurant. After that we spend the night in Westin hotel complimentary from the restaurant, it was a big club room with a king size bed, the start of our happiest moments. The next day we sat on the bed like two little kids counting the money from the red packets and delightfully we made $10,000 profit from the dinner, I told Eugenia she can buy anything she wants with the money, it’s hers anyway. From the looks of her eyes her mind went wild but she didn’t spend it at all during the honeymoon, so it was kept in her bank until we pay down payment for our car. Jokingly I asked can we do another dinner on our 10th anniversary so that we can make another $10,000 and she said nobody will come by then.

I was busy working on an offshore platform in the gulf of Thailand so she volunteers to hunt for wedding bends, her good friend recommended House of Hung in Far East Shopping Center Orchard Road, my first thought was why there? It’s a shop more for tourists than locals and their price is not going to be cheap, but we got the bends there anyway, just want her to be happy, while my mum gave her a full set of diamond jewelries including a ring with 4 little diamonds. Since we bought our rings there, we thought we could bring the diamond ring back to do a trade-in and get a bigger one as my special gift for her, unfortunately we got a 0.3 carat VVS1 for more than $3000 just to find out later that they didn’t deduct the price of our old diamond ring. I was quite angry at that time but since Eugenia love the ring so much, I quickly forgot about it, but we will never go back to that shop again.

3400m Mt He Huan, 10° C during summer

As we were on a tight budget we went back to Taiwan for honeymoon, the only different was we were too lazy to drive out of the city and it’s a shorter trip compared to the last one. The first trip we rented a car and went up 3400m on their 2nd highest peak without a GPS, it was very scary as we had to drive in the dark clueless of where we were heading, in the day we drove into the clouds by the side of the cliff on a single lane two directional road in zero visibility, we could only see the bonnet of our car. Along the way we saw big container trucks got stuck on the mountain and railings broken off, signs of vehicle falling off the cliff, it was a very tense moment, but we were rewarded with snow; the whole mountain was covered with snow. We went from Taipei, Danshui, Yilan to Hualien and into the Taroko gorge and up the mountain call He Huan Shan, then down past Nantou to Sun Moon Lake, Taichung and Kaohsiung and back to Taipei. It was very tiring, and we spend most of the nights sleeping in the car so much that we have feelings for the car; Eugenia didn’t want to return the car, so I promise her to get one in Singapore. This was the same route Aly and I took on our Jun Taiwan trip for Eugenia's 1st death Anniversary.

For the honeymoon we just wanted to laze around do nothing, so we went shopping, night market, hot spring, spa and lots of food, we even met up with my Taiwanese friend. We went to the whole sale market for ladies' clothes, wu fen pu (五分埔), spend the whole day there and Eugenia just manage to get 3 t-shirts, she’s not much of a shopper, doesn’t like to buy things. Then we went around the city and eat like king and queen. Her favorite Taiwanese food is the Tainan meat ball and mine is the slimy fried oyster, then we stumbled upon this really nice dish with slice beef and some kind of pancake rolled into one and sweet sauce in between, we love it so much we were thinking of coming back the 3rd time. Another of our favorites was the crepe from Danshui night market, we try that on the first visit and part of the reason why we went back to Taiwan, just can’t have enough of this little roadside savory crepe, we couldn’t find anything close to that in Singapore. Also, in Singapore we don’t fancy teppanyaki, but Taiwan is very good for that because of the close proximity to Japan, they have teppanyaki almost everywhere from street stores to high class restaurant and we would have it every other day. Looking back, I could had brought her to the most expensive one, where the chef serves maximum of 6 persons or 3 couples at $100 per person.

   

I was trying to make her grow fat but fail, she just can’t eat much and threw most of her food at me and I ended up fatter instead. The one thing we enjoy the most is the hot spring, we had a two-hour package hot spring with massage in a very posh spa hotel call Shui Mei in Beitou, about 15 mins MRT ride from Taipei main station, slightly expensive but the place to go. We shopped a lot but not for ourselves, she was always shopping souvenirs for friends and relatives and I’m too lazy to buy anything. The trip was more relaxed and less stressful, we enjoy so much that we didn’t want to go back.

The question of where to stay is still unanswered, we knew we can’t stay with my mum too long as she got cancer and planning to sell the house, split the money between my siblings. So the first idea that came to Eugenia's mind is to go back to her house since she had her own room. But the dad didn’t agree, he believes the daughter should not move back after marriage, fortunately my friend’s dad rented his house to us, and we had 1 year of newfound freedom. That was also the happiest moment of her life, we’ll only go back to her parents’ place every alternate weekend and have two full weeks of our private time though the mum will make her call home everyday and if she forgets the mum will bark the daylight out of her. She enjoys her new life so much that she was so reluctant when we had to give up the house and move to my house to take care of my mum. We were still trying to get a house from HDB but every balloting ended with an even bigger disappointment.

 

We came back to my friend’s empty house after our honeymoon without a bed; we ordered a queen size bed but was not due for delivery, so we spend our first week sleeping on the floor. The house was very empty, but we don’t really mind because we had each other and that’s all we needed. It was the most beautiful memory we ever had on our marriage.

Over the years we had very little arguments and never fight until Aly came. When we move back to her house we started to have more arguments mainly on how we should care for Aly and half of the time over the parents. My army buddy who rented the house to us warned me of the in-law issue, but I didn’t listen, still believe that I will get along with them at that time. Moving back was the biggest mistake, we thought that everything will be the same as before but with Aly things are very different. We were very stress out and Eugenia was having insomnia, I’ll touch further on a later topic.

Eugenia and her dad

Eugenia’s dad is by far the most old-fashion person of all the older generations I ever met, my primary school teachers are so much more updated than him. Not much to say about except old block, super outdated that can’t accept new ideas.

Eugenia and I came home very late one night when we were dating, I was on public transport and still staying with my mum in Jurong, so it’s a long way home, if I miss the bus, it’ll will be a cab from Telok Blangah to Jurong West, so Eugenia suggested that I stay for the night and take a bus home the next day. I asked her to seek her parents’ permission first, don’t want to shock them the next morning to see their daughter’s boyfriend sleeping over. She went over to their room, came back and told me permission granted, as a respect I decided to sleep in the hall and she sleeps in her own room, but she insisted I take her bed while she goes to the hall; we kept the room’s door open. We didn’t do anything funny; Eugenia is a very good Catholic, no sex before marriage so the four years before marriage we kept to this strict rule. The next morning we woke up and I went to the hall and sat on the sofa, the dad would have saw Eugenia on the sofa as he wakes up at 5am everyday. Then while I was watching the TV with the dad sitting on my left, I was actually waiting for him to say something because for some reason I knew he’s not comfortable with me stay over. He finally spoke, he waited till Eugenia was not with me and told me sternly that he doesn’t want me to stay over at their house but cut it short when Eugenia returned. In front of Eugenia I promised him no more staying over, Eugenia asked her dad what’s going on and he kept quiet, but I told her what the dad said when we went back to her room. She was quite angry because to get such warning at 28 years old is quite embarrassing, we are old enough to book a hotel room and do what we want, and we really didn’t do anything at all.

There was a time when I was asked to go KL Malaysia to help out on a presentation and I asked Eugenia to come along, at 29 years old and the dad don’t allow her to go so I went there myself with another friend and his family. We were so busy preparing for the day we hardly have time to stay in the hotel, it was all work for me and Eugenia could actually go shopping, she was very disappointed.

We still wanted to go travel together and really enjoy ourselves, so we came out with a plan to go Taiwan. She told her folks she’s going with her friend and we were supposed to meet at the airport, but when the parents said they wanted to send her to the airport we have to change the meeting point to the boarding gate instead and she needs to cook up a story why the friend is not there to meet her at the departure area, luckily they didn't turn up as the flight was early in the morning. It was a very adventurous trip not just for Taiwan but also the parents’ part, the feeling at that time was like doing a James Bond type mission, Eugenia was so happy to have 11 days of freedom and I vow to give her that freedom for the rest of her life. We drove around the whole island sleeping in the car and hotels still keeping to the strict Catholic rule of no sex before marriage. This was the trip that Eugenia saw for the first time in her life professional gangsters in tuxedo, surprisingly the gangsters’ boss was staying in the same hotel with us in Kaohsiung. She was quite worried but she trusted me a lot and I just told her we are much safer than walking on the street, these big-time gangsters carry guns and not likely to start a fight, in Taiwan only small-time gangsters fight on the street.

Though the dad is an old block Eugenia and I agree he’s a very good dad, much better than mine. I had one who was a child abuser, wife beater, womanizer, drunker and gambler. Eugenia’s dad is nothing short of a super dad bringing up two graduates while my dad doesn’t allow us to go to school. Her dad is always trying to be a responsible dad so much that he finds it hard to quit, he fails to realize that his children are now grownups with their own life.

After Eugenia’s death he simply assumes that he’ll take the responsibility to look after Alyssa without realizing that Alyssa still has a dad. He’ll buy food for her everyday without checking with me and almost always massed up Aly’s feeding schedule. When Aly and I dine out he’ll accuse me for not giving Aly food as he didn’t see Aly eating under his nose. He’ll give fruits, Oreo, chocolates and anything he can find just before Aly’s mealtime and when time for her proper meal she could not eat anymore. I got no choice but to stop him from giving Aly food, the next thing you know he asked me when am I going to move out. After a while he started feeding Aly again. When Aly miss behave, I need to punish her by making her stand in a corner, he’ll pull her away. He interfered in all aspect of Aly’s up bringing and gave totally no respect to me as Aly’s father, I had a hard time trying to regain control and realized how much Eugenia been through when she’s looking after Aly while I was happily enjoying my $15000 job.

We also have very different mindset of what food is good for Aly, while her pediatrician told us to give her more milk, he thinks milk is useless and try to replace her milk with carbohydrates; anything that is make of rice. In the beginning I gave in to him and Aly’s milk was down to a bottle of 180ml per day, she was also down to skin and bone, we had an argument on that and I was told to keep my mouth shut. So I took back Aly and start giving 4 bottles per day and sometimes 6 with some solid food, multi vitamin and fiber, she gain back some weight but still not what I would like, still trying to make her eat more.  Though his intention is a good one but he failed to understand that his method is outdated and probably cause malnutrition to Eugenia, Eugenia was underweight from very young which I believe caused her health condition. I wanted to get her an NTUC term policy but was rejected due to this, guess the insurance company knew something about being underweight.

Overall I still appreciate his present when I need to attend business meetings and I can’t bring Aly along, he has been a very good help but unfortunately, we have very different views.

Eugenia and her mum

Eugenia seems to be a very submissive girl next door, always pleasing others but inside her it’s another story. After being with her and the family for a few months I realized that Eugenia had very little confidence and this have something to do with the mom. The mom was a very domineering figure in the family, so much so that the dad called her empress dowager. She’ll throw her weight around whenever she likes and nobody in the family dare say a word when she did that. Eugenia being the only girl in the family was very close to the mom and naturally she came under the repressive regime of the mom more than any family member, she’s more like a servant for the mom than a daughter. She cannot sound her displease as she’ll be taken down immediately and never allow to show her temple, there was once she tries to argue with the mom and was swiftly suppress with something like how dare you talk against me and immediately Eugenia kept quiet, and that was after we got married. If I were to stand up for Eugenia, the situation might be worst, and I'll put her in a very difficult position.

Eugenia did tell me that she had difficulty expressing herself, so I was trying to find out what caused that and when I asked was her mom always throwing her weight at them since young, she just kept quiet. To me the mom was not a bad person, it’s just her anger that cost her daughter’s happiness and self-confidence, at times she can blow up just by accidentally stepping on her toe and a lot of time she and I went through a full-scale war with poor Eugenia caught in the crossfire. I simply will not give in to her mom because I believe if I do, more will come.

We gave up our friend’s rental house and stayed with my mom in order to take care of her but when she died, we vacated my brother’s house and were left without a house. We tried to apply for government rental house but was turn down while we were still trying to ballot for a new house, we were not comfortable renting house due to our financials so the decision of moving back to her house is a very difficult one. I could see that she was very unhappy, so we had a long talk, she told me she really enjoyed the first year of our marriage because we were staying by ourselves away from her family. So the plan was let’s give it a try and if things don’t work out, we’ll rent.

Eugenia was totally stress out trying to nurse Aly and still do housework, I was on 12 hours shift 7 days week and can't help her much. Trying to protect her I told her let’s move out and her first reaction was how is she going to explain to the mom that we’re moving out, she said if we get a house from the ballot it’s ok but if we’re going to rent, her mom will question and will be furious. Suddenly we found ourselves prisoners of the mom, the stress with her mom was at breaking point and we were supposed to move out and rent a condo just before she was diagnosed with cancer.

After Eugenia’s death her mom seems to mellow down to the point of zero anger, we don’t fight anymore and surprisingly now she’s very kind to me, she totally changes to a gentle loving old lady but if this is because of Eugenia it’s really too much to pay.

Deep down I just can't help but blame them for her death, still trying very hard to forgive and forget.

Meet the mum

After a month of dating Eugenia, she asked me to join her family’s weekend dinner at scotts picnic food court for steamboat. It was a tense situation for me as well as the parents, I was somewhat unemployed while I was taking my part time degree, what am I going to say if that rather stupid question pops up from the parents? I’m sure they’re also having the same thought, what am I doing for a living? So it was really not a very good time to meet them but to make Eugenia happy I went along with her since she had so much confidence in me.

I was at my best behavior serving the future mother-in-law throughout the whole dinner and it was not too bad. Luckily that question didn’t pop up over the dining table, but I could sense that her mom was so ready to jump into that all so sensitive topic. Somehow Eugenia told them when they were back home, it really didn’t help with their digestive system. After a week or so I was in Eugenia’s room looking out of the window together with Eugenia and her mom came into the room and ask me in Chinese 你有钱养我女儿吗? (Can you afford to support my daughter?)

It went straight to my stomach and it’s the start of our nightmare till the day Eugenia dies. I vow to prove them wrong and I did it so hard that I’m still doing it even though I have already proven myself. They knew I have a lot of money but they have no idea how much and the dad still don’t think I’m capable of buying private properties, to me that’s the biggest joke but since Eugenia’s gone I don’t give a damn anymore, just want to find a new place for Aly and me and live the rest of our lives happily. They can say anything they want while we enjoy our year round holiday without even have to work for it. I don’t think they’ll ever get to know how rich I am.

First Kiss

I brought her to my yacht club on our 2nd date and had a late dinner. Started at 9 finished close to 11, nearly 2 hours. It was a very English dinner with full table setting; 3 sets of cutleries, soup spoon, butter knife and 2 wine glasses. She was overwhelmed staring down at the table, so I patiently explained what they were for and when to use them. It was taught by my primary school teacher that if you want to test a girl bring her to a full course western dinner, so I did, from that moment I knew she’s just an average girl next door.

After dinner we took a walk on the floating dock investigating every yacht and dreaming of having one, but reality sets in to tell us it’s never practical to have a yacht and only use it on weekends, so we agreed. Both of us are on the same frequency and somewhat similar mindset. We went back to the restaurant on the 2nd floor, which was closed by then, 12am and we sat on a bench outside the restaurant looking out to the sea, the wind was blowing so again, I wrap my arms around her. We kept quiet for a while then we started to hug each other. I pat her chic and ask her if she ever had such experience, she kept quiet, and I gave a few more kisses on her face and suddenly she turns around started to kiss me on my lips. That’s our first kiss and I was shocked because she did so well, till today I’m still wondering am I the first person she every kiss. Guess I’ll never know.