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.

She's the one.

1999, I left Disney Fest in Taiwan, came back and found a new job selling Australian property. With just an engineering diploma I decided to get a degree in marketing, it started with a marketing certificate in Themes business school and met Eugenia there as student service executive. We talk and joke a lot, nothing happens but inside me I had this feeling that she’s the one, it didn’t occur to me that I’ll will ask her out as I’m not at the best economic situation. Then one evening after class as I was looking for someone to go supper with and there she was, pop out in front of me so I casually ask her if she’s hungry and we ended up in Suntec City. After supper we took a walk on the street looking down the fountain, surprisingly she was quite comfortable with me. We took a sit on the bench, and I realized she was shivering cold even with her jacket, so I try to keep her warm by wrapping my arms and half my body around her; she said she felt warm and loves the feeling. That’s where we started, I promised her that I’ll give her that warm as long as I live.