Filial piety is defined loosely as showing respect to one's elders. In a traditional Chinese society, this is one of the values that are deemed most important - more so than earning as much money as you can even if it's through dodgy ways (unofficial Chinese value). Today's dinner was on my part, an exercise in filial piety.

This is the bit where I delve into my family's history. A long long time ago before I was born, there was conflict in the family. In fact there was a lot of conflict, so this is just one of them. My kaugoong (which apparently is the wrong term for calling him since I'm already one generation down, just that no one bothered to correct me so I never know what to call him) - my paternal grandmother's elder brother married a woman of a 'disagreeable disposition'. As a result she often came into conflict with my grandmother and my grandfather (who is the most easy going person I know). This however would not have been such a problem if my grandmother was not so close to her elder brother - but she was. As a result, they often traveled together, with my grand uncle's unhappy dour wife in toll.

This woman went on to bear 3 children, and my father and his siblings growing up were relatively close to their cousins. Then they grew up and goot married. Enter the wife. The wife of the eldest was also a woman with her own mind. She too constantly came into conflict with her mother in law. She apparently did not really like my family too much either, because they never came to visit us during Chinese New Year for the last 6+ years - as dictated by Chinese tradition. What a pity, since I was a flower girl at their wedding.

About a week ago, my kaugoong and his wife flew in from Sydney where they've been living for the past decade or so. In the interim they've been staying at my grandparent's place. So there I was, this late afternoon, trying to sleep on the couch when I heard them come in. I didn't know what to do, so I just continued pretending I was asleep. I heard the lady's voice and my blood stopped. It was every bit as dry and humourless and scary as it was 9 years ago.

It was my Uncle's wedding and I was also a flower girl. I was running around the lunch buffet and picked up a card. It said ''the wedding of Mr Andrew W- and Miss xxx". Thing is, I never know my Uncle had a Christian name. No one in the family called him Andrew. So I very loudly exclaimed "WHO THE HELL IS ANDREW?!" The look on that woman's face showed that she was throughly scandalised. Her mouth opened like a goldfish. Oh God.

Finally my grandmother came around and 'woke' me up. The first thing I saw was the woman, giving me a disapproving look for sleeping on the couch on the living room. Oh the joy. I then saw my kaugoong, smiley as always. He looked much more frail and lost than when I last saw him a number of years ago. In the car as I sat next to the woman, I felt so nyeh that I couldn't even ask her generic polite questions. Instead she just asked me about IB - so I started prattling on.

Tonight dinner was supposed to be a combination of my family and theirs. That is my family of 4, Uncle's family, grandparents, kaugoong and his wife and their eldest son's family. In order to better facilitate the eating, we were split up into two tables. At one table my family started to congregate, including kaugoong. At the other the woman was left alone because her family wasn't here. D'oh! I felt bad, so I went over and sat next to her. Giving her an insane totally fake smile and not talking. Kaugoong saw us and went over to join us with my grandmother following him shortly. So there we sat.

When her son finally came, I was all set to escape back to my table when my grandma got up and left. She came to me and giggled in my ear, "eh stay here please, you know why I'm leaving". Alamak? When I returned to get my bag, my father said "yeah! represent us there". No one wanted to sit at that table.

So that is how I ended up sitting at a table of people I had not seen in 6 years+.

The wife appeared. I realised I forgot her name. She sat down and asked her mother-in-law how her day was. The woman replied in a gruff tone that she rested the entire day. I could have ignored it if I didn't know for a fact that she was out the entire day. Oh my God what the flying fuck have I gotten myself into (imagine me saying this with the perma-smile that was on my face)! Then they tried talking about the plans for tomorrow and the woman started complaining. So the wife gave up and peppered me with ten thousand questions about IB (no, I have no idea why I turned into an ambassador either). Somehow through this strategy of talking to me instead of each other, we managed to get through the dinner without any eyes being clawed out.

After the dinner I realised I couldn't smile anymore. My cheek muscles were slack and they refuse to contract. I blame it on excessive fake smiling. As a result I ended up wandering throughout Giant with a very bad attituide expression - looking very much like the woman who had caused it in the first place.