Hello, I blog!

My grandmother’s sudden death two weeks ago (more on that later) seems to have brought the cousins and I closer together, which is the ‘brighter’ side of the whole situation. Although of course, I do wish she’s still around with us.

We went on our first gathering yesterday evening. Honestly a memorable one, and I’m confident there’ll be more to come. These are the people I grew up with. We’ve known each other since we were little runts, subsequently brats, then snotty teenagers and now grown-ups with our own hopes and dreams. On top of that, a shared identity, family history and genes to match.

Laughing at one another’s jokes and ridiculous boo-boos were reminiscent of my last proper interaction with them, sometime 5 years back. (During the 5 years, I withdrew from my extended family a lot – for a variety of personal reasons. Now, I’m kicking myself for having done so because I have lost out on a lot of precious time.) I’m really happy that after all this time, some things don’t change. :’)

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We had dinner at Saveur, a lovely place with awesome French food at really decent prices … to the point where we had no qualms about topping up our orders because the food was so good.

In fact, the staff also had this strange tendency to send food which did not belong to us (but meant for the table next to us) our way. And of course, some unsuspecting cousin will scoop a huge mouthful and plop it into his mouth … just before a more observant one goes “waaaait, did we order that?”

The occupants of the next table got so paranoid that they’d never fail to look over each time food gets served on our table. It was quite hilarious to watch.

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During dessert. M ordered ‘cookies and milk’ which turned out to be this plateful of … something completely covered with milk froth. It was so intriguing that everyone leaned in for a closer look.

“What’s underneath?” J asked. (Obviously asking about the dessert.)

In response, M lifted the plate and peeked below it.

Facepalms all around.

The above, and a tonne of other laughter-inducing moments. I’m even giggling to myself as I’m writing this, and am suddenly aware of how much I really miss all these.

Good night, folks.