Wednesday, December 06, 2006

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I miss my grandad.

Serial nights of insomnia have resulted in me thinking about him quite a bit in the past few weeks. He died a couple of years ago.

He was fantastic. He brought me to movies when I was younger. And to boot it off, he loved all those awesome American action movies chock full of testosterone. Air Force One, Die Hard and all it's spawn. Ditto Jurassic Park. I was first exposed to King Kong in the eighties, thanks to him. On VHs. And he would have loved Peter Jackson's take on the giant ape. He was the main reason we would make a trip out in the car to the local laser-disc store (remember those huge bastards?) to rent horrible action movies where things blew up and people died. It's because of him that I can appreciate movies like Kill Bill, Snakes on a Plane. And to this day, I love any Sylvester Stallone movie where people get killed horrible and shit blows up. I mean, this man was so awesome, he spent 50 dollars on tickets and snacks for me, my sister and him to watch the Titanic. He proceeded to wrap himself up in his jacket and told me to wake him up when the shit started hitting the fan. 50 dollars spent willingly just to watch the spectacle of a ship sinking into the water. Then he went to sleep again until the movie ended. Then he said it was a good movie. You know what, he'd probably have loved Michael Bay's abominable take on Pearl Harbour. 'Cos, y'know, shit blew up and people died.

I remember when I was in primary four (or thereabouts) my mum yelled at me for taking too many of his cans of Coca-Cola (he just loved the stuff, and well, so do I). After yelling at me for about half an hour, she left me crying like a wuss in the guest bedroom. A few minutes later, when she left to do some stuff, he snuck in the room with a massive grin and a can of the drink for me in his pocket and told me that I was welcome to his stash anytime I wanted. Irregardless of what my mum says. Then he grinned some more and buggered off to watch stuff blow the fuck up on tv.

He bought me toys. And taught me how to appreciate them for their engineering and sculpting. This is the reason Transformers hold a happy place in me. They remind me of him. And the feeling I had when he was around.

He bought me my first video-game consoles (an NES rip-off and, later, a Sega Genesis) and introduced a whole new medium of storytelling to me. He bought a ginormous Lego technics set and we spent every night of 3 weeks putting together a massive car. We messed up the gearbox, but whatever. He loved Salem cigarrettes (they killed him, which is why I would never smoke), red bean ice-cream, braised pork legs in XO sauce. He was a dentist and a competitive badminton player. He hated butter and lamb but loved chicken chops.

At one point in time, we went to the Sarawak Museum every weekend. Just to look at stuff together. I can still see him in my head chatting with my grandmother on the patio every evening when I came back from school. I think they're the definition of the perfect couple.

I was in Sydney when he died. My mum called me at 7.15 am Sydney-time to tell me. I had spent the whole night blubbering on the couch because I knew it was coming so when she called I was just numb. I was numb for the longest time. And I didn't cry for him until a couple of months back, because I'm fucked up that way.

They wouldn't let me go back for the funeral. I was pretty fucking pissed of about that. I still am. Majorly so.

I'm not being very grammatically correct and this post is badly written but the point of it all is this:

My grandad was awesome.

3 Comments:

Blogger Keem said...

such a long post just to lobby for transformers. ok lah ok lah. buy lah. -_-

9:30 AM  
Blogger lainieyeoh said...

my grandpa could get along with your granddad, if mine's not too busy being terribly hedonistic somewhere.

heh. he got me super nes rip off, games and tv. and for violence, pitted his daughter in laws against one of his wife.

cool firewerks

12:31 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Moobs, in pure sentimental sense, your gramps would have been proud of you, I'm sure.

But look at it this way, you have wonderful memories of him in Coke, movies and Transformers.

I've never even met mine.. ='(

1:09 AM  

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