My Dad

I had a beautiful experience talking to my mom through phone this afternoon and was inspired to write posts on series on my family. Hahaha. Let's start from my dad.

My Dad
How to describe him? Let me start with unique things about him. He did cross-stitch. We have a huge last supper cross-stitched by him in our living room, another one on lakeside view in my grandma's house. The interesting thing is he cross-stitch them in a consistent manner, eg if you stitch from top-left to bottom-right then top-right to bottom-left, he will not swap to top-right to bottom-left then top-left to bottom-right. As a result, even if you see his cross-stitch closely, all stitch will have same direction.

He likes orchid. He grows some orchid at home and when we visited his principal's office near my grandma's house, the principal often gives him the little orchid for my dad. (how to describe? the young orchid? the one still in the bottle)

My dad doesn't say vulgarities at home. After realizing how it's so easy for the people here to swear and say vulgarities, I've noticed that my dad doesn't say vulgarities at home.

He's generous. The way he looks at beggar, the way he pays attention when people from donation booth (let's say UNICEF booth) approaches him, is just amazing. He will give when he's moved to give despite the fact that people say A-Z not to give, he will just do it if he feels that he can and he should give.

The picture above was taken on his birthday. It was the first time we made surprise for him. We successfully pretended to forget his birthday. Hahaha. Then we wrote bday wishes for him in small rolled paper (we = my family, my cousins, my aunt and uncle). We went out for dinner as if it's a normal going-out-session-for-dinner.

He replied SMS maximum 3 words. The most common reply are "Ok" or "In office" or "why like that?" Hahaha. Sometimes I feel that it's getting harder to talk to him because he doesn't really talk much. The only time we talked much was when I told him about my study plan (study and work plan) and at that moment, I could feel he really tried to understand my plan: is there scholarship? what's the difference between this programme and another? and at the end, his only question was, "Until when you wanna study?" :P

The only thing that I wish now is seeing him baptized. He goes to church with us, but of course he can't receive holy communion yet. He wants to wait for elderly RCIA because it only takes 3 months. My mom was already happy when he could recite the Lord's prayer and Hail Mary. He prays in front of our altar every morning before working.

The thing that I miss about him...hmmm.. Watching world cup with him? I felt quite sad watching world cup alone last year, but Thank God I could go home around semifinals so we watched semifinals and finals together :):)

Oh...one thing about him, he rarely disagreed with me 'directly'. When I was accepted in NUS, he told my mom that I shouldn't go. Not only because of no scholarship, but because of other stuff too, he's quite worried. However, my mom reminded him how he also didn't let me go when I was secondary school and he promised me to let me try for university. My mom told him how disappointed I will be if this time he didn't let me go. When I was high school and he knew that I had boyfriend, my mom told me that he asked my mum lots of stuff like, "Who's the guy? What's his ethnicity? What's he going to study in university?" but he didn't ask a single thing from me.

My dad is not the perfect man in the world, but I thank God that he's the way he is now.