She was off to Darwin for a six-month stint in a Darwin hospital. In another life, she would have been a professional violinist but it was medicine she chose or perhaps it was her mother who chose it for her. And so, they held a farewell party for her, to celebrate another milestone, another small step to a big career as an anaesthetist, a word that many at the party had trouble saying and one that The Mrs could never spell.
“Wah! Congrats, Corinne! You’ll rake in the money soon! My analsthetitcian friend just bought a condo worth millions!” one of her aunties said.
“Well done, Corinne. An anaesthesist soon, we are so proud of you!” The Mrs said.
“Here’s an ang pow for you, luv. Congrats for getting into anahhssthetihhss,” Corinne’s eldest aunty said, without her new dentures.
Corinne did not correct anyone; she was going to be an anaesthesiologist, not an anaesthetist. She didn’t think it was necessary to explain the difference to her elders. She smiled sweetly and snuggled up closer to her boyfriend next to her. Tall and gangly, he had never been seen in a smart shirt but the smile that he wore on his face more than made up for his slovenly appearance. His ruffled brown hair, somewhat knotted, was proof he did not own a comb. They make a contented couple, with mutual admiration for each other. Both soft-spoken, they whispered to each other when they talked, maybe as a tactic to be physically close. Her uncle, the old man, wondered out loud to me if they could even hear themselves when they quarrel.
The party was held at the Urumqi Restaurant in Gouger Street, the main street in Adelaide’s Chinatown. The old man had not even heard of the restaurant that was remarkably popular for their Uyghur food. Not wanting to miss the AO’s men’s final, they booked a table for 5.30 pm which was just as well, as the usual dinner time slots were all booked out.
“Wow, they must be good,” the old man said when told that, cynically discarding his normal distaste for lamb and mutton. He was pulling at the obstreperous string algae in the pond when he looked up to listen to The Mrs speak. The glare of the sun caught his clouded eyes and as he frowned, she mistakenly assumed he did not welcome her sudden presence.
“I know you find me annoying, but must you frown every time I talk to you?” she asked in her most icy tone.
“No, it’s the sun,” he said defensively.
“Don’t bring our son into this,” she began to argue before changing her mind and instead told him to hurry home to change for the party.
They arrived at Gouger Street early. The sun was still violent on their skin, imparting oxidative properties with its UV rays. The old man had implored his wife to apply some cream on herself the night before after being horrified at seeing his own wrinkles in the shower cubicle. Adelaide, being near the desert, had been harsh to them over the years. The difficulties of their youth had piled deep wrinkles on their faces. The scaly condition of their limbs and the gnarled fingers of gardeners only exacerbated their ageing. The excess skin and fat hanging off his arms and the sunken biceps, once bulging and hard, spoke volumes about his poor exercise regime.
Unusually, there were many vacant parking bays along the main street. The old man did not have to circle a few rounds along the back streets to fight for a space to park. He eased his white Golf GTi into a bay but failed to park it straight even after a few tries. Once upon a time, he used to enjoy praises from The Mrs for his driving and parking skills. Not any more. He blamed it on the pandemic and then blamed it on his deteriorating eyesight. They hardly got out of their house once the lockdown was imposed in early 2020.
He got out of his car and checked the parking sign again and again as he pretended not to see that the front tyre of his car was straddling the painted line on the road. It’s a Sunday, he reminded himself, assured that the traffic inspectors would have better things to do.
“Yes, we can park here,” The Mrs said it twice, the second time a little bit more forcefully, and the old man quickly agreed before her impatience got the better of her. He had stopped committing himself to negative emotions from statements of opinion and cynicisms dished out by people around him. As Epictetus said all those years ago, anxiety is caused by people wanting things that are outside their control. The old man finally saw the light and learned not to sacrifice his peace of mind by listening to errant comments or hoping for wishes to come true. None of them were within his control – it was as foolish as staying up in the wee hours of the night, wanting his football team to win the game.
Their idea to have an early dinner failed miserably in its implementation. Their one-hundred-year-old mother was nowhere to be seen. Of course, they should have expected that. It had not yet dawn on them to expect a different outcome. There was a saying about people persisting on the same action but expecting a different result. Even President Biden of the US was guilty of that – bombing the Houthis and when asked if that would be successful, he replied ‘No”, but he would keep bombing them anyway.
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
attributed to Albert Einstein
“A stint at relieving her bladder had led to other distractions,” Corinne’s mother apologetically said on the phone.
“Don’t wait for us, you guys start without us,” she added.
But, of course, everyone waited for their matriarch to arrive.
The restaurant timed it perfectly. As soon as their matriarch was seated at the table, the food started to arrive. Lamb, mutton, dapanji (a big plate of chicken and noodles) and even lamb kidney. Sheep yoghurt milk was the only drink on offer unless highly chlorinated tap water was preferred.
“It’s offal, isn’t it awful?” the old man asked, as he pointed to the sticks of lamb kidney. It took him over four decades to learn how to eat lamb. The last time he had roast lamb was in New Zealand where his good friend, John Law and his wife, Karen, served it for dinner in their sprawling Christchurch home.
“Just try it, ba,” the old man’s son said. “It’s nice,” he said but his opinion was met by his disbelieving father.
“I bet it is as ‘nice’ as Heggis,” the old man said with sarcasm, before retelling his story about tasting his first Heggis in Edinburgh two months ago. Heggis, made of sheep’s heart, liver, suet and lungs, did not leave a nice memory for him.
Maybe, the Scottish and Uyghurs lacked the right recipe for offal. The old man remembered fondly the chicken entrails rice broth he had in Hong Kong and the small and large intestines that were unmissable ingredients in olden day sar hor fun that his dad occasionally brought home after a late night movie in the 60s.
The old man and The Mrs were amongst the last to leave. The younger members had said their goodbyes to Corinne some fifteen minutes earlier, hugged her and wished her luck in her new life in Darwin. They did not linger and make small talk as the older folks waited for their matriarch to finish her cold piece of lamb kidney, the fat of which had started to coagulate and turn whitish. By the time she was gently eased into the front passenger seat of the Tesla, Medvedev had already won his first game at the tennis final. The old man detected the whiff of lamb fat on his hair as he hurried to his own car. Skeins of offal scent unwound themselves and blended with the heavy staleness of long trapped pungent smells in his car, forcing him to open the windows. Cool evening air rushed in and injected the smell of deep fried fish from a nearby restaurant. A group of young revellers shouted and shrieked at one another as the old man pressed down on the foot pedal to accelerate away from the city.
“Make sure you wash your hair tonight,” The Mrs said.
Urghhlings 