All About Your Child

Tina tagged me this on 19th August! Oh dear…forgive me girl…*wink*

Can I tell you I don’t really have a chore that I hate…?! I’m serious! Ok, so I guess I’m not from planet earth afterall….

But I do hate something which my dad made me do EVERY SUNDAY, which I’ll never gonna do again unless its really in a too-horrible-and-smelly state…then maybe, just maybe… I would do it again.

I was not even 11 years old yet, I remember, when I was assigned to this task on every sunday!

I was made to sit infront of the Rubbish Chute with a scraper in my hand and a pail of water. I am supposed to scrub the rubbish chute opening.

(for those of you who do not live in Singapore may never know what the hell I’m talking about, so took a photo of the ‘hell’)

In the high-rise housing estates here, we have this thing called the rubbish chute in EVERY household.

We throw whatever rubbish into it, so long as it can go through that 35cm by 25cm opening.

The moment you open the ‘door’, you are in for a surprise treat.

Either a cockroach or lizard or some unknown insect may crawl or leap out to greet you;

or (if you are that lucky)look into the ‘dark‘ hole and you may even get to see your neighbour’s hand putting a bag of gooey stuff into his ‘box’ and slammed the ‘door’ at your face (almost);

or the people staying above you may have just dropped down a ‘water‘ bomb to give you a splash of your life….. that is if it hits onto the edge of the (your) opening; (unless you are staying on the top floor then this will never happen to you)

or even a piece of rotten meat may slide into that (your) little ‘box’, just to say ‘hi‘ and then waits for you to close the box, so that it can continue its roller coaster ride down 70feet (this depends on how high you stay), where it can join the rest of its own kind, waiting stinkily in the big rubbish container at the bottom.

In order to minimise the ‘surprise attacks’, many would just OPEN – DROP WHATEVER IN – CLOSE in super high speed.

But what was I doing every Sunday? I was forced to leave it open, it was a ‘sign‘ to all the insects and my neighbours above me to give me whatever ‘surprises‘ they have; as I was pouring water and scraping all the dirt left there by the ‘gifts’ from above.

I had to scrape all the sides and before I can call it a day, my inspector – Papa, will need to check on my work and the reward I get from this is, “ok, done so go clean the scrape now.” That’s the most delightful sentence i hear in my life!

For 7 years (my dad died when I was 18), I had to do that, sitting in-front of the stinky old and almost rusted metal box for about 10mins….*sigh* that was an order I couldn’t say ‘no‘ to.

Any of you have done this before?

I am tagging:

Suhanya and Cendrine

That’s just sound awfully wrong!

But it seems to explain my case – what I managed to do with the little money I got from my last bazaar.

Take a look at Allan and my wardrobe.

Binbin sleeps right in-front of it every night and noon (he takes naps too)

Nothing unusual?

Let’s take a CLOSER LOOK…

We used carpet-tape to ‘secure’ the sides and the corners of the wardrobe, but can you see that the tape couldn’t really hold it together?

Can you see the piece of wood, ‘going away’ from the tape, between the wardrobe and the wall?

The interior has already gave way.

The back of the wardrobe and the base is about 5cm apart.

It has been in this condition for years now…

Allan and I often sleep with the feeling that we may be woken up in the middle of the night when the wardrobe decides to give-up-its-life and brings my little Binbin along with it to its’ grave.

Worried were we…but we did nothing…we are just to busy clearing all the interest from the debts and bills and food and pure basic living that we had postpone it till now…

Yes, go ahead and label us as bad parents. I’m not going to fight my case, ‘cos I know its a losing battle for us.

But with the little money I got from my last bazaar, I bought the new wardrobe, to prevent the worst nightmare from happening.

I could strike off another item from my if-I-have-extra-money-after-paying-the-usual-I-would-buy-this list of things.

*sigh* We are REALLY terrible parents…Thank God for keeping Binbin safe for so long under such danger….its like a time bomb, you never know WHEN the wardrobe will decide to end its life…but the nightmare is over now…finally!