For some time, an idea has been lurking in my mind - sending a postcard to my grandfather. You see, my uncle migrated a long time ago, and my grandfather is overjoyed every time he receives a letter, in ever deteriorating Chinese. Lately hanyu pinyin has been appearing in the letters. The only thing is, my grandfather's preferred language of communication is Chinese, and when he receives a postcard from me in Chinese, he'll go, "Wtf? So this is the result of all my efforts to get my children and hence grandchildren to know Chinese?????" I'll probably be a lot more comprehensible in French - and, my grandfather knows French.
He was a Chinese language journalist during his time, a pretty influential one I hear. After he retired he continued writing a column for many years that had a good following. One of my Chinese tuition teachers mentioned his column before, and was surprised to hear that he's my grandfather. She was probably thinking, And this is the standard of his granddaughter's Chinese??? Anyway, he took French classes at the Alliance Francaise before, and even won a scholarship to study French in Paris for a year. When Carrefour first opened, he was correcting all our pronunciations. That was before I studied French. When I told him that I was studying French, he offered me his French-Chinese dictionary, which I politely declined. Firstly, I'll need an English-Chinese dictionary to use in conjunction, and he having it around might keep his mind alert - another source of intellectual stimulation.
M says my family has a lot of atypical characters. Of course I never thought of it that way, I mean, who thinks of their family as odd? Maybe that's why my sense of what's "normal" is somewhat skewered. For one, "you should study a course that would get you a highest paying job" isn't a mantra in the family - guess why my uncle migrated? His job is not available in Singapore, not because of bureaucratic narrow-mindedness, but because there is really no such job (make a guess). My dad is in a profession that is closest to his real interest - give ya a clue: in his youth, he and his friend nearly blew up his friend's house.
My grandfather was pretty forward-looking for his time. He knew that English is the language of communication, but he wanted his children to be grounded in Chinese. So he put them in a Chinese school (one that's progressive for its time - math and science classes were held in English, humanities in Chinese) up to secondary level, and literally begged the RI principal to take them in for pre-university. So yeah, my dad is one of the few effectively bilingual people I know around, and I never read the Chinese dailies available at my place. Well, actually he used to know ancient Greek as well - he took a correspondence course in divinity during his NS days, which involved reading the Bible in the original languages. He didn't continue the program when he got to the Old Testament.
And this is just the immediate family on my father's side. My mum is probably one of the few women of her generation with a graduate degree (well, I guess many women in my grandma's generation had to work to supplement the family income). My grandma used to be a ballet dancer (in addition to her real job as a schoolteacher - in Chinese as well. Actually both my grandmas were Chinese schoolteachers. Don't ask any more about my command of Chinese.) My other grandfather was intimately acquainted with Prague in its heyday. And beyond the immediate family, there are other crazy characters, like 70 years young granduncle and aunt who go parasailing in Malaysia, driving in South Africa, and volunteering as English teachers in villages in China.
