Bon voyage


Today my parents and sister had their last day in Singapore. To celebrate the end of their holiday, I … stayed at the office until 7pm. This made me sad, because for the next two hours I was an inchoate mess of rage and frustration, rather than the loving son and brother that I should have been. On the positive side, they had La Serpiente Aquatica Negra to play with all the time, and she has a (mostly) more pleasant personality than I can muster. It’s been lovely to have them here, and for La Serpiente Aquatica Negra to meet them at this new stage in her life – I just wish I could have been more present.

We took them to dinner at Lucha Loco, the closest Mexican restaurant to our house. At first we’d thought our daughter would stay behind with my wife, but a few plaintive yelps from her as her auntie began to disappear and she was allowed to join the happy throng. Sat down at a table in the garden area, she kept getting up to run around the restaurant. Around Lucha Loco are various images of masked Mexican wrestlers. My daughter pointed at one, and said quite clearly "Mummy". This makes me think we probably shouldn’t take her back for a while.

But perhaps it wasn’t the shape of the body or the facemask she was referring to. Maybe it was the pugilistic attitude. There’s an all-female muay-thai gym over the street from Lucha Loco, and although at first scared by the yelling and thumping, our daughter grew fascinated by the women kicking and punching the heavy bags. Maybe she thinks all women should take up martial arts. I’m happy with this, although the thought of a killing machine for a daughter does give me pause; could we at least wait until she’s acquired concepts like mercy and patience, before educating her in the ways of battering people?

But who could deny a cute pre-teen their black belt?

The tacos were good as ever. The service wasn’t atrocious, which was always Lucha Loco’s Achilles’ heel. (Then again, at the end of the night it took twenty minutes to get the bill.) Sadly, there seemed something a bit off about dessert; the blue corn cake, previously my favourite, didn’t taste quite right. Nor did the Mexican chocolate mousse feel like the greatest thing on earth. But perhaps I’d just scorched my palate with too much spice on the elotes…

We got home in time for my daughter’s bath, and then a forlorn farewell from her to her aunt and grandparents, before I took them downstairs to get the taxi to the airport. That in itself was incredibly stressful as I have no confidence in taxi drivers to find their way to the right place in our building, and so I ran through the car park to try to locate our errant car.

Which had for once gone to the right place, rather than the expected wrong place. Maybe I’m just impossible to please.

So family departed in a car for the airport, and I went upstairs to read the child her bedtime story, after which she fell asleep almost instantaneously, and I spent two frustrating hours trying to make a bank transfer before almost giving up and skimming my computer out the window. (HSBC have a long and complicated process you have to follow, and only at the very end will they tell you that you can’t do what you wanted to do, for reasons too obscure for them to actually explain on the webpage that tells you that you can’t do what you want.) Steam issued from my ears, wife wisely retreated to bed.

And so to tomorrow.


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