How my aunts tried to kill me the day before I was born
I was born on the 16th of November 2001. That's 16/11/2001. My birth time was 01:01:01 so feel free to read my natal chart, curse my existence or whatever, I'm not that superstitious. I am convinced however, that my aunts, my mom's sisters are out to kill me.
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Why? Well. Let me take you back to a lovely day on the 15th of November 2001, about 12 hours before I was born.
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My mom, Ai Leng, was in her third week back in Singapore. Both her and my dad had flown back over from Hong Kong at the very last date her doctors told her she should fly back.
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Needless to say, she was very pregnant, and incredibly busy.
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Her HDB flat, my childhood home, was being rented out and she had to chase the tenants living there out, leaving just a week left for my parents to furnish and baby-proof the house.
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On that Thursday noon, she decided that enough was enough and she decided that she needed a break. Fortunately for her, someone was listening and someone answered.
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She got a call from my grandmother, inviting her down to her house to play a good old game of mahjong, the same game my grandparents taught me when I was just 6 years old.
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My mom was screaming "PONG" every time she had a pair of matching tiles in her hand, eyes, you might call them, this went on well into the evening.
Something strange happened to my mom when she won a big hand, a "qing ye se" for those curious.
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Somehow her pants was suddenly drenched, not with water though. She freaked out obviously, it was the first time it happened to her, my elder sister was born through a scheduled caesarian after all.
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So she called my aunts for advice, somehow needing to ask if going to the hospital was a good idea.
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Well, the answer to that question was, here's a towel for the mess you made.
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And she continued playing mahjong.
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Perhaps it was the high from winning money off her family that wavered off her contractions that continued hours after her water broke, who knows.
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For what it's worth, I know she got reprimanded by the nurses when she got to the hospital, my dad told me that much.
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Later into that night, my mom recalled when I ask her this earlier, around 11pm, that she gripped onto my dad's arm until it bled. She said it was the worse pain she had ever experienced, hopefully not as bad as raising me anyway, I'll take the win.
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My mom told me that my dad actually walked out during labour because he was about to throw up so I can see where my aversion to blood and needles came from.
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Soon enough, the day had ended and I was doomed to be born on an unsatisfying even number, fifteen just seems more aesthetically pleasing to me. If I could choose though, I would probably pick to be born on the first.
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But anyway, with my dad outside the hospital room and my mom writhing in pain, exactly an hour, a minute and second later, I was born.
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Did I mention that I was the youngest among my cousins?
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Maybe that speaks more about my cousins than anything else.
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Oh yeah, my aunts were nurses too, like all four them, were nurses that are all still working in the same hospital I was born in.
Probably why I get more money on Chinese New Year anyway.