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Small Talk:
The pink line of ‘dead pixels’ on my Samsung 2232BW is actually an error from my VGA’s digital output. I managed to solve this problem by removing the previous nVIDIA Forceware installation and installing the latest version of the driver. I am now enjoying the crispy goodness of a digital LCD now :D

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She hopped and skipped her way toward me and landed her head on my bouncy round abs before giving my waist a firm hug.

“Pak Chu*, my life is mrrffrrble.” she said.

*Pak Chu is what my brothers’ children call me.

Unable to comprehend her muffled voice, I pulled her face out of my belly. “Your life is what?”

“My life is miserable,” said my 6-year old niece.

I spun her around and lowered myself so she could sit on my lap. The little girl just loves being spoiled. Her young mind has yet to learn the manners of a lady, and sat with her legs wide apart under her light blue one-piece dress. She arched her head back and threatened to muffle me with her thick soft curly hair.

“My life is so miserable, Pak Chu.” she said again, only this time her voice lowered to a whisper.

“Oh? Miserable? How come?” I asked.

“Well…” she said, and she started to fumble her legs around and it raised up her dress.

I had to pull her legs back together and pulled her dress down. She really needs to learn a thing or two about modesty. “Keep your legs together sayang, that’s not nice. You’re a good girl. Now why is your life miserable?” I asked.

“I never get what I want.” she said.

“What did you want la?” I asked.

“I want 300 toys and 3000 candies.” she said with SERIOUSLY disappointed look on her face. “I never get to have any candy and I never get enough toys.”

I told her, “What do you need that much for, anyway? You can’t play with 300 toys and you definitely can’t eat 3000 candies.”

“All the toys I have are boring. I can’t play with those,” she said, pointing at the cooking sets and playhouses my sister bought for her a few years back, “…those are baby toys. I want big girl toys.”

I could have easily lied and told her some random stuff about toys, dolls and plushies and ended it there, but for some strange reason, I found it really hard to lie to children - especially my nieces and nephew. Somehow, I felt compelled to tell her about how we grew up without that much toys and how we had fun and laughed and fooled around no matter what the toys we had were.

Then I realized that we could enjoy that childhood because we grew up with friends and spend years with them. My niece doesn’t have that. Her dad [my brother] is an expatriate in Singapore. She lives in apartment full of expat families. She goes to school for children of expats. Nobody around her, except for her own family, sticks around long enough.

Everyone around her comes and goes. Sure, the family earns a lot of money from an expat job, but that luxury comes at a price. And the children had to pay that price.

I’m not saying that an expat job is bad, it ruins the family institution blablabla… because that is obviously not true. I have a few friends who had expatriate parents, moving from one country to another, and they are splendid individuals for growing up and able to experience the world instead being fed with it from an idiot box.

A sudden bite on my thumb snapped me out my delusional wanderings.

“Pak Chu, did you hear what I said?”

“Sorry, what?” Apparently I was too deep in my own thoughts I forgot the ‘demise’ of the little angel sitting my lap.

“I wish I had a genie,” she said. I hate you, Disney. “When a genie gives me three wishes, I can wish for 300 more wishes!”

Okay, I really, seriously hate you now, Disney.

“What would you wish for with those 300 wishes?”

She turned around and looked at me with a huge grin. “I wish you would get married. I want more aunties, I don’t have enough of them!”

I gave her an amused stare.

She smiled back without even blinking.

I hope she gets her wish.