Sometimes there are exceptions

Yesterday I was at my Ama's house, taking care of her.

In the latter part of 2014, my Ama got shingles (http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/154912.php), a very painful virus that weakened her and sent her to hospital, where we discovered her age after years of no birth certificate (93 going 94 this year!!! That's older than Lee Kuan Yew). Now she's home, but we're still worried about her falling or something else failing, and so one of the family is always at her home in Sengkang to look out for her.

On Monday, I took the train over to see her and look after her for the day.

Actually, I don't think I did a very good job of looking after her. She speaks Hokkien and doesn't read. She can understand rudimentary Chinese. I can understand and speak rudimentary Hokkien (aka about 5 phrases, 3 of which concern food). So we don't make a very fine pair for talking. I spent most of the day writing and reading, occasionally asking her if she needed water, but otherwise retreating back to awkward silence and smiles.

However, my Ama and I do have one way of communication-food. She is an amazing cook, I've been eating her popiah and loving it since I could remember. And she loves seeing me eat (She always asks me to eat more, calling me 'san po po', or skinny lady).

She cooked me dinner that day, I looked into the bowl and saw mee sua, soup, omelet, broccoli. And pork and fish and prawns. I was caught - I didn't know how to explain I was vegetarian in Chinese or Hokkien, and I certainly didn't want to insult or hurt her. I ate all the mee sua and the broccoli and omelet while trying to think of a solution.

So first, I tried to give her my prawns, saying 'Ama lai jia' (Come, Ama, eat this!) in the you should eat more you're recovering kind of way. But she just laughed a LOT and started piling more mee sua and pork onto my plate.

Right, I thought, that didn't work.

Then i thought, you know what? This is my Ama, I'm supposed to be taking care of her, and making her happy. So I ate the extra mee sua, and then the pork, and then the fish.

And honestly, I would do it over again, because she was so happy when I told her that it was "Ho!" (Good!)