no. 9 - my betrothed, 过大礼

and our story will grow old

there is an exuberance I cannot express

a profound joy I revel in and cannot believe

& in too many ways, a gratefulness I cannot seem to thank of enough

On 15 April 2018 we celebrated our Guo Da Li which is the Chinese betrothal ceremony which we knew very little about save that Mark would come over with his family and gift my family with some traditionally significant items and my family would likewise gift him / his family with some of their own.

As a side note, to go through this post in its best form one must tune in to Synchronal Photography's ("Synchronal") spotify playlist which included the following key songs that must be listened to in reading this post (best in the following order): Follow the Sun (Acoustic) by Caroline Pennell, ABC by Alexander Fairchild, High by Young Rising Sons, Fills Me Up by Big Little Lions, From Gold by Novo Amor

(thanks Synchronal for this playlist and the photos, I love them both so much on their own and even more together)

Thinking about it, its so true isn't it - the playlist a writer is journalling to should really be recorded/ noted down because it is so very relevant to the underlying tone and thoughts that have influenced the entry.

That was a long side note, back to the Betrothal ceremony more commonly known as Guo Da Li.

Before I account proper of what happened at our Guo Da Li, i think it necessary to provide a brief of what Guo Da Li actually is/ means - which was a poignant question my eldest sister decided to ask midpoint during the Guo Da Li. More accurately, she asked what the Chinese characters were/ stood for when our response that it was a Chinese betrothal ceremony didn't sufficiently satisfy her burning query (woman has a masters in like world history and french etc. etc. - loves and is full of knowledge basically).

Until such point, I had not actually known what the Chinese characters was - and neither did anyone in the family (my parents don't speak or read Chinese, my eldest sister's knowledge of Chinese is limited to Faye Wong's songs and what she needs to speak to the elderly she visits and my second sister's Chinese is limited to what her bff has taught her, most of which has to do with ordering food at a Chinese restaurant/ hotpot).

Mark's family has a grand total of about 1/4 Chinese representation in their blood and despite their racial mix including Chinese - they neither speak, write nor ever learnt Chinese. So it really came down to the Gohs - who... are probably the worst representation for the Chinese language and culture, although we are pretty damn incredible at consuming large amounts of Chinese food.

So I very valiantly announced that in my mind, I thought it was 过打力 which directly translates to 过 (cross/ go over) 打 (beat) 力 (strength) - which is completely illogical and could not be made sense of because in truth, I probably thought it was that as they were really the only 3 characters I could think of with the hanyupinyin "Guo Da Li".

That sounded conspicuously wrong to my eldest sister (because she couldn't make sense of it) and Mark's cousin who's taking basic chinese in University now looked confused at my announcement.

After a quick google search, we confirmed that I was completely wrong and it really is "过大礼" - as written on Brendan's phone - which based on direct translation meant "cross/ go over big present", which made absolute sense looking at the array of roast meat, cakes, oranges and of course, U-Like Wok, that came over.

Now if your question is how does GDL work with a family that is more mixed Catholic than they are racially grounded and a Chinese family that knows little about their Chinese traditions save that they celebrate everything and love making traditional dishes that no one hand-makes anymore (think bazhang, tang yuan and fishballs) - just imagine mild chaos, a lot laughter and what do we do next??

That said, GDL was culturally significant for my mum, who grew up in what would be a rather typical taoist-buddhist cantonese speaking Singapore Chinese family - my late maternal grandmother was a cleaner who had arrived on the Singapore shores from China when she was in her early teens and my late maternal grandfather from a local Chinese family that once had a silver spoon which was later lost to horse racing debts - and to whom my grandma was the family's cleaner. My dad, although Chinese, was brought up by an Indian family owing to financial difficulties faced after my late paternal grandfather passed on from a shrapnel wound received during WWII.

For me, much of my childhood was spent with my late maternal grandmother whose love I don't think I fully appreciated until I was older. She believed in pascal's theory without knowing that that was a theory and trained me to love her cooking like no other.

As a child, I used to fear water on my face for it would dribble into my eyes and sting, so she would shower me and place a wet towel over my face while gently washing my hair so that water wouldn't dribble on my face. I also have reason to believe she potty trained me and is really the only reason for my very very paltry Cantonese.

When I grew older, I only saw her on Sundays, when we would sit together and watch that Taiwanese soap opera about that lady selling bak kut teh at a night market stall. I introduced Mark to her one Sunday visit when we had dated for about 2 years. She took kindly to him and it was around then that we were informed she had cancer. In many ways, I don't think I ever fully addressed her passing and this paragraph was surprisingly hard to draft.

My grandma passed away on 18 April 2014, slightly over 6 months from the day that Buddy suddenly passed on. I remember the week or two before when her condition deteriorated, the fear of being fired was completely drained from me when my mother called me while I was at work. I literally dropped all, told my colleague who sat in the cubicle beside me that I had to go and ran out of the office door and didn't return until my grandma had passed on.

To me, my grandma was synonymous with jade, a survivor of a very hard life, excellent cooking and the killer of chickens, fish, crabs and anything live that she fancied we should eat.

It was for this reason that celebrating GDL meant something to me. In spite of my paltry Chinese, lacking knowledge and a skin tone that jade cannot compliment - I thought it to be the greatest way to have her included, in a celebration she would have understood (she passed on Catholic but I don't think the English language mass was ever really her thing).

It was a celebration of food, family and a tradition that we tried very hard to- and probably barely- kept alive. Mark's family was enthusiastic beyond belief,

- his 2 aunts tried their best as the "aunty matchmakers" we were told were ordinarily present, arriving with fans and a poem they later got too nervous to recite to my parents

- my now mother-in-law was determined to get me something I would like and while knowing nothing about why i wanted jade, we went to choo yilin together with my mum where they spent hours with me picking out jewelery that I couldn't have loved more

- my mother pulled out the trinklet and gold pendant necklace my grandmothers had purchased for me when i was born, complete with the goldsmith's receipt from 1990 and gave me a jade bangle she had bought for my grandma and who had in turn left it behind. She also zhnged it up a little with some diamonds and gold, inspired no less by Choo yilin. I wore this same bangle at the wedding along with the other jewelery both my mums had gifted me.

- Mark brought so much food and items that it required some of his cousins to come assist with the gifts bearing - i have long dreamed of a four tier roast meat stack and along with the customary dried foods, oranges, sugee cake and my favourite tau sar pia, he came with a suckling pig, roast duck, kurobuta pork char siew, roast pork belly (sio bak) and some special roast chicken. If he didn't already stake his claim on my heart then, he did with the roast meat stack.

There was a lot of laughter, plots to steal the suckling pig and buzz, just like new year but better. I never dreamed that I would be blessed with such an occasion but as much as shit happens, so do amazing things.

There is that joy I cannot conceive or fathom, that love that I am amazed by every day and a gratefulness that I can never seem to compensate for.

Naturally, the dogs also stole a lot of the limelight but can you blame them?

This entry tugged at my heart strings and went a lot deeper than I expected. I wound up skipping my routine lunch gym time to laugh, tear and think at my desk - all along to Synchronal's playlist no less.

The food btw was all consumed after as we hosted dinner at our new place after GDL was over.

I recognise that it might seem rather excessive to get photographers in for every other stage of our wedding journey (prewed, GDL, wedding celebrations x3, italy) but the thing about me is that I have a deep strange love for photographs and I knew it was an expense I wouldn't regret. I btw am still haunted by my family's trip to the 12 Apostles almost 9 years ago when after the arduous drive our SD card failed us and we have no records of that visit.

Perhaps just like how i write journals and reread them over and over, I love trawling through photos of days, memories and moments. Moments in particular, are my favourite.

so here's one for the road, the memories and the books

A I love you never gonna let you

B alone now always gonna help you

C you are the only one I want to love

Special thanks of course to Synchronal (https://www.thesynchronal.com/about_us/ )for capturing these moments. I truly love them.

I btw also got them to take some photos of my parents, which was unfortunately hampered by the rain that day, but the few that they got are incredible no less and I shall save them for another rainy reflective day