my mum called in the afternoon asking if my uncle called. apparently he had been trying to call my grandma for almost an hour and she still hadn't picked up the phone... he was worried so he called my mum. i was rather worried. from her routine i had gotten used to when i was a child, she usually has nothing to do in the afternoon except maybe ironing or otherwise she would be nodding off in front of the tv till it was time to cook dinner. reasoned with myself that she had probably gone out somewhere or was in the bathroom or something. twenty minutes later my mum called again, she had also tried calling but nobody answered the phone. she asked me and my brother to take a cab down to go check on my grandma. she said we were the nearest (which is true, cos i dunno where's my uncle's office) even though my uncle wanted to get off work to check on her. that's when all the absurd thoughts came across my mind. what if something had really happened to her? it was so unlike her not to be at home... she seldom goes out cos the only places she can independently travel to are the market and some person's place where she gets her hair permed. and usually she returns from these places at the latest just in time to cook lunch. and then i thought about how ronald smith suddenly passed away, even in the midst of preparing for performances. my grandma's probably around his age or older... i could still remember celebrating her 80th birthday. plus, there was nothing much we could've done... except ring the doorbell hoping she'd open the door or try calling her house phone.

when we got to her house, rang the doorbell and waited, we saw that the gate was unlocked... at first a fleeting thought of her house being burglared came across my mind. but of cos it became obvious that nothing of the sort happened when we found the door locked. and then we smelled that familiar pungent smell of incense... she had just offered incense to the dieties placed outside the door, did that mean she was at home? yep... she answered the door just a moment after we discovered the incense. she had been in the bathroom when we rang the doorbell, and it turned out that her phone did not ring today at all. nothing was wrong with it... we found the phones' receivers properly placed. so we called to inform my mum that it was a false alarm and tried calling grandma's house number... but the phone did not ring. then we tried calling our handphones using her phones... and realised there was no dial tone for both phones. but the wire was connnected. we tried everything we could possibly had done but still couldn't get her phones to work. but she said my uncle would try when he drops by in the evening... and offered us dumplings. hmmm... we just ate those for breakfast so we politely refused and after a while we left. i'm so glad and relieved it was a false alarm.

the incident got me thinking about my grandma. when i was a child and we lived in the unit opposite grandma's house, we would stay in her house until our parents were back from work. that was until our parents decided to send us to before and after school day care around primary three. dinner was always prepared by my grandma and it would be ready once our parents came home. i remember playing all sorts of make-believe games mostly with my brother, and sometimes my cousins, getting scolded when we camped under the dining table and pretended it was all sorts of things from a tent to a spaceship. as a kid, i remember watching cantonese dramas on tv in the afternoons, how i entertained myself while she did the ironing, or how i hovered around while she prepared dinner... trying to help but being a hindrance instead. i also recall when i first went to school, hated it and fought with her not to go to school, refused to do homework and how she always helped me colour pictures and always insisted on helping me cut excercise questions to be pasted into excercise books... she said i always created jagged sides. sigh... those are the good memories.

well, being nostalgic isn't particularly helpful, especially when jct is looming nearer. time to return to the present...