Two weeks ago, I turned 26. The momentous occasion this year was all the more special when I received a Graf von Faber-Castell mechanical pencil from Le Garçon.Though it is not jewellery or handbag, it is more than enough bling to last me for a very very long time.
[1989. Shanghai, China.]

I saw my first mechanical pencil at a stationery store on Huaihai Road with my Mama. It was shiny silver with a handsome black grip. I thought it was the classiest thing I had ever seen in my life and bound to make me have the best handwriting in the whole school. Unfortunately, this was back in the old country - fine things were rare and expensive.

"You can have that pencil if you get full marks in your test next week," my Mama bribed. It took a bold statement like that to move me away from the glass cabinet that the mechanical pencil was encased in.

I studied my times table and Chinese poetry like crazy that week. But as fate would have it, I didn't get full marks. I got 89% in Chinese and 97% in Maths. I stared at the numbers in the report card with bitterness as I thought about how the mechanical pencil was going to be encased in that glass cabinet forever. I was seven-years-old and had already started to develop a tendency for the melodramatic.

Slowly, I began to change the numbers on the report card. I was seven-years-old and had not yet learned that there was no possible way of making either "89" or "97" look like "100".

On the way home, the guilt of it all started to weigh down on me. I was also aware that the two 100's did not really look that legitimate. It all got too much that when I handed my passive Papa the report card, I burst out crying and fessed up.

Like how they were for the rest of my childhood, they didn't lose their temper or yell. They simply said they were disappointed and it was enough for the water works to overflow the dam again.

A few days later, while shopping with my Mama, I saw the mechanical pencil again in the same store. I stared at it again and quickly walked away. But this time, Mama pulled me back to the glass cabinet.

"You changed your marks so you could have this, didn't you?" she asked.

I sheepishly agreed.

"I was going to buy it for you anyway. But if I buy it for you today, you will have to never lie again."

I nodded but I felt awful. It was a prize I shouldn't have won. It was also 3RMB and I knew that Mama only took home 20RMB a week. When I finally held the pencil in my hand, I got no satfisfaction in knowing that it was mine. It was tainted goods. I put it in my desk drawer when I got home and never used it.
"So that's the worst thing you've ever done in your whole life?" Le Garçon asked when we were trading childhood stories about a year ago. "You fibbed your way into getting some pencil and that's the worst you've got?"

"It was a mechanical pencil! And I lied to get it and mum still bought it for me even though it cost 15% of her weekly wage! I was a horrible child!"

"That's still the worst thing you've ever done?" He asked in disbelief.
On my birthday, I tore through the wrapping and shook the box slightly to hear if it sounded like the pair of earrings I had been hinting for all week. When I finally opened the white oblong box, I was seven-years-old again, staring at the classiest thing ever.

"So you can have one legitimately now," he said.

But what was I supposed to tell my parents? I have not spoken about my downfall of 1989 since the event.

A day later, my passive Papa called.

"What did the Boy get you for your birthday?" he asked.

"He got me a mechanical pencil."

"A what?"

"Remember that time in second grade when I changed my mark so I could get a mechanical pencil?" It was inevitable to relive the shame all over again.

"No? When did that happen?" Passive Papa was clueless.

"In second grade! Mum said I could only have it if I aced my tests that term." I was starting to get exasperated that he couldn't remember the worst thing I have ever done in my life.

"So you changed marks?" Passive Papa started to laugh.

"Yes. I felt awful."

"Why your mother not buy it for you? It couldn't be that much!" He said sympathetically.

"But she did! And it was 3RMB when you guys only made 20RMB a week!"

"How you still remember that?" he asked.

"How do you not remember that??" I asked, "You mean I've been carrying the guilt of this horrible thing I did for almost twenty years and you guys don't even remember?"

"No. Can't remember."

I think I may have written something to this effect back in late 2004, amidst exams and thesis:

"Grr...have to stop wasting time mucking about on computer writing stupid stuff. Have a thesis to write. Have another 100 pages of thesis to write. Have to present thesis in TWO DAYS!"

So here I am again. The CFA exam is in 75 days, there are probably 75,000 pages yet to be read and I am happily typing away.

I suppose an absence of over a year warrants an update on all the old favourite characters, and possibly introduction to some new ones.

My hot momma took a long time to adjust to her little duckling moving out of home. While visiting me in Melbourne at Easter last year, she gave me another ten months of freedom before moving back home. That did not eventuate. I stood my ground and am still happily enjoying freedom with intermittent trips home every few months. I think she is back to her former happy self now with some new friends - new wild friends with tattoos, I might add.

My lovely poppa is like the constant in a regression equation (apologies, I just read up on regression analysis yesterday). He has not changed. I enjoy the conversations we have, especially while he fixes the heels of my shoes whenever I am up in Sydney (and saving myself $8 per shoe in the process).

Every night, at just after eight without fail, they call me on my mobile because that's when Optus free time kicks in.

"Have you had dinner?" mum usually begins.

"Yep, just had dinner," I answer, sometimes begrudgingly because it seems there is never a new topic of conversation.

"What you have?"

"A potato and spinach salad," I said today.

"What??! Just salad for dinner? Any bread?" she said with alarm.

"I didn't want bread," I explained, not really wanting to go into my aversion to carbohydrates late at night.

"What about rice? What about soup?"

"No rice! NO SOUP!"

"Aiya. If you were at home, you could have had soup." She always made four dishes and a soup every night.

Some nights, I make up dishes and soups to tell her, things that would not be possible for me to make in the little time I have after coming home from work. Grilled salmon, mama! With some chicken broth to start! And quiche too!

Bah! The books are staring me down! Looks like I will have to introduce the new characters next time. Stay tuned.

There is a clear difference between paternal and maternal love. A fine example of which can be found in my family.

Amidst the intense heat of summer, we are all in an uproar in preparation for my departure to Melbourne. As an only child, this uproar is by no means any kind of exaggeration.

For two days straight, my mother took me shopping for new work clothes. I bought up big on crisp business shirts and conservative tops to go with the two sets of suits I already own. Momma, however, found my taste dull. She insisted on picking up sparkly low-cut tops.

"Darling, you're being boring," said Momma, holding up a sequined-neck backless number. "Your clothes should have personality!! This shirt screams attention! You'll stand out from the crowd!"

"I'll definitely stand out from the crowd after they fire me for indecent exposure."

"You should not waste your youth. If I was your age, I would only ever wear revealing clothes. Show your skin while you still can."

I stood my ground and vetoed the idea of showing up for my first proper yuppie job dressed like a skank trying to land a banker at bar on a typical Friday night. As Pixie once rightly said, "we do not get to be investment bankers by wearing fuck-me boots."

While Momma tried to diversify my wardrobe, Poppa went shopping for me as well. He stopped at his favourite Hardware House and forked out some serious cash on pliers, hammers, nails and screw drivers.

"Essential items. I wrote down a list of them. I'll get you some ropes and a small jigsaw tomorrow," promised Poppa.

He fears that his beloved only child may get trapped in the wilderness with lions, tigers and bears when in Melbourne. My super-boyscout-Poppa is prepared for anything.