The World of Tai Tai

I attended my cousin Edmund's wedding in Kuala Belait, Brunei Darusalam yesterday. It was a happy occasion as another member of the younger generation along my maternal family line had heeded the holy matrimonial call. Cousin Edmund is a bank officer while his wife, Rachel was a civil engineer. She had just submitted her letter of resignation several days before to take up the role of a full-time housewife. If I am not wrong, they had dated each other for six years. I wish them all the best. I was also glad to have the opportunity to meet up with my relatives including Tatiana and Cousin Andrew(a Croatian Australian of mixed parentage). Despite distinctive differences in religions(catholicism, anglicanism, Islam and Buddhism), we were able to converge for the wedding mass in church joyfully. Shame on some christian relatives who had refused to witness the Islamic matrimony ceremony of a muslim cousin two years back. The invi...

(Right: Papa is sight-seeing in an old housing area in Di-Pai) On the third day of travel, Papa and Sis finally treaded the soil of our place of origin, Di-Pai, Lung-Men Province, Gwang Dong, China. Di-Pai is a very remote suburban town in Lung-Men Province. Most of her residents are Hakka, one of the majority tribes in China. My late grandfather came from a local village where all folks bore the same family name --Lo. His reason for leaving his birthplace had nothing to do with seeking a greener pasture, but because of a dramatic trauma.  One fine evening when grandpa, a herb-gatherer, was on his way home after finishing his routine work in a nearby forest, he was attacked, overpowered and taken captive by a group of human trafficking syndicates. Along with many other would-be slave labourers, he was shipped all the way from China to Netherlands, being chained and tethered like an animal in the hold. Some had perished from starvation, tortures and illnesses before reaching the f...