An unnacustomed to experience.

For the first time in my life I have been busy. This is not to put myself down. The low self esteem corner is already quite overbooked. This is just to say that in the middle of illegal emp3 downloading and bitching about my boss, I have been working hard enough to not want to talk to any of my friends. And my friends are nice people.

The new workplace comes equipped with a window next to me and a desk secluded enough to hide the pictures of nude women that show up on all the mp3 sites. The building is too old to be able to handle the extra power load of an AC so the office gets so hot that if I were to bring cake batter to work in the morning, I could leave the office at the the odd hours I do with a freshly baked cake to impress my neighbours. This is something that would finally convince my neighbours that I am not in fact a prostitute but a very, very hard-working child molester.

I am actually quite miserable. My grandmother is much better. She loudly and stridently complains that the new nurse is so dark that she may not be able to see her at night. The stunning sister of my cousin's friend is assuredly a lesbian (yes, she knows that word). She has announced her will to the whole family and I am getting the cracked porcelain cat from her sideboard and her green eyeliner from 1967. My cousin, her most favourite grandchild gets my grandfather and my other cousin, her least favourite; gets nothing. Her night nurse, she has said, gets the entire contents of her elegant patrician nose.

And as my grandmother made her loud entry back into the land of sweetness and light, a place she has every intention of sullying to set right, an uncle made his dignified exit. As all the old aunts nodded into their coffee swearing that he was a good man, I remembered that indeed he was.

As a young fourteen year old, I knew him as the uncle whose fronds of moustache swayed gently in the teacup as he drank. And who was known world wide as one of the finest teachers. As I have grown up I have realised that he was a gently affectionate man whom we still called "Mr. Bose" Not Gilbert Uncle, or Gilbert Phua but Mr. Bose. And behind his back, we called him what the Andhra-ite accountant who couldn't pronounce ''Gilbert' called him-Chilled Beer.

But he was a good man, Chilled Beer Bose. He had joy. And was non judgemental. And although he will never have stories attached to him like my grandmother does, except for the one I used to tell, that he needn't look beyond his copious moustache for a snack, should he need one, he will have a fond smile attached to his name.

And for him, I celebrate. Because in a family of lunatics, he was the untouched moon.