KambingBujang

Photo: blentley

1. My mom is a supreme cop, Judge Dredd, Robocop, or whatever fancy names you want to label. But my mom is nothing like it. No one can ever be leveled with her. She IS much more than that. She’s a panther of the jungle who always taking control of a situation and turns it into something you can’t possibly imagine when you’re kid. If, me and other siblings, had done something wrong, then we knew what kind of ‘reward’ we would get.

2. Yes. What followed after that, was a supersonic voice, and drilling pinches, and endless lecture about how grateful I was, compared to other kids who lived in Somalia.

3. My mom is a unique woman. And I love her. She used to believe (and she is now) that good people were made of steel. The more strictness you are, the more powerful you would become. And yes, it was totally proven – everyone in the family leads a happy life and have a decent job. I remember that my mom taught me about life when I was little:

EAT LIKE POOR PEOPLE
4. I’m so crazy in love with hot chili-based foods and dishes. Those foods make my head itchy and I can feel the sweat on my back every time I look at them. It seems like I have a superpower: the hotter the food is, the itchier the skin of my head will be.

5. Then the memory of me and my mom that I can’t forget, no matter how hard I try,  the first time I got smacked by my mother because of the chilli Boh.

6. I can’t fight the feeling of irresistible temptation when I see red color in food — I drank chili boh she had been prepared that morning. I got smacked like a thunder in the sky.

7. And I also remembered how my mom told me that we have to be prepared ourselves with less ordinary food if we broke that consequently led to extreme poverty life and we had to eat a lovely cat or lizard in order to survive.

8. So, at least once a week she prepared the most lowest level kind of food like rice with fried fish, and black soy ketchup.

9. Usually we, as siblings, were served with at least more than two dishes.

10. If a few pieces of rice was dropped off of the plate, make sure you pick it up. And the table had to be cleaned without sign of food. If not, the punishment shall be your coat.

11. There must be no sign of rice on the table. Those rice have to be what they suppose to be: on plate. I had to eat my dinner in careful manner, not to drop a single grain of rice if my mother noticed that I ignored it, I would get pinched on my thigh.

12. It’s hard to be a mom. Especially when she had no assistant to wash plates, bowl, and she had to deal with her children who have no table manner like Vikings. Well, of course, aside from we get a burning sensation of pinching on our thighs because of our behavior, we also have to wash our own dishes.

NO LUXURY FOOD UNTIL YOU APPRECIATE OF HOW GRATEFUL YOU ARE
13. She seldom cook for us any luxury food to teach us that we have to be grateful and live a life less ordinary.

14. Don’t let our food becomes a waste because there are millions of poor people who need food and, everyday they die because of food deprivation.

PREPARE FOR THE RAINY DAYS.
Why my mom cooked and served like we have only RM3 left in our pocket? She did that because she wanted me to be prepared for the worst, and not to complain about it.