Beautifully Imperfect.

When I was a child, Wawasan 2020 always seemed so far away. I remember passing by the garden landscape that proudly said '2020', beside the Federal Highway every Sunday as my dad drove us to church in KL. I would sit in the backseat, and make my way to the right (yeah, so my parents never enforced seatbelts - I would then later grow up to realise how dangerous it was -_-) to look at it, calculating how old I would be in 2020. The answer was 32, which seemed like it was light years away. I wondered what I'd be by the time I was 32.

WELL. That light years away, is merely 2 years away now.

I recently had this conversation with my family at dinner, about growing up, which led me to this post.

One of the things that made me realise that I was now an adult was:

1. I don't mind hot beverages anymore

When I was younger, I had to order cold drinks. Milo ais, iced lemon tea, you get the drift. I never understood why adults liked to have hot drinks. You almost always burn your tongue, the damn steam fogs up your glasses, and it's not like we need it to warm ourselves up because it's 37 degrees outside. One day, I caught myself ordering a hot ocha. The next time, it was a hot chocolate. Then a hot matcha latte. Hot honey lemon. Then it hit me, I had become one of those adults.

Hot chocolate in the afternoon? Blasphemy

We put this to the test during that same family dinner, which was at a Japanese restaurant, and true enough, most of those over the age of 30 ordered hot green tea, whilst 5 out of the 6 teens/kids ordered iced green tea. Hypothesis proven.

This hypothesis had me thinking a little more about this, and led me to this next point:

2. Your friends have children who will start calling you aunty once they can talk

One of my best friends Ching, whom I've known since I was a toddler, now has a toddler of her very own named Ellie.

I know I have a host of nephews and nieces, so I've technically been an aunty since 11, but they call me aunty on Hokkien terms (Wen 'Kor' - referring to their father's sister, or Wen 'Yi' - referring to their mother's youngest sister) so it never really sounds that bad. 

Now, when there are younger children around, you try to insist being called jie jie or kor kor because you really don't feel like you're that old, or that much of an adult yet. But when I think about it, there's really no two ways about it especially now that these are my friends' kids.

Because... what did you call your parents' friends when you were younger? My parents would gently chide me, "Wen, call aunty uncle la". When you went to a friend's house to hang out or to work on a project together, you'd also immediately greet their parents with an "Hi aunty" or "How are you, uncle?" simply because your parents had reminded you to do that a hundred times while they were dropping you off.

Hence, what should Ellie call her parent's (Ching) friend (me)? Uh huh. There's no denying this entire generation gap between the both of us, so I guess Wendy jie jie won't cut it anymore.

And last but not least, my favourite point:

3. You shouldn't call people kakak anymore because you are the kakak

Well, not literally the kakak, but okay, let me explain.

You know how you usually call some shop assistants 'kak' out of respect because they're older than you? Slowly one day, you start to realise that you're not that much younger than these kaks anymore? I've also started noticing that shop assistants now call me ma'am instead of miss wtf. 

But that's not the worst. The true clincher came for me about 1-2 weeks ago.

So, my mum recently started having temporary cleaners come by once a week to help her with household chores. One morning, I came down the stairs, about to leave for work, and I saw the temp cleaner sweeping the floor. I opened my mouth, about to greet her but she turned around beat me to it.

Smiling cheerily, she said, "Selamat pagi, kak".

HAHAHA it was like she took the words out of my mouth. -__-

Oh well. If I knew things were going to change this way, why the heck did I keep on looking forward to Wawasan 2020 all those years ago?