The Chatterboxes in The Family

Last weekend, my mom dragged all of us to my Mak Ndak's place at Taman Rashidah Utama, Seremban to visit my bed-ridden Tok. Mak Tam from Kedah was there for the weekend too.

I made a Guilt Free Chocolate Chiffon cake as buah tangan. My mom has this rule that you'd better be taking something when you visit someone. Except her house as we always trot down to Gombak on empty stomachs and plenty of empty tupperware for takeaways, even frozen cucur udang for us to fry when we get home. I know. I know. Such spoilt kids!

Anyhow.

Gartred and me, Gartblue are such chatterboxes. When there are the two of us, anywhere, be assured that it will be merry.

Gartred works in a hospital and has been evern since she started working and she always regale us, the clan with stories of illnesses and dead bodies having to be brought downstairs via the stairs since the lifts could not accomodate a body lying down, before rigor sets in. She also tells of the people stories and it never fails to fascinate us. And of course, the boob jobs, the tummy tucks stories are always the best, particularly who's who and how it's down. We'd be oo-ing and ouch-ing and ehem-ing.

Our little sister, call her GartLilSis is also a pharmacist but she works at a drugs enforcement agency, a governmental body, if you may wonder. She's not like Gartblue or me at all. She's rather small-ish and a lot less talkative than us. But when she does share, we'd love to listen to stories of what drug will come in and what drug's been taken off the shelves and sometimes she shares with us the samples which she gets by the bucket.

Anyways.

I work in a very boring industry, not worth mentioning to my clan, unless I want them to sleep. Face it! Compared to haunted hospital lifts and drug scandals, my coal and gas issues are rather bland, to say the least.

But I've found a new topic which caught the attention of my clan. Not that there's any competition. Yikes!

It's baking. My aunties still can't believe for the lifes of them that I can bake. And teach people some more. So, everytime I bring a cake, they'd be peppering me with the questions of how, what and the rest. Finally!

Anyways.

Remembering the reason why we're there, we set out butts in my Tok's room, massaging her skinny legs and helping her to change sides to relieve her sores. And new topics began anew.

Mak Tam was talking about the current fave of "rebung madu" i.e. honey bamboo shoots. I love rebung and never made them. Gartred was dishing out how to make masak lemak rebung with only 3 ingredients. Kunyit, cili api and santan. Then the rebung and ikan bilis la.

Then Mak Tam said, "bawang takkan takde" to which a resounding no from Gartred, my mom and Mak Ndak. Mak Tam then said "la, Mak yang ajag ni." She then turned to Tok and said jokingla " Mak, mak cakap kat cek sekarang sementara mak ada lagi. Apa lagi ajaran-ajaran sesat mak dah ajag cek selain dari masak lemak".

We all were laughing with tears streaming down our cheeks. Tok just smiled.