BACK TO THE PAST

To give our contractor space to renovate our home on Coombe Road, the family has moved out for a period of no less than 3-months. Dora and I are now in a small 1-bedroom apartment in Happy Valley, reliving the early days of our marraige which can be summarized as : no space, no helpers, no pets, no $ but above all, no kids! The flip side is we had lots of time together, lots of creativity entertaining at home on low budgets, and lots of love .... I meant 'love' that goes beyond the bedroom, like looking after each other. The picture shows Dora in her side of the study, which doubles as the dining room, with the open kitchen/pantry at the back, and our state-of-the-art surround sound home-theater to the left. My study is the other half of the dual purpose table. Imagine facing your wife while screening dirty photos and clips from my global network of less-than-respectable pals? It is, without any question, something new in my life.

I love playing the role of our helpers and not to blow my own trumpets, I am quite good at it. Dora is served a different style breakfast with accompanying choices of her favorite teas, every morning - in bed - with the 8am news. When she leaves to 'earn bread for us' I make the bed, tidy up the flat, wash the dishes, take orders for 1-pot dinners (if we eat at home) and humbly bite my tongue when she hands down critiques eg too much oil, needs less salt etc as she is seriously health conscious these days. I enjoy looking after her in this way, probably the result of guilt from all these years of neglect. The apartment is serviced 3 times weekly and one of the staff said, 'there is hardly anything for us to do except changing the towels and vaccum the floor'. I think I might have paid too much. You see, everybody has a boss and it looks like mine is you-know-who these days. Being in such close quarters is both good and bad. We may spend more time together, we might even 'understand' each other better, but that creates more opportunites for friction too. Worse yet, there is no place to hide! I cannot even take Kaya out with my Petit Robusto to avoid a potential fight which, to Dora, is always just a different angle of looking at things, never a fight. 'You can learn to be more patient and less easily irritated by small stuff, and they are all small stuff, right?' .... yeh, dear, you are always right!