Since young, my dad had set his eyes on grooming us to love chinese culture. Because of his great love for the culture, he did things like send us to chinese schools, enrol in chinese music classes/ make us join chinese orchestra as a CCA, teach us chinese calligraphy, bring us to china on holidays, etc. Long ago, he even rejected an offer to be posted to Australia for work cos he didn't want us to become bananas lol.
Nevertheless, I don't think all of us turned out particularly in tuned to Chinese culture. He did managed to convince me though - I ended up continuing orchestra till university on my own accord. I also listen to chinese classical music, watch chinese history films, think that cheongsums are the prettiest things and take to oriental stuff a lot.
Anyway, whenever my dad goes to China for work (which he has been going pretty often in the past few years) he always makes it a point to get us gifts. This is a collection of what I've received so far, and I must say, he is pretty good taste in getting us useful and quite pretty stuff:
From extreme left, this was the first gift he ever bought for me. I don't know what made him decide that I liked pandas, or soft toys (which I do)! I gave it to my brother cos he had better appreciation of pandas (he likes panda stuff lol).
To the right, it is a jade bangle that he bought for my mum, but she didn't like it cos she thinks only grandmas wear them. So I took it for myself. Haha, banished to the rungs of grandma fashion ^^
Then below, there is my name stamp on another trip. I used to have one long ago which he would use to chop our textbooks, but we misplaced it. :(
Then there is the wooden comb. I love it that it is so hardy and natural, and use it all the time.
Above it, is a pocket mirror! it's made up of acrylic I think, and is very handy and pretty
Above it, is a box which is supposed to contain a ring, but I misplaced it. A green ring that looks like that:
Not the usual kind of rings that I would get/ wear, but just because he looked so excited when he gifted it to me and was happy when I said I would wear it.
Top, an umbrella that he got on his most recent trip! He got another for my sis and I some time back, that I termed as the ugliest umbrella ever (cos it was metallic blue with glitter) but I loved it all the same. I left it at a church during a wedding and haven't gone back to collect it yet!
And lastly, a calligraphy practice set! It is very useful cos you can just use water as ink, and it appears on the special cloth as black ink, and disappears after a while. I've been using it for some time now.
<3
EDIT: One more thing that proves that papa is telepathic.
I have an insane love for jimmy liao's illustrations! He illustrated the most poignant and romantic book "向左走，向右走" which was made into a film. Since secondary school, I have been collecting many of his books, but I only buy them when I'm in China (cos it's 15RMB (S$3-4) a book vs S$27 if you get it at any local book stores). This time round, papa bought one of his books for me! But a pity, because I already have a mini version. :p
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