Jasmine's Father
Jasmine’s Father
By Paul Tan
It’s such an irony. I had always thought that marriage for my only child Jasmine was a given. As with all my other siblings, marriage was not only to ensure one’s continued progeny, it was protection against censure and unwanted speculation. Most importantly, it was the best safeguard against loneliness, especially in one’s twilight years.
Jasmine today is still single at thirty-five, living it up in Vancouver where she migrated. From what she tells me, her calendar is always crowded with interesting appointments with chatty, effusive people. Weekends are spent trekking some pristine patch of nature or learning the finer points of wine-tasting. There is never enough time, she declared. I, on the other hand, am a widower who spends a good part of his days alone in a comfortable three-room flat in Marine Parade.
Not that I mind it now. I am perfectly content with this arrangement that affords me solitude and quiet reflection. I have reconciled myself to the unlikely prospects of noisy nuptials for Jasmine, especially when one weighs in her passion for her new- found home and her friends there.
Of late, in her weekly communications, her disdain for Singapore, or at least its men, has become more strident. She increasingly chooses to interact with Canadian men, rather than men from the Asian community there. Those guys are so with it, articulate and sporting, she declared, compared to Singaporean men who were graceless, guarded chauvinists with the charm of a flea. I did not understand all her idioms, many of them trendy American phrases but listened intently anyway.
Jasmine has always been vocal. Apart from her familiar gripes about the dearth of interesting Singaporean men, she also felt passionately the need to get away from a system which she felt routinely discriminated against her. This was something she had often shared with me over an after-dinner glass of wine. She labelled it The System - a sum of cold bureaucracy, inept
By Paul Tan
It’s such an irony. I had always thought that marriage for my only child Jasmine was a given. As with all my other siblings, marriage was not only to ensure one’s continued progeny, it was protection against censure and unwanted speculation. Most importantly, it was the best safeguard against loneliness, especially in one’s twilight years.
Jasmine today is still single at thirty-five, living it up in Vancouver where she migrated. From what she tells me, her calendar is always crowded with interesting appointments with chatty, effusive people. Weekends are spent trekking some pristine patch of nature or learning the finer points of wine-tasting. There is never enough time, she declared. I, on the other hand, am a widower who spends a good part of his days alone in a comfortable three-room flat in Marine Parade.
Not that I mind it now. I am perfectly content with this arrangement that affords me solitude and quiet reflection. I have reconciled myself to the unlikely prospects of noisy nuptials for Jasmine, especially when one weighs in her passion for her new- found home and her friends there.
Of late, in her weekly communications, her disdain for Singapore, or at least its men, has become more strident. She increasingly chooses to interact with Canadian men, rather than men from the Asian community there. Those guys are so with it, articulate and sporting, she declared, compared to Singaporean men who were graceless, guarded chauvinists with the charm of a flea. I did not understand all her idioms, many of them trendy American phrases but listened intently anyway.
Jasmine has always been vocal. Apart from her familiar gripes about the dearth of interesting Singaporean men, she also felt passionately the need to get away from a system which she felt routinely discriminated against her. This was something she had often shared with me over an after-dinner glass of wine. She labelled it The System - a sum of cold bureaucracy, inept