Inherited Traits

I'm typing this from the grandfolks' place in So Hour, where I have been for a little less than thirty-six hours. It's been an interesting time so far, so I suppose you'll want to know absolutely everything about my life since the past update nearly two weeks ago--and, as my usual habit goes, even if you don't you're about to find out anyway!

...then again, nothing much of note has happened since my last update; I've mostly spent the time getting used to the house--there's a lot to keep on getting used to--and looking unsuccessfully for jobs, and hanging out with people, but more on that in a bit. Mostly I stay in the house and listen to the landlady's random mutterings, and I have to admit she's getting on my nerves rather. She's a sixty-something-year-old woman with the figure of a dessicated pear and the face of a gargoyle (not the real-life stone-carved ones, more like the ones from the Disney animated series) and I'm really trying to be kind here... age has not been kind to her. And I probably should have noticed earlier, but the house is clearly not the house of a person who reads much, and she said once that she used to be a retail promoter, so there really isn't very much of her mind to probe for interesting stuff either. Not that I talk to her very much, or vice-versa, apart from her asking how my family is (I suspect she just wants to know how much money we have because my continued joblessness frightens her) or her wittering on about making sure to lock the door and keep the keys secure and not use the computer so much and to not turn the lights on until it's absolutely necessary and the hot weather (when the electric fans aren't turned on) and the cold weather (when they are)... essentially she's a rather old woman and I'm still getting used to it. Mostly I put the headphones on, though that's definitely a stopgap measure and not great for long-term use, and drown her talking in good music.

At any rate I haven't been in the house for very long stretches as of late, and it looks like travelling has been foisted on me for (at least) until the 20th of July, so that's time to build up resistance to the landlady, though it also is time lost that I could be looking for jobs with, so I don't know. Still, time away from Singapore means that much longer that the money will last, so... trade-off, I guess. It's really all up in God's hands since I haven't the foggiest what's going to happen--my father thinks this mad urge to go into the industry is definitely going to end with me in some kind of management role, and if so then there's a lot more that I'm going to need to learn and brush up on. Stuff like making inspiring speeches and looking like I know a lot more than I actually do and looking down on other people as useless midgets... yes, I read Dilbert, why do you ask?

So I arrived yesterday, but I received the summons on the night of the 6th, when I was informed by my father that my grandfather was badly ill and that I should hurry up and come over to see him, upon which I asked how ill he was, and my father said he was ill enough to warrant an emergency flight from Patience (where my father was at the time), and when I asked what illness there wasn't any reply. So I left early the next day, telling the landlady only that I'd be away for an unknown period of time, and then arrived in the house just after lunchtime, thinking that I'd probably find my grandfather in his usual lounge chair in front of the TV and a little bit uneasy or something. (The other prevalent image that came to my mind was me arriving just as the coffin was being delivered, but I banished that as being a little too morbid.) To my surprise the house was nearly empty, and then I found that my grandfather was in the hospital, along with Fourth Aunt and my father, and after that was a lot of medical history--basically my grandfather had a knee surgery just before I went off to Australia, if I remember correctly, and was supposed to rest for three months; barely three days after the surgery, however, he was toddling off to run around the farm with his rifle to shoot squirrels, and on one of those excursions he managed to fall down and then the doctor was very fierce at him, and with good reason.

And then a couple days ago, he had a fever, but was lucid enough to insist on being left to rest in the house and not going to see the doctor; the next day the fever was bad enough that he apparently lost all motor control and fell out of the bed when he tried to get out of it. And that was when the panicking started and the ambulance was sent for and all the uncles and aunts and grandchildren were notified, and it was that night that I received the summons; the day I arrived he'd been on treatment, apparently for a viral attack, and today he was discharged. So it doesn't look like it was too bad in the end, but it was still very worrying. (I should add at this point that he also just had a cataracts operation and so is wearing shades all the time.) It's also a little bit amusing, because I've realised I've inherited his apparently cavalier treatment of the body--as evidenced by the episode of the infected right middle finger when I was seriously considering amputating it before going to the doctor's. (And as a result there's a slightly-rough patch of skin there, the original site of infection, where I've no sensation at all. It's rather surreal.)

But at any rate he's been discharged, and so is in the house being taken care of by my grandmother and aunts and cousins, and shouldn't be in any life-threatening situations for the foreseeable future, unless the part of his brain that says he's Wolverine kicks in again and he goes off and joins a marathon or something.

...in all this I'm sure God has His plans somewhere--if He's beyond time then He's certainly at His leisure to arrange whatever needs to be arranged, and I'll admit a bit of time in Patience does seem... desirable, for the time being. Of course, there's an old woman there, too; and the parents, and two brothers, and the Internet is going to be pretty nearly unavailable. But there's a piano, and... well! I don't know what's going to happen. Let's see what turns up.

(I suspect this impulsive ticket-booking of my father's has been inherited by me, too, except I buy books instead of plane tickets.)