Tuesday, June 03, 2008

Long Lost Aunt & Other Family Members

I had a very interesting night last night. I met an aunt which I haven’t met and kinda didn’t know existed for the past 31 years.

I always knew that my dad had one sister. That’s the aunt I know. But she’s rather elusive. Long story.


And recently, I received a SMS from another person saying that she’s my aunt and that she would like to invite me to her son, aka my cousin’s wedding.


After investigating, I found out that my paternal grand father had 2 wives and this new aunt, Aunt Myra, was the youngest daughter of my grand father from the second wife! And she has a brother. So now instead of 1 aunt, I now have 2 aunts and 1 uncle!


And apparently there were a lot of non official wives. It was very common then.


We decided to meet up cos it would be really strange for me to attend and wedding and not know the bride and groom. Nor know whom I’m related to in the room since it is a relatives’ wedding.


We met up in Sid’s and had a fantastic time! Both my aunt and her husband were a hoot and we had such a great time catching up, drinking and talking.

And I found out so much about my family line. Some things I knew already but some were complete revelations.


I knew that my great great grand father was Yap Ah Syak (you know the road in KL with the good food). And he was a real gangster! The Kapitans ruled KL!


What I didn’t know was that:

- he was the 4th Kapitan Cina in KL (Yap Ah Loy was the first and no one know much about the 2nd and the 3rd)

- the family used to own two thirds of the land in KL (I could have been a multi multi multi billionaire today if it wasn’t the curse of money not lasting more than 3 generations. Dammit!)

- The family house used to be on Jalan Bukit Bintang and anyone who isn’t a Yap who slept in the house, always woke up outside or in another part of the house! Apparently the ghosts of the ancestors only looked after the Yaps and didn’t like outsiders.


I thought my family was small but about a decade ago, The Star did an article about my Aunt and Yap Ah Shak and she managed to find 72 different relatives to attend a dinner. 10 years on, I probably have more than a hundred relatives out there I don’t know about!


This is going to be an interesting wedding indeed!


But like Paul said, just hope that I don’t meet an ex boyfriend there!


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