Jun's early taste of the limelight

How many of us, especially Malaysians, can claim to have met Queen Elizabeth?
Well, Jun can!

When she was one year old, Queen Elizabeth visited Camden Town Chinese Community Centre. Jun’s mum works at the CCC. Somehow Jun got a chance to meet QE while her dad was holding her. Pictures of the meeting was published in various newspapers as well as televised.

Now, at 3 years old, she can claim to be a jetsetter, having travelled to Malaysia twice within 6 months!

She can understand and speak English, Mandarin and Cantonese. I was quite impressed with her command of English. For example:

What is your name? My name is Wai-Jun.
How old are you? Three years old.
Why are you going to Malaysia? To see my grand-mother.
Does your daddy smoke? Yes, in the toilet. He tells me to go away (with hand gesture waving).
In the plane toilet: Is it(poo)coming? No, wait ten minutes.
At baggage collection: This bag is mine. Are you sure? Yes. I wait for daddy’s bag.
SP lied to her: Your daddy’s will come next week.

When she looked out of the window, she saw a stranger standing next to our rented car.
Jun said in Cantonese, “Yaw yat ko wai tan yew tao lei ge che” and as we were trying to spot if the young bloke was really up to no good, she then suggested in Cantonese as well, after pulling the blinds “Kui mm hew tai dou ngo dei”

Mandarin:
At the airport, she was screaming away when told to follow us through the security checks: “Pu yau! Pu yau! Pu yau!” “Wo yau Papa!” “Wo yau Mama!”
Actually, I nearly gave up and almost decided to call off the arrangement. I could empathise with the trauma she was going through.

Fortunately, by the time we entered the Duty Free area, my wife managed to pacify her by suggesting that she chooses some chocolates with different figurines for her grandmother. From then on, SP had to use all her years of experience as a mother and her teaching skills to tell her stories and relate to actual persons.

As soon as she was pacified, I decided to call my son who was waiting outside the security area, with my nephew and wife. I realised my phone with Digi pre-paid card does not have international roaming. Luckily, I could access his number from the phone memory and wrote in down. Then I used the public phone to call him to inform my nephew that everything is fine.

I was quite surprised that Beng had been checking on our flight. As soon as the plane taxied to a stop at KLIA, I switched on my handphone and as we were walking out of the plane he called and said he knew we had touched down and that he was doing it to keep the parents informed. Come to think of it, Beng, at about the same age as Jun, did experience something similar. He was with his mum at Heathrow sending me off and I could still remember how terrible I felt then. But at least he still had his mum then unlike Jun, being separated from both mum and dad. Jun is very fond of Beng. He didn’t lie to her that he was going to follow her to Malaysia . Not knowing that she was going, he unintentionally agreed when she asked, that he is going with her. It was a result of her brainwashing by her mum to get her mentally prepared I suppose. It would not have been a problem if indeed he were going back with us then.