on a phone call home yesterday...

(phone ringing...)
Hansen(H):"hello?"
Gretel(G):"hello. gor ah. eh, 好一点了吗?"
H:"uh"
G:"几时回去上班？"
H:"星期四 lor."
G:"啊？爸爸 email 我， 说你 MC到 29/11。"
H:"ah? 没有啦。"
G:"so 没事了啦？"
H:"uh."
H+G:"......"
G:" 爸爸在吗？"
H:"不在。"
G:"妈妈？"
H:"在。" (shouts to mum:"妈！诗音打来了！"
[back ground, mum replies:"哎呀。我在晒衣服。你跟她讲多一下。"
H:"我没有东西讲了。"
mum approaching phone and saying loudly:"自己的妹妹都没有话讲。没有用。"]
mum picks up phone:"hello. eh, 什么事？"

i personally find the above "conversation" sad and funny at the same time...
sad because my brother and i seem to have nothing to talk about...since we were kids.
funny because my brother is always keen to pass the phone to mum/dad so that he dun have to talk to me anymore.

germ says her brother is like that too. and i wonder how many peoples' brothers are like. hmmm...

though i must admit it's not purely my brother's unwillingness talk to me...i run out of things to say to him as well...so in a way, my mum's 没有用 is referring to both my brother and i. perhaps when we were kids, we had more verbal communication than right now. the times my brother becomes verbal are when 1) he is playing computor game and is either winning or losing, 2) playing mahjong, 3) fixing up the computor and 4) trying to teach me physics and i just don't get it. at least that's what i observe. i'm sure he got alot more to talk to his friends about than with his baby sister.

nonetheless, the above phone conversation was probably one of the longest one i had with my elder brother. pathetic? hopeless?

well...not really. cos perhaps both of us just prefer to 让一切尽在不言中。and in a way, less verbal exchange also means we step on each other's toes less. so there are benefits in that sense.

or maybe i am jus kidding myself. we are just 2 people who have nothing to say to each other.

watever...i know that he's my brother, and i know that i love him...and i know that i want him to be well and healthy...

and deep inside, i know he really cares for me too. so, we don't talk much...but as long as we still understand each other, maybe not talking isn't such a problem after all.