Outdated Updates Updated - Antics of the Future Mother-in-Law

It was the last night of the Honey Bun-neeey's stay in Singapore (of his August trip) and we were being given the cold shoulder. By whom, you ask. Well, it would be no surprise if I said it was The Lady of the Manor. Any why, you ask. Well, this one's a shocker. Are you sitting down? You'll need to if you're going to read on.

As we're both sitting on the lounge, waiting for her to comment on what we found out about the Yishun Country Club that day, she sits quietly and starts to flip the 4-page brochure from front to back to front to back and all over again. This goes on for a while and the HB and I knew something was up. I decided that I was going to take myself to bed anyway because the HB and I needed to be up early the next morning for his flight out of Singapore. The HB said he's not far out of bed too but will stay up a little longer. Good luck, I thought to myself as I made my exit.

The next morning, in the taxi to the airport, the HB summarises the 3 hour conversation which he had with The Lady of the Manor after I had taken myself to bed. 3 bloody hours! By the time he had gone to bed, it was close to 3am and he only had less than 3 hours of sleep because we had to be up early for his flight out. It wasn't like the Lady of the Manor didn't know he had an early start the next day but that didn't stop her from acting like a child, did it?

So, the source of her childish tantrums turns out to be none other than the wedding dinner reception or banquet as we'd like to call it in Singapore. The past 2 weeks, the Honey Bun-neeey and I had been asking hotels to send us their packages, we'd been out and about looking at these function rooms and we'd always come home to report our findings to The Lady of the Manor. But towards the end of the HB's trip, it surfaced that

we did not want to make a speech (the HB wasn't comfortable with a 20min monologue)
we did not want a champagne fountain (tacky, tacky, tacky!)
we did not want a Yum Seng toast (we don't speak that dialect and its not our tradition)
we did not want the dry ice-effect during our march-in (tacky, tacky, tacky and haven't we moved on from that?) .

The Lady of the Manor couldn't be more displeased. She wants the 80s version of a full-blown Chinese banquet for our dinner reception - just minus the Chinese sit-down menu. But why when it's fast forward 2 decades later, and neither of us are Chinese? Her attempt at logical reasoning is - because that's the way it's done in Singapore. A whole load of crap that is! The last time she must have attended one of these wedding receptions would have been 12 years ago when my brother got married! Perhaps that's why she's still caught up with the style and practices of wedding receptions of that era! Cringe! But being The Lady of the Manor, she refuses to admit to that and instead lies that she knows what she's talking about because she's attended so many other wedding dinner receptions in recent years. She fails to notice that we both live under the same house and I usually know what her social activities are.

Anyway, in 3 hours, in between having to hear re-runs of the Lady of the Manor putting me down, accusing me of hell all and comparing me with the daughter-in-law she never liked and the son she puts on a pedastal, the HB tried to reason with her why we didn't want these practices at our reception. He even negotiated with her - we'll make a speech and a toast, albeit not a Yum Seng toast, but no to all the rest. It seemed that although she wasn't happy she wasn't getting the whole deal, she agreed nonetheless.

This all comes back to the dinner reception we don't even want. Why are we bloody having to negotiate with her on all these things when it's a bloody dinner reception we didn't even want in the first place??? It's bloody madness!!! And doesn't it embarrass her to behave like a 6 years old who throws tantrums when he doesn't get his way when the fact is, she's 61 years old and should be years wiser than that?

The Antics of His Future Mother-in-law.