The Household COO

In Chinese culture, filial piety is very important.  One of the duties that demonstrates filial piety is the taking the responsibility of looking after the elderly in their old age.  Although the Chinese tradition is for the sons to look after the elderly, in this modern day, it is equally applicable to both sons and daughters to assume the responsibility of looking after the elderly. 

Raised in a Western society, there were a lot of Chinese traditions that I was never made aware of.  However, this Chinese tradition was not one of them.  From an early age, my parents inculcated the importance of filial piety and the need to look after the elderly in their old age. 

When hubby and I got married, we had originally decided we wanted to live on our own, however the hubby made it clear that my in laws would eventually move in and live with us as they grew older.  Having been raised to that expectation, I have never had an issue with this.  In fact, had he not believed in this practice, I would have assumed that responsibility because it was what I had been taught since young.

What I never expected was to be living with my in laws during the early part of our marriage - even if it was intended to be a temporary measure.  Even more unexpected was that I would be living in the house of my in laws, rather than they living in our house. 

What’s the difference, you ask? Well, when you live in someone else’s house (even one that you call home), there are certain expectations that you need to follow just because this house belongs to them.  That means that there are a lot of things you cannot do because you need to be mindful of the person who runs the house (at least, that’s how it should be if you respect that person’s feelings).  When you own the house, you have greater liberty to do as you please.

This minor adjustment is something I could live with since it is, after all, just a temporary measure.  What I found most challenging was learning to understand the way my in laws tick because they are very different people to my parents.  When you stay in close quarters with others, there is always a greater tendency to inadvertantly rub sandpaper on raw skin.  Learning how to live together takes time and effort.

For instance, when I was a kid, my Dad had a pretty explosive temper.  Now that he’s older, he seems to have mellowed out somewhat - either that or distance has made his temper seem cooler.  What I discovered while I was growing up was that giving my Dad a wide berth when he was mad was often the best thing to do.  My Dad appreciated the time to cool off on his own and I developed a similar preference of wanting to be left alone when I was mad at something that wasn’t in reference to anyone in particular.

So on days when my MIL lost her temper, I tended to stay away from her - to give her the time to cool down without being underfoot.  Little did I realise was that with my MIL, this is exactly what you should not do.  It took me a while to discover this, but I’m glad I did, because at least now I know how to help her better.

Even though living with my in laws is a very different experience to living with my own parents, there are a number of practices that my MIL has that I like.  For instance, I like how they always wait (whenever possible) for everyone to get home first before having dinner so we can all sit down together for a meal on a regular basis.  In my house, we only ate together if everyone happened to be home at the same time.  Sometimes, we didn’t eat together because someone would be busy doing something else around the house, or another person wasn’t hungry yet.  What I like about eating together is that it encourages bonding for strong family ties.

Although we had a number of teething periods when we first moved in, I find they grow less and less as we spend more time together and learn to live together.  If I felt intimidated by the idea of living with my in laws in their house initially, I can honestly say that I do enjoy living here now.  That said, I still look forward to the time when we will move into our own house because I want a place of my own to furnish as I please.  My TY bears are still waiting for a proper home outside of a plastic box, Gavin still needs a dedicated play area that he can freely mess up and be responsible for, and I want an area where I can set up my ergonomic computer desk and chair.  I also want my own kitchen because I’ve always felt more comfortable cooking in my own space - knowing exactly what I have stock of and what utensils and equipment I have available.  Cooking in someone else’s kitchen just isn’t the same.

I saw the following swing in Harvey Norman and I think it would look pretty nice on the front porch…

I also want a Japanese Garden.  Although I like the Koi pond in my in law’s house, I think it’s a little too much work for the likes of me.  I shall settle on something neat and self-tending.  I was never much of a green thumb - I love flowers but I hate earthworms.  Therein lies my problem.

So I was looking for dining chairs to match my dining table and I figured the easiest place to find these would be to look at the same shop my dining table came from.  It was quite disappointing not to find anything that matched.  The closest I could find were these two:

Not quite the perfect match I was hoping for so I think I’ll have to continue looking around for more. 

I did see this really cool chair under the dining chair section, though:

Don’t worry, hubby, I’m not serious about getting it - but you have to admit, it’s pretty groovy, isn’t it?

Okay, okay, back to the drawing board.  I need a chair to match the table pictured in my earlier post.

Since my last post on this topic, I’ve decided to decorate our future home by posting up pictures of the stuff I’d like to have in our house when it is ready.  I’m also trying to design a toddler friendly house, since Gavin and his sibbling will be pretty mobile by that time.  Sorry Koh, that means none of the wooden furniture you love.

A few Sundays back, the hubby and I went to the XZQT furniture store on Level 3 of the new wing of 1Utama.  I saw a couple of pieces of furniture there I would love to have.  Below is the MR 9702.  It is a leather sofa set with an convertible back that can be adjusted to provide head and neck support.

The sofa set is one of the few sofas I’ve seen around that meets both the hubby’s and my requirements.  The hubby has always wanted a sofa that you can lie down on and watch TV.  While, I have always liked sofas that give you head support - most of the newer sofa sets seem to be lacking the head and neck support because of a low back.  I wasn’t entirely keen that about the black, but then, as hubby rightly pointed out, white is impossible to keep clean with kids around.

I also liked their dining table.  Okay, okay, so I get tickled easily by little gimmicks, so what?  I love the concept of the built-in lazy susan.  I also feel that the glass adds to the clean, modern living style that I like.

I’m quite fond of the furniture at XZQT, but these are the only two items that have really caught my eye at present.  I have yet to browse through their full catalogue to see what else I would like.