the most ungrateful daughter in the history of the world

guess who didn't call her dad up this weekend to wish him a Happy Father's Day? and guess who wished him a Happy Birthday 3 days before his actual birthdate, when he called, just so that she wouldn't have to on the day itself? yes, me, the lousiest kid ever. my dad and i are alike in so many ways you wouldn't believe. i'm a carbon copy of him, and not just in looks. we're both introverts. we're both stubborn as hell, arrogant as anything, and nobody impulse shops better than me or my dad. unfortunately for him, when i impulse shop, it's normally at the expense of his bank account. well anyway, i think that because we're so alike, especially in our hard-headedness, we disagree and argue a lot. so sometimes, i feel like pulling whatever's left of his hair out. and i'm sure that at the same time he's trying to figure out what he did to offend God so much as to end up with a kid like me. but sometimes, he makes me laugh, like today, when he sent me this e-mail:

"Dad has just turned 35 (smiley face) and how is this so?
"A long time ago when I was a young lad in Form 1, there were a number of classmates who were rather funny, or at least that was what I thought of them in those times. These classmates of mine read their books rather differently - opening the back pages and reading them from the back and finally to the front. This was particularly glaring when they read the papers in the school library. Later on, I discovered that these lads were from transition classes. This was rather a cultural shock for a kampong boy such as I, where at those times I was only exposed to my humble village mission primary school where classmates were monoethnic in composition. And it was perhaps in the later school that I must have been exposed to Mandarin learning lads!
"So a naughty friend of mine, for some reason was in a public bus with me one day, and that bus must have been what we called in those days as the STC bus. [a.n.: they're still called STC busses, but my dad, who hasn't ridden a bus in 35 years, doesn't know that, apparently...] Anyway this friend did try to read the papers from the back to the front and to make matters worse read it upside down... this to impress upon some of his classmates that he was just as literate when it came to the Mandarin papers.
"And so in my daze of recalling what a casual acquaintance remarked to me yesterday morning that I don't actually look like my age, after she discovered that it was my birthday and had wanted to know the secret of looking youthful... I was just made more embarassed. Thus, this combined with my earlier experience as a young lad in school, who can blame me if I read the number from the front to the back; I may as well bask in the compliment, for after all it was my birthday!"

times like this, he makes me want to fly back home and give him a hug. the story? one, to gloat that his friend complimented him on his "youthful looks" (which i hope to Buddha that i've inherited), and two, to cheer me up because he sensed that things weren't going too well here. because dads have a sixth sense about that sort of thing, no matter how hard you try to hide it from them. i love you too, Daddy. and Happy 53rd Birthday!