my old man....

Is perhaps not the most fitting of titles for my dad. Most people think we are brothers, some have even said that I look like the older brother!!

My mum sometimes says, "You are just like your father"..and whilst she usually says this out of frustration, it fills me with pride.

In the 1990 version of my primary school magazine, we were asked to write about what we wanted to be when we grow up. I said "I want to be a policeman so I can catch all the bad guys, just like my daddy".

We don't often share words, but there is no real need to. Instead we sit and watch football, or go for long exhausting runs. He used to have to wait for me, now he cant keep up. We share breakfast together on Saturdays, he reads the Ming Pao daily, I can't read Chinese so I am stuck with the South China morning post. We make fun of bad drivers, slow runners, bad footballers, unskilled fighters and stupid 'cop movies'. We sit there and try not to laugh when my mum is complaining about us, then when she is gone we burst into a smile. We suffer from athletes foot because we never dry our feet properly. We like our haircuts as cheap as possible. We don't take medicine when we are sick. We never cry. We love grandma's soup. We think mum spends WAY too much money on household decorations. We sometimes forget to flush. We pretend to dislike new clothes "I have one like this already" we complain, but actually we wear new shirts with pride. We don't really care much for fancifulness, just give us a few bowls of rice. We love adventure. We both think we could take each other in a boxing match (although I think he knows I would win). He is my dad, I am his son.

I sometimes forget that I am indeed rather lucky to still have my old man around. Like father like son as they say, I hope that this is true.

My old man...he's not really that old at all.