I think bringing back your boyfriend home to meet the parents is one thing every girl either looks forward to or dreads. As I first told my mum a few years ago that I’ll be bringing my boyfriend home for a visit back in 2006, she was more than trilled to ‘finally’ meet the guy. Her neck has grown a few inches longer till the day we landed at KLIA .

As for me, I was rather anxious to see my family’s reaction. The ice was broken in no time as my mum can be quite chatty at times. I think it was quite an eye-opening experience for him during our three weeks stay back in Malaysia. Months before departing, he had to get himself vaccinated against Malaria and taking the medication along with him too.

Why didn’t you need vaccination?, he asked, as it has been a long time for me being away from home. Do I really need a vaccination against Malaria? I never gave it a thought at all.

During those three weeks stay, he’d observed some peculiarities in my culture/country that, to my amusements, had never crossed my mind before. For example:

• Why do we have those stop signs on the road saying ‘BERHENTI‘ instead of ‘STOP‘?
  Common sense told him that it’s a stop road sign but he never saw a stop road sign saying ‘BERHENTI’ before because in Germany they have stop road signs saying ‘STOP’. I still remember when he asked me one day out of the blue, what is ‘BERHENTI’? I was really caught off guard by his question wondering when did he learn some Malay. Hmmm…it means stop.
• He wondered why we are not disturbed at all seeing lizards in the house?
  While we were watching Astro in the living room one day, I noticed that he wasn’t watching the TV but somewhere at the wall. He was looking at a lizard. Doesn’t that creature bother you?, he asked. Hmm….no. I had a feeling that his attention seemed to be fixed on the lizard for the rest of the evening because they don’t have these kind of skinny lizards in Germany .
• These spoons are funny.
  I didn’t know that he has never seen these kind of spoons before and he asked me one day why do we use funny looking spoons? I was speechless. Hmm…maybe because the soup taste better when we drink them from these spoons?
• Why do we eat noodle for breakfast?
  I think he has been eating bread for breakfast all his life and the idea of eating laksa or char kuey teow was rather a novelty to him. Do you still have room for lunch after such a hearty breakfast?, he asked. Hmm…yes .

For our trip back home this time, I think he’s quite prepared now, or not .

Picture source: Wikipedia