Catching Up With My Nephew

           It has been a lovely Sunday, made special because I met up with my nephew for lunch. With his second year exams behind him, Jon is back in Ipoh for his much-deserved holiday. I seized the opportunity to give him a birthday treat and to catch up with him.

Lovely lunch with Jon at Vintage Coffee & Bread

        Due to our own commitments, I had not seen Jon for months. And as he sat across the table, animatedly telling me about his university life and his Chinese lessons, I marvelled at how much he has grown and what an upstanding young man he has turned out to be.
        Memories of the Summer of 1998 resurfaced. Jon was then merely eleven months old and together with his mum, had just joined his dad in London. His dad was pursuing his postgraduate degree there. My stint in the United Kingdom was drawing to its end so I decided to take the four-hour bus journey from Plymouth to spend some time with them and to savour some days in London.
        One Sunday, we were all getting ready for a day out in London (the family was staying in the outskirts of the city). I was helping the little tyke to wear his shoes and was excitedly describing to him where we would be off to. I told him we would be going to the park and we would see lots of birdies. His dad, who was listening in to the conversation, started to chuckle, and then I realised that a birdie is also an euphemism for the male genitalia when the highly-intelligent Jon proceeded to look in the direction of the mentioned body part. Both his dad and I burst out laughing. Jon was momentarily confused, and then, he took offence because he thought we were laughing at his birdie. He bawled and I felt so guilty for making my little darling cry. Mercifully, Jon was too young to remember this incident and bears no grudges against me.

At St. James's Park, London, with Jon

Big Ben, Swee Lian jie jie, Jon and I

        Come September, Jon will return to the university to commence his third year. In the not too distant future, he  would be graduating as a dentist (I was telling him about losing my milk tooth recently and he was suggesting doing an implant at the gap, but he soon corrected himself and told me to ask him again if that's the best solution three years from now) and it may be even more difficult to meet up, with work-related commitments. I'm so glad we had a nice catch-up over lunch today.