My other three grandparents died when I was very young and all I remember are bits and pieces of the funerals of my two grandfathers and nothing of my paternal grandmother.
So excuse me this week if my column turns out to be a little bit self-indulgent. But hey, every writer will end up writing about his or her grandmother at least once (it ain't cliched, it's sweet!).
My grandmother was the one who taught me how to speak Cantonese. Apparently, as I was told, I could actually speak it fluently when I was very young.
I can't really remember if it's true or not, but now, my conversations in Cantonese are just fodder for my friends and colleagues to secretly record and upload to Instagram so they can have a laugh!
Once, I even got angry and screamed at a bank teller for calling me 'hakchai' which actually means 'customer' because I had mistakenly thought it meant 'dark kid'! I'm never going into that bank again!
For those of you who don't get the joke, go ask a Chinese to explain it to you. Then be friends with him or her and help foster better race relations in a time when the country really needs it.
She also nagged a lot! Everytime I did something wrong and got a nagging from her, I would count the seconds in between her pauses to see how long they would last. I never got pass three!
She even nagged me to sleep every night by telling me to always be good to my parents because everything they did was for me. I think it's because, as a parent, everything she did was for her children too.
My grandmother also taught me that you have to be smart and always value education. When I was little, I always thought she was the smartest person in the world. Simply because...
She would start her day with coffee and the newspaper. Then she would head off to the stock market to make money. And in the evenings, she was off to play mahjong to make even more money!
I thought she loved money so much that when I got my first ever salary as a journalist, I gave her some. She looked at me, shed tears and cried because she felt so touched.
Then she came to her senses and scolded me and then laughed at me and said that she has more money than me and that I should just keep it.
But the most important lesson I learnt from my grandmother is something that I will always try to instil into my daughter. And that is, women are strong, independent and can do anything.
She had a career working with the Johor state government and she took her job seriously and with responsibility. She also took care of her family, sacrificed for them and cared for them fiercely.
I like to believe that I was her favourite grandchild because I was her first one. So I constantly told her that. And she constantly chose to ignore the fact and pretend like she didn't hear me!
When I was twelve, I wrote a poem about my grandmother titled 'The Tickle Lady' because she used to tickle me with her long, manicured, bright red finger nails all the time.
It was selected to be exhibited in an art gallery in New York City (yes, I was a great writer even back then!). But for the life of me, I can't remember it and I can't find a copy anywhere.
But one thing that I will always remember is my 35 years and 2.5 months of living with her in my life. I loved her dearly and still do.
She led a good and full life for 86 years with great family, children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. And she passed on very peacefully and calmly with all of us right there holding her.
And when my time comes to leave this world, I wouldn't mind going the way she did. Allah bless Ang Swee Poh. Al Fatihah.
