Una Ragazza on Love: Sisters Abroad

Growing up, my jie (sister) and I quarreled a fair bit. She was the perfect kid with whom every other kid in school wanted to play zero-point or sit next to in the canteen – smart, cool, fashionable and artistic – while I was often the geek who frowned upon too much play. At home, she was very well-mannered and sensible whereas I was, at times, curt and disrespectful.



The canvas of an artistic jie



Accumulating points at zero-point

This made for a clear-cut winner for the "best-behaved kid in the family" title. As a result, I responded by keeping my distance and refusing to let her grow close to me. We were cool with each other, but never the best friends that the silver screen often portrayed loving sisters to be.

Now, for nearly 12 years, my sister and I have been living apart.

It started when I was about to enter university in Singapore and she was off to graduate school in America. My feelings about her departure were mixed. On one hand, I would no longer be constantly nagged at to buck up at one thing or another in my life; on the other, I would be reminded ever so often by family members about this poster child of a sister who is the first in the family to go to an Ivy League, and on a scholarship to boot.

I remembered giving her the awkward parting gift of a jigsaw puzzle of Times Square; I wasn't sure why I'd thought she'd have enough space in her overflowing suitcase for 250 loose pieces of cardboard with silver dust on them.



In the months following her departure, I missed her terribly. I had not realized how much her presence meant to me, even though we'd squabbled half the time about inconsequential things.

When she called home, I found myself curious about her life abroad, and our conversations were surprisingly civil and respectful. I also started to write her occasional e-mails, earnestly looking forward to each reply in which I'd hope to learn a little more about her life in a foreign land. At times, these exchanges were instructional. At others, they were merely for their entertainment value.

"My roommate today told me she got a urinary tract infection," began one such conversation. "She even casually added that it's due to too much sex with her boyfriend. So funny, these American girls. Now, don't tell mom I told you this..."

Of course, I kept up a good front and never let on that her absence bothered me much – even at a young age, I was a proud kid.

About five years would pass before I, too, would leave Singapore. I had received a scholarship and would be studying in Italy. I can still recall my excitement as I broke the news to my sister and held my breath as I awaited her reaction, hoping for that sign of approval and for her to say that she was proud of me. She didn't disappoint. She was glad that I'd be embarking on a once-in-a-lifetime journey and offered to provide any help or advice on overseas living that I might need.

Since then, I had moved around a lot – after Italy, I'd spent time in Switzerland, then Germany, North Carolina, and Belgium. Regardless of where I lived, my sister is often my primary source of refuge in time of need – be it for companionship, relationship advice, financial or immigration issues.



Give the woman a needle and thread, and voilà!

So it was quite a no-brainer when I decided to move to New York after my multi-country stint in Europe. My sister had been living in Manhattan with her husband for some years by then, and she welcomed me with open arms when I announced my decision to venture across the Atlantic. We were to spend nearly three years together in the same city before she would move away again, but those three years were good years.

While we were seldom each other's top pick for a weekend meal or an afternoon of shopping back home, suddenly in New York, nearly 10,000 miles from Joo Chiat, we seemed to have discovered the simple joys of having each other close by and spending time together.

We'd walk the shopping streets of Soho, sip coffee in Village cafes, stroll through The Gates' billowing orange drapes in Central Park, and even cook in her 5' by 8' windowless kitchen in Morningside Heights. Every now and then, we'd find ourselves giggling like schoolgirls at the strangeness of New Yorkers (more to come on this strangeness in subsequent tales).



The Gates by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Winter 2005



The (typical) New York kitchen

This newfound love for my sister, I never professed to her. Perhaps it's an Asian thing – a rather common excuse I'd given, over the years, for many things to which I cannot explain my awkwardness. Perhaps it's because I suspect she already knows.

Or perhaps it just doesn't matter at all because she's always loved me unconditionally since I was a little girl of six, when this nine-year-old child herself asked me to hang up a sock over my bed because Santa was coming, only to use all her savings to buy a squeaky, furry toy mouse that she'd stuff into my sock that very night as I slept.

In 10 days, I'll be visiting her newborn and her in their newly adopted city of Shanghai. I cannot wait to pick up where we'd left off.



Una Ragazza and her sister comparing girths when the latter was five months pregnant

(Some pictures taken from the Internet)