He ain't heavy, he's my brother

My brother is rarely mentioned in previous articles and its not because I don't have a great relationship with him. Maybe its just timing or since I do my writing late at night, your priorities are a little screwed up. I am going to devote this article to my bro and how it was like growing up. The other reason I am doing this is also because my bro is extremely funny, talented and lazy. Even when he is not trying, he is funny. Also the fact that he is about 6'2" and weighs a LOT and looks like a huge tree and since he can snap me like a twig or stomp me flatter than a cheap chapati, I tot it was time to write something about our lives.

Jude is 5 years younger so when he came about, we weren't really expecting him. He is named after St Jude the patron saint of hopeless cases. 'Nuff said don't you think? He was always large when we were kids and it was always easy to pick him out from his class photo with about 50 classmates as he is always the one that takes up 3spaces. When he as 8, his waist was already 32 and by the time he was 11 he was already 40. So he was huge as a kid and that kinda made him conscious about it.

The reason he was big, was because he loved to eat and my mom loved to see him eat. When he was 8, he could already eat 10 char siew pau in one sitting. We are not talking the wimpy, diet watching, cholestrol controlling type of pau we have now. We are talking pau built to last and pau that had no health restrictions and can be used to add weight to a rhino. We are talking a real man's pau! And he could eat 10 of them in one sitting.

When younger, Jude was a real trouble maker but that's mostly because I lead him into most of it. I remember one time when I was 11 and we were bathing together where we had a cement tub-like water containment which is meant for you to collect water. We filled it up and climbed into it turning it into some indoor private wading pool. It turned the water black and when mom came knocking after several hours of us being in the bath, she was LIVID. She took a rubber hose and whacked the daylights out of us...naked!! Today, that's child abuse. Those days, it was tough love.

Also when he was 8, Jude drank about 3 cans of Guinness from my dad's stash and then slept on the floor. Sound asleep mind you. That was hilarious. The more hilarious thing about Jude was that he tend to sleep walk and he is freaking funny when he does that. We used to have a night light that was karosene fueled and we use to put it in the kitchen table of our low-cost flat then. He will walk up to the light and then carry it around the kitchen like some treasure hunter in a dark cave. Since it is late, all you can see is this floating light in the kitchen. That's how superstition gets started! Also once, he walked over to the laundry basket and peed in it. On all our clothes. I secretly burned mine!

Life for us was tough as we were poor but not in poverty. So we had enough to go by, but not by much. Being the younger sibling, he usually gets away with blue murder and he is the favourite of our parents. That leaves me having to be the responsible one and sometimes that friction gets between us. Another point I thought also contributed to the friction was my bro's sight. One of cornea has a tear and seriously impedes his vision. I guess it also made him irritable since he doesn't know its not supposed to be there. I remember him beating up a kid 2 years older than him and also a gangster girl. I personally thought it was cool of him to do it.

Later when we found out about his condition, he went through a cornea transplant. Poor nut had to go through it 3 times since the first 2 was rejected by the body. They were from a Sri Langkan donor. The 3rd was successful since it was from a US donor. Go figure! Since then, he had more friends and was more popular and he took up drums. He is an excellent drummer and plays by ear. He sings pretty well too and you can sometimes catch his band Soul Income at Finnegan's.

He is now in a relationship with a remarkable lady from Thailand, whom I personally think can't really cook (not to my taste la) but has a heart of pure gold. She looks after him so well that now my bro can be classified as construction equipment in starving nations like Rwanda. That's the short story of my bro who still comes over with his girl and takes my mom out for supper, dinner, movies, trips, etc. He is big, funny and can be a bit wacky. He still loves his food and sleep and one time, he feel asleep in an amusement park listening to a walkman and woke up realizing that there were no more music and that his chest was lighter. That's because someone stole his walkman leaving the earphones there. So he is still clumsy but he ain't heavy, he's my brother......also part time body guard. So u know, I can mean business.