i shall explain my housing arrangement to the people who have never been, or perhaps aren't used to extended families living together, and about my family, because people sometimes are confused and ask how i can be an only child and call ariel and sarah my nephew and niece.

my aunt isn't my father's sister but his cousin. it's the grandfathers who are brothers (there were three brothers and two sisters.) we - that is - all the branches of the Family - lived together in one house in the kampung (there were different wings for the different families). our great-grandmother was the archetypal iron-fisted teochew widowed matriach and ruled over the entire Family. after moving out of the kampung the Family settled at one or two addresses (and by then some of the women had also married and moved out) and eventually dispersed around the island except for my dad and my aunt who in 1966 moved our two small-f-families into terrace housing, into adjoining houses, and took down the internal fencing and some of the dividing walls so that although it's still two separate houses, with two front gates, it's like being in one large compound. you don't have to go back out into the street to go to the other house. we're still living in the same place, after 40 years.

the current dividing walls were built in 2001, when my grandfather died, because it was thought that, with later generations no longer living in the same place, one day the younger generation, on either side (not me certainly!) may want to sell their half of the house, and that the division should be made for the future. it's easy on my side, because my father was an only child and so am i, but there are children and grandchildren on the other side and i expect if not in my cousin's generation, then in ariel and sarah's time, the house will be sold, unless one person always stays in the family house?

i shall be very sad if that ever happens.