My dear grandpa...

Ouh dear, my grandpa in Brunei passed away this evening due to lung cancer. The doctors in Brunei already told us to expect the worst within this 2 weeks. I got a call around 10am today that he was admitted to hospital due to respiratory problems and then he passed away around 5pm. Since Muslim funerals requires that the body should be buried immediately or within 24hours, my grandpa would be buried on Friday afternoon instead. Since I got a call around 5pm, I immediately gave Royal Brunei Airlines office a call and told the staff that its an emergency. They were kind enough to extend their office hours till I get there. I’ve to quickly drive down to Royal Brunei Airlines office at UE Shopping Mall to confirm 14 tickets for my parents, uncles and aunts. Since all of them have a valid one year open ticket, they were booked to fly for tomorrow’s morning flight. The good thing is that all of them were upgrade to Business class at no charge. Another 12 tickets for my cousins, my sister and myself for Saturday’s morning flight since some of my cousins are having school tests and such. We wouldn’t get to see my grandpa’s body by the time we arrive cause the body is gonna be buried on Friday afternoon.

My sister is flying in from Rome and would probably reach here tomorrow night. So next I’ve to call Emirates booking centre to book tickets for my brother. My brother told me that he will only fly to Brunei if there are tickets available. So fortunately there is tickets for him. He would be flying in from Kenya to Singapore via Dubai on Emirates and Singapore to Bandar Seri Begawan on Singapore Airlines. So I estimate that he will reach Brunei on Saturday evening. If life is like this everyday, I would probably have to open a ticketing agency and charge premium price on air tickets. I would be rich in a year’s time.

I went home to pack whatever is necessary. Well actually there is nothing much to pack since I would be back by Sunday evening with my cousins. So I just gave necessary calls to whoever that needs to know about the “news“. Tomorrow there is also SPBAND Symphonic Band Concert which I’m supposed to attend. Initially I thought of giving it a miss to mark my mourning but decided to go ahead to attend the concert since there is nothing much else I can do besides praying. I just have to get back home early that’s all.

The weird thing about me is that, I don’t feel sad nor do I feel any sense of loss. Maybe because I’ve attend too many funeral wakes this year and probably got immune by it. So far I’ve attended 5 funeral wakes. Maybe the saddest wake I’ve attended was that of my aunt’s. Cause I was closer to her than my grandpa actually. Another reason is probably because I’m not close to my paternal family in the first place. I simply think that my paternal family is a bit ‘plastic’ on the surface. I just couldn’t stand any of their behaviour. The only reason that kept us together is because of my grandfather. Now I begin to wonder what’s gonna happen to the paternal family after this. I won’t be surprise if there is a lot of ‘soap drama’ behaviour gonna happen.

Oh well whatever it is, I just pray hard that things goes well and hopefully those buggers don’t bother me. I already have enough craps to handle.