My family - some Background

I am a from a family of 4. There are two girls and two boys. My sister, the eldest in the family is 8 yrs older than I. Then my two brothers, 7 yrs older and 5yrs respectively. I'm the youngest. But, I also have a half sister who is 7 yrs younger than me.

It's weird that there's 5 of us and yet I often feel like an only child. We are not close to each other, and I don't have much memories of doing much with them.

In our adulthood, my sisters and I have connected a little more out of life's necessities and age does seem to close the older you get. When I say due to life's necessities, I mean my sister has had to be inter-dependent on each other as we got older. The relationship with my younger sister is more a healthier one - not out of need or dependency so much but from a platonic gravitation towards each other. Perhaps that we're both more of the same wavelength helps.

Of my 2 brothers, my second brother is the one I get along better. He's always been the one that would make an effort to play with me when I was younger or seem to have more time to listen. He's more emotionally connected. He's a slow and steady worker and his career success itself is an awesome life success story which I might get to one day.

I was born in a little port town called Port Klang, an hour south of Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. I studied my first 5 yrs in Malaysia, then the rest of my schooling life was completed in Singapore. In a miraculous way, I came to Australia in 1991 to study my tertiary education. In 1994, I got married to an Australian. I've basically left home since I was 19, lived in a different country and embraced the Australian culture.

The embracing of the Australian culture was not difficult in my case for many reasons I will explain in later posts. I felt like an open slate, waiting to absorb a culture that made sense and had more logic. In doing so, I took a large diversion path from the way of life and culture my family and friends in Singapore were living.

Hence begun a journey I am now on. I am currently struggling with that wedge of difference between me and my family members. The differences in views, perspectives, likes and dislikes... but still they are my family - that blood is thicker than water is true in the Asian culture but also complicates life and the cause of a lot of heartache.

I shall stop here for now as I have limited myself to time spent on blogging.