Red Fish in Red Pail

Red fish in red pail.

(insert picture of red pail)

I'm quite sure you've seen this red pail before. Heck, I'm doubly ass sure that all of you have it somewhere IN your house. It's synonymous with the typical Singaporean household. My mum uses it, my aunts uses it, my neighbors uses it and last of all, my grandma uses one too(no wait, half a dozen actually). And that's where the problem lies.

Last night, while I was taking my bath after coming home weary from work, I didn't realize there was someone (if you could call it so), together with me in the shower.

I was holding the shower-head at the top of my head, almost done washing the shampoo off my hair (and yes, contrary to belief, I do use shampoo. BECAUSE I HAVE HAIR NOW!) and ready to chuck it back into the red pail which holds the bath water when a ripple that splashed across the surface of the water caught my eye. At first I did not think much of it; it could perhaps be nothing more than just the hose connected to the shower head knocking against the pail, thus disturbing the water.

However, when I turned towards the pail, ready to chuck the shower-head into it, I nearly wet myself, (aha! A pun!) and I cried, "WTF!" Oh and what-the-fish indeed, for there was indeed a fish in pail. A red goldfish of some-sort in a red pail. How nice.

Now, WHO IN THE RIGHT MIND WOULD PUT A F__KING FISH (aha! An alliteration! Including this very sentence!) in a pail meant for holding water to use for bathing?! My mind immediately thought of my grandmother. Having been living in my grandmother's household for almost 2 years now, it should hardly come as a surprise that such a thing has occurred really. She's been known to have many "queer" (maybe it wasn't half a century ago?) habits. She works part time as a karang-guni woman, likes cleaning the walls when Chinese new year draws near as part of the annual big cleaning event (who does that?), and finally, one which I cannot stand: She uses the same pail for everything else.

For that one pail, she could use it to: rinse the mop with when mopping the house, soak our laundry in it before putting it into the washing machine, collect the water that comes out from the washing machine during a wash, and a few times I've caught her using it to soak her vegetables or whatever foul looking Chinese food (I shudder to think that it is edible) in it too! So I suppose, using it to house a goldfish should not be a big hoo-ha huh? Oh and speaking of the fish, I think I nearly killed it at the start of my shower. For some reason, whenever the heater is on, and right at the start when you turn on the tap to the shower, water close to boiling point (yes I'm sure, you can see steam rising from the shower-head) gushes out. I'm well aware of that therefore I always put it in the pail for the first few seconds until the water temperature returns to normal. So could you imagine, if not for the pail being already half filled with cool water, how could the fish have survived?! I'm glad I did not have to find one boiled fish with soup on my conscience.

Anyway, my grandmother is incredible. Don't you think so? And so are her fried crispy eggs. (Crispy cause of the shells.) Or it could be my brother's doing for I'm sure that my grandmother did not buy the fish. If that's the case, I would acknowledge him as incredible like my grandmother, incredibly stupid that is.

The fish lives on in the pail as we speak.

Oh and it was my incredibly stupid brother who did that.