family tree...

Earlier tonight several old men visited my house together with my grandparents. I thought they were my grandmother's friends, since she has quite a big number of kaki lepaks (it actually put me to shame). A couple of them even spoke in weird Mandarin slangs which I can't catch.

I later found out from my mother that those elders are actually separate distant relatives of mine, one of them came all the way from China. They are here to compile a family tree scripture that was started back in the 17th century. That's 300 bloody years for crap's sake!

Of course, I do know the fact that my ancestors came from China, duh. But it's very exciting to find out that we have a well-recorded scripture which contains names of all the children and grandchildren and greatgrandchildren all the way back to the first of my ancestors, though the record was temporarily discontinued sometime around 1930s (from what I hear from my mother). It is now picked back up by them and they actually travelled to many places to locate all the descendants of the 'Tan' family. How cool is that?

I was told that I am the 18th generation since the first Tan ('jou jong sap pat doi', fits me well, haha). So is one of the old men, who's about 70 plus. And I don't have to respect him, wahahaha... kidding, everyone knows I'm a polite boy.

I also found out that if I was to be named according to the scripture (they have a cycle of names to use for every generation), I would've been named Tan See *fill up something here*. Not really that bad to be honest. A lot better than Tan Ah Kau or Tan Ah Ngau right?

And check this out: I'm the first in the family tree to have an English name (my brother doesn't have his English name in his birth cert).

Now how cool is that?!!