Doesn’t seem possible it’s been a month. It feels like yesterday and forever ago. I miss you, dad.

One night, I come home and find my dad’s already there (rare!) sitting around in his underwear and undershirt, relaxing. That particular night, I’d told my buddy and girlfriend that they could come by and watch a movie or something (my dad loved premium cable, even though he was rarely off work enough to watch it). I let my dad know and he offered to go sit in the bedroom and read. I told him it wasn’t necessary, but he went anyway. He also put on trousers and a shirt, which was probably necessary. When my friends arrived, he went off to leave us to our own devices.

A couple hours later, he emerged from his room and offered them food and drink, yelling at me for not feeding them and reacting in horror when my buddy told him he was a vegetarian. I think he got some drinks for them, then went back to his room.

After the movie had finished, my friends left and my dad came out and asked me if I was hungry. I hadn’t properly eaten yet, so I said sure, and he went to make some steaks.

For those that don’t know how easy it is to make a proper steak, my dad taught me, and I’ll tell you right now:

Step 1) Buy a good steak. It doesn’t have to be some super-expensive Kobe beef or a premium cut like a filet mignon. The most important thing is the marbling. You need fat to make your steak taste good! (The steaks we’d get came from the supplier for the restaurant my dad ran, the 360 revolving restaurant at the CN Tower. These steaks were dry hung for a couple of weeks to age, which makes them more tender and tasty.) About 1.5″ thick is good.

Step 2) Season the steak properly. A good cut of meat needs almost nothing to taste good. Simply rub it in kosher salt and some cracked pepper. That’s it. Rub it in with your hands. No sauce. No marinade. Not necessary.

Step 3) Let it sit a bit. You want the steak near to room temperature, not cold.

Step 4) Cook it. If you have a grill, awesome. If not, it doesn’t matter. Put a little pat of butter in a frying pan and turn the heat up high. High heat is important! You want to eat a good steak rare or medium rare. More than that and you’re just wasting the meat, really. Medium rare is warm the whole way through, and seared on the surface. Let the steak cook about 3 minutes, then flip it. Let it cook another couple of minutes, then press the middle of the steak with your finger or a spatula.

A rare steak is really soft. A well-done steak is an abomination, hard and firm. The juices are gone and it’s dry and you’ve just ruined your whole meal and might as well buy a strip steak and put HP sauce on it or something. Why do you hate and torture yourself and cows?

Step 5) Serve? When the steak is ready, take it off the heat and put it on a plate. Leave it there. Go do something else for about five minutes. My dad would fry chip-sliced potatoes while cooking the steak and used this time to pat the chips dry with a paper towel to absorb some of the excess grease, then plate them. The important thing is that you let your steak sit for about as long as it took to cook. This lets it soak up the juices inside and stay moist.

Step 6) Eat. Some people put a sauce on the side or whatever. It’s not really necessary, if you ask me. Just eat your delicious steak.

So, back to my dad and I sitting down to eat steaks. He’d made fried potatoes to go with the steaks and plopped the plate down on the coffee table in front of of the TV so we could eat like men, on the couch.

As I tucked into the meal, I heard him mumble to my right, “So that’s your girlfriend, huh?”

“Yeah.”

He nodded and we continued to eat.

“You know about condoms, right?”

Suddenly, a piece of steak was lodged in my throat. I coughed it back up into my mouth.

I managed to exclaim, “Yes!”

He nodded again.

“Good… We don’t need a bunch of little yous running around.”

I think I stammered out something like, “No, that’s not going to happen.”

“Good steak.”

We ate the rest of the meal in silence, watching TV.

The most interesting one, however, was a young actress named Hayley Mills who had debuted in the 1959 picture Tiger Bay. (“You know that girl. The one from the movie. She always licked her lips,” he told me.) Assigned to shepherd her around the theatre during the premiere, he found himself escorting the 11 or 12-year-old when the fans and media busted through a side door and swarmed into the theatre. Thinking fast, he did what you might do with any other kid her age: he basically just scooped her up and ran.

He made for the elevator to the top floor, jostling through the crowd. I’m sure it looked very dramatic and heroic. Well, at least until the part where he got to the elevator door, then fell through into the waiting car, he and Ms. Mills landing in a pile on top of each other in the lift in their evening best.

Glamorous.

It’s probably not a surprise, then, that gangsters would often hang out at the cinema. Unfortunately for my dad, one of his brothers had a tendency to get into trouble (probably by running his mouth, because, according to my dad, he was cocky). This led to these thugs slapping him around.

One day, my dad’s at work and one of the workers comes running and tells him, “Harold, there’s a bunch of guys downstairs smacking around your brother!” Most people would phone the cops. My dad took off his suit jacket and ran down into the parking lot.

He gets there and there’s four or five guys beating on his brother, so he jumps in, swinging his fists. (He told me he picked one fella up and threw him. I’m not sure if I completely believe that.) He’s punching guys left and right, they’re grabbing him and rolling on the ground. At some point, he gets hit in the back of the head and gets knocked out. He wakes up a little while later (Seconds? Minutes? There’s no way to know) and he sees them hitting his brother, so he plunges back in headfirst.

Luckily for him, someone more sensible did run and get a cop. A local detective shows up and fires a shot into the air. Everyone stops.

“Police! Everyone get on the ground!”

In Singapore, and in other Asian countries at this time, when you assume the position, you don’t put your hands on the wall or behind your head. At least according to my dad’s account, they make you sit cross-legged, with your arms folded and hands under your armpits. The officer lined everyone up this way in the parking lot.

Once he’d determined my dad and his brother were the ones he was supposed to be rescuing, he told them to get up. My uncle got up and meekly walked over to the cop. My dad got up, turned around and then slapped all four or five cross-legged gangsters with one giant paintbrush-style slap upside their heads.

The cop yelled at him in exasperation not to do that, then started laughing and told him he had guts.

This may have been one of the reasons my dad eventually became a cop: he loved slapping gangsters.

Anyway, this isn’t a history lesson. All you need to know is that the British surrendered Singapore to the Japanese and it was renamed Syonanto. During the Japanese occupation, my grandfather, who was the first Asian police inspector in Singapore, worked funneling supplies to resistance fighters. The family was forced to flee into the jungles of Malaysia for their own protection to avoid Japanese reprisals.

So it came to be that my dad grew up in the jungle. They made a little farm and my dad learned to climb trees and work hard to help feed his family. This made him unusually strong and gave him what he used to refer to as his “brute strength”. Him being freaky strong is one thing that figures into many of the crazy stories we have about him.

30 minutes of sketches, ranging from 30s to… actually I have no idea how long. 5 or 10 mins?

(Click to Embiggen!)

“Hipthulhu would devour the universe, but he’s sure it’s not sustainable agriculture.”

Feel free to add your own captions in the comment section.

 The Most Charming Man in the World

Backstory (on title card scroll, narrated): During the learned and erudite times of the Renaissance, there was a man so charming that he was known as the Most Charming Man in the World.  Cursed by an evil wizard, the Most Charming Man in the World is frozen, a statue, returning to life only moments a day to offer his wisdom and advice.

Setting: Exterior, a town square in Elizabethan England.  The Most Charming Man in the World (Ian McShane) is frozen, statue-like, in a regal pose.  He wears an exquisite jerkin over a white satin doublet and matching padded hose, with a puffy, round plumed hat.  A nobleman and his wife stand before him.

Nobleman: Any moment now, I’m sure of it!  There, you see, he returns to life!  Quickly, good sir, before foul wizardry takes thee again.  My wife is barren, unable to have children but I desperately want them.  Should I buy the children of the poor?

The Most Charming Man in the World: HellOOOOOO! Fear not, my good man, you may have my BUTT BABIES!  [He lifts a leg theatrically and farts loudly.] I have THOUSANDS of them! [He farts again, leg in the air and face contorted.] Ooooh, thaaat was a BIG ONE!!

The Most Charming Man in the World resumes his noble pose and once more becomes a statue.

Then I woke up.

But fuck that.  I declare this shit to be over.  You can’t crush me, universe.  Life is the best thing, even when it’s being shitty.

From now on, I’m bringing the thunder.

…whatever that means.

In just the three months that have passed so far:

• The Middle East has exploded with revolution and violence
• Japan has experienced one of the largest earthquakes on record
• My mum had a health scare
• My dad has been sick
• Toni got the bitch flu from hell
• Munchie got sick
• My car got broken into

In the plus column: I did get a promotion at work.  Yay.

This is not a good start, 2011.  You better shape up, mister, or I’m going to start 2012 early.