KEEP IT IN THE PHAMLY

Pham is the fourth most common surname in the Vietnamese community (Nguyen is top at nearly 40%, then Tran & Le) so it wasn't a huge coincidence that our neighbours across the hall in the council flats were Phams. The Other Phams as they are known in our world were a Phamly with three boys and a girl, the youngest. We went to the same primary school and their Middle Brother was in the same year as Big Brother Pham. The younger two kids were closer in age to Little Sissy Pham and me. I don't have any photos with them - I guess none of us had cameras back then.

Big Brother Pham and Middle Brother Other Pham were the best of friends before we moved to Brisbane. I remembered they came over and played computer games a lot at our house, and we'd all play downstairs together. Big Brother Pham and Other Brothers Pham played basketball and cricket while the younger siblings played less coordinated games.

The Other Phams adored Mum Pham and Dad Pham. Middle Brother Other Pham told me that in a way my parents were more like parents to them than their own. Sadly for The Other Phams, their parents worked crazy hours and were always away. Unlike my parents who were on a pension and always home, so super attentive of us spoiled Pham siblings.

Often we'd come home from school or grocery shopping on weekends, and one or more of the kids would be sitting on the steps outside the landing to our respective flats because their parents weren't home, and they were locked out. Mum Pham would invite them to ours, and feed them snacks and if their parents weren't home in time dinner too. I still remember Little Brother Other Pham stuffing his face on chicken wings, home made hot chips, and tomato sauce like there was no tomorrow. Funny how random memories stick.

Life in Melbourne wouldn't have been the same without The Other Phams next door. In my hazy childhood memories, it didn't seem odd that they were always around because as kids you just accept that the world is the way it is. It wasn't until we reconnected years later that I learned how special this time in the flats was for them. I hope Mum Pham knew how much of a positive impact she had on The Other Pham siblings. She did a lot of good things for people without asking for thanks, and I still learn new ways to appreciate her to this day several years after she's passed. Thanks Mum for taking care of all Phams.


If you want to start from the beginning of Phamly history, read:
Part 1 - O Captain! My Captain! Dad Pham's navy days during the Vietnam War.
Part 2 - P.O.W. Viet Cong Re-education Camp Dad Pham's time as a prisoner of war.
Part 3 - Living with Viet Cong Mum Pham's experience with communism.
Part 4 - Boat People Dad Pham seeks refuge after the war.
Part 5 - Finding Faith Dad finds peace.
Part 6 - When Herr met Frau - Dad Pham meets Mum Pham.
Part 7 - Life in Germany: the early years - Dad Pham sets up life in Germany.
Part 8 - Life in Germany: the later years - Dad gets sick, Mum steps up.
Part 9 - Getting ready for Australia - Mum Pham is on a mission.
Part 10 - Coming to Australia - My first memories of Australia.
Part 11 - Live in Brisbane the first time - The story of why we left Brisbane.
Part 12 - Moving to Melbourne - First impressions.
Part 13 - Life in Melbourne - Dad Pham - The good old days.
Part 14 - The Other Phams - Our neighbours in Melbourne were Phams too.

Dad Pham dreamt of us kids before we were born. Each dream came to reflect our personalities and lives. It could be coincidence, or it could be something else. Interpret the dreams as you wish.

Big Brother Pham
Before Big Brother Pham was born, Dad had a dream that he was standing in the open under a dark and stormy sky. God told him he was expecting a son, and the son would be his close friend, yet being trials and hardship to his life.

True to his dream, Big Brother is Dad's friend and also the child with the most difficult life. It impacted Dad and The Phamly a lot in our early years. Though, now the storm has finally passed and Big Brother and Dad Pham are living together and having the best time.

Big Sissy Pham (Me)
I, of course, was the most difficult of his dreams. Dad dreamt it was night time and he was crawling on his belly, deep in mud under barbed wire - he was cut from getting caught on the wires and bleeding. Ahead he could see a building with its lights on, which he instinctively knew he had to reach. As he pulled himself further and further, the wire got lower and lower until it was ripping him open. He started vomitting blood.

When he finally reached the building, he crawled up the steps to the building where, exhausted and bleeding, he found a room full of Vietnamese boys and a single Western woman wearing leopard print - he knew instantly she was strong, difficult and the boss. He had to choose between the boys and the girl. He picked me.

I bet he regretted his decision in my early teens to early twenties when I butted heads with my parents over their Vietnamese cultural beliefs and my Westernised ways. These days, I use my knowledge of Western culture to make sure Dad gets the best of both worlds - his Vietnamese roots and the benefits of living in Australia, instead of clashing with him. Cultures can co-exist, it's not one or the other - I saw the world as too black & white when I was younger.


Little Sissy Pham
When Little Sissy Pham was conceived, Dad dreamt he was by the sea when a German man in a formal suit told him he'd have a boy. The man then transformed into a half shark / half frog creature and hopped away across the water.

Now Little Sissy is a boy so the dream was somewhat wrong, except for the part where she identified as a boy until her mid-teen years. Whenever we role played games as kids, I would be the princess and she would be the distress. I also had to refer to her as Brother in Vietnamese. Though these days she's girlier than I am.

Little Brother Pham
Dad never had any dreams of our little brother. Before Mum came to term, she slipped on ice and fell hard - we lost our little brother who was stillborn.

Finally, I am a cat lady again by way of aunty and roommate to an adorable kitten. Still too irresponsible to be a cat mum. Nolan Pham. This little nugget of joy came into our lives in November last year. His origin story isn't a great one.

A piece of human garbage went and put him in a plastic bag, and threw him in a bin. It makes me livid to think of how many animals die abandoned in horrible ways like being thrown in the bin, rivers, left on the side of a road - it's not much more effort and way less cruel to surrender them to an animal shelter.


Little Sissy Pham drove to Toowoomba to meet another kitten named Ava, who was adorable in pictures but didn't like Little Sis when they met. So Little Sis had a play with the other kittens the foster mum was caring for. Ava was there with a few others from her litter, and none of them clicked with Little Sis. Instead, it was the lone wolf of the pack - Nolan, who chose her as his human. He was separated from his litter.

Poor Nolan was found alone sadly, but in a way he was lucky to be alone because his independent streak is what Little Sis wanted. A kitty who can handle being home alone during work days. Nolan is definitely an independent cat, but also affectionate and likes to be around his humans when they’re home - or wander off to play his own games if we’re being too boring. He pretty much owns every room and surface in the apartment and courtyard now, so while he may not have had the brightest of beginnings, he's in for a great life being adored by his Phamly.

I’ve missed having a kitty in The Phamly. And now we have two! I’ll tell you about Sprite, Big Brother Pham’s cat, another time. Her origin story is a little sad too.

Photos: Cousin T & Big Brother Pham (with Little Sissy Pham on the side) in 1987 versus Little Sissy Pham & me in 2017

In Vietnamese culture we refer to family members in birth order. So, for example, Big Brother Pham is number 2, I am number 3, and Little Sissy Pham is number 4. It's relative to the speaker so to my siblings I'm sister 3, my nieces Aunty 3, or to elders child 3. And then everyone has their name too so I can be Aunty Ngoc or Jade. And in Mum's Phamly they have their Vietnamese name AND their Chinese name. So depending on which side of the Phamly I speak to I refer to them by their Chinese name (Mum's side) or by their number (Dad's side)... it gets rather confusing so for blog purposes so I will use numbers relative to me.

Mum Pham was the youngest of 10 kids. Aunty 9, being the 8th in line, helped raise and care for Mum since Grandma passed away when Mum was a toddler. Mum loved Aunty 9 and though I hadn't seen her in decades so do I. Her care and love helped shape the care and love Mum gave me. I was ecstatic when Cousin T told us his mum could see us.

So on our first full day in Hometown, we went to visit Aunty 9 in the old flat where The Phamly used to visit every weekend. It was strange to walk the streets and halls that Mum & Dad Pham used to walk every weekend, and then to see the same flat that is in so many Phamly photos. I made Little Sissy Pham recreate a photo from childhood - except instead of Big Brother Pham and Cousin T, we were in the pic. It was the funnest!

It always makes me happy-sad to visit family and friends who knew Mum. I can see the love and loss I remind them of when they see Mum's face in mine. I'm almost the age Mum Pham was when she fled to Germany too. Aunty 9 says I even have the same gentle way of speaking. Ooph, it's like good, firm kick in the feels every time.

In long-held Phamly tradition, Aunty 9 overfed us to the point of bursting...and then took us to an all-you-can-eat buffet with Aunty 6's kids. Aunty 9 was so happy to see us, she spent hours strolling the streets of Hometown with us even though she's only recently out of hospital and not up to her regular strength. One thing we noticed in Europe - everyone is way fitter than Aussies of any age. People are just healthier and more active - obesity wasn't really a thing. Or if it was, we never saw anyone morbidly overweight in our travels.

Aunty 9 and her husband still went for bike rides up until her surgery and his (he was in hospital when we were visiting so didn't get to see him). I remember I used to annoy the crap out of him because he didn't like noisy kids, and I was chubby chaos. Cousin N told me how one time he told me to be quiet, and I had a full tantrum, stormed off into the bedroom, and refused to talk to anyone or do anything I was so mad for hours. What a little shit I was.

Being back in the flat where all these memories were made was surreal. I couldn't tell which bits I remembered from actual memory or from old Phamly album photos or tales. Either way, it was indescribably wonderful to be back at the flat where we hung out every week as kids. So much love and fondness was felt the whole day there.

Back in Germany in the '80s, every Saturday or Sunday The Phamly would walk a half hour to Aunty 9’s house. Well, it's a 20 minute walk as an adult for us when we went back to Germany for the first time in 29 years, but Dad & Mum Pham had to haul 3 young kids with them. Aside from the cousin who lived with us, we were probably closest to Aunty 9's kids.

We reunited with our cousins in Frankfurt on our Europe 2017 trip. Genetics is a funny thing - I recognised my cousin rounding a corner at the train station immediately because he looks EXACTLY like his mum. And he spotted me immediately because I look EXACTLY like Mum Pham (his Mum's sister).

It's been 29 years since we've seen each other. I was a pudgy 4 year old and Little Sissy Pham a scrawny 3 year old when we left Germany. In my memories, our cousins were so big and tall, and now I dwarf them. In fact, we dwarfed all of our German Phamly. Mum Pham used to say we grew enormous because we had cows' milk and potatoes as kids since we were born in Germany, then raised in Australia. Our cousins were born in Vietnam, and immigrated or migrated over.

Our Frankfurt-based cousins, Chi N (10 years older though looks 10 years younger than us now) and Anh T (3 years older), are in heaps of Phamly photos because we used to do all the fun things together. Parades and games and birthday and playground photos.

If we had stayed in Germany, I know I'd be really close to Chi N who's a graphic designer, artist, singer, and super-funny and sassy to boot. My kind of human and humour. Big Brother Pham and Anh T would have been the best of friends too. Anh T was his mum's shadow as a kid but when we went to their house, he and Big Brother Pham would go off playing adventure games together. He studied IT and is a software developer for Germany's Federal Intelligence Service. Big Brother Pham studied IT too but didn't finish his course due to some unfortunate turns of events in his life. Makes me wonder how differently all our lives would have turned out if we'd stayed in Germany. But we didn't, so no use dreaming of our fluent German, not knowing English and maybe having a smoother ride in life than we had - though with less fresh Vietnamese food because tropical-friendly food is not so common in freezing cold Germany. Life would definitely have been different for The Phamly.

Chi N shared stories of when we were little because she was old enough to remember. This one, made me laugh because it’s so typically me and Mum, and it involves something as mundane as a toilet door:

One day at Aunty 6's house when I was 3 years old, I locked myself in the toilet and didn't know how to unlock the door because: imbecile child. After a while people noticed I was missing. Soon they discovered the toilet door was locked and couldn’t think of who else would be in there so they called through the door to ask if I was OK. I was either too petrified or too dumb to reply so didn’t make a sound. As soon as Mum Pham realised I was locked inside and not responding she did what Mum Pham does best - she went into full-blown panic mode, and freaked everyone out pacing back and forth, screeching that the worst has happened because I could have had a seizure in there (I’d had one a year before), or tripped and hit my head, or fallen in the toilet and drowned. So one of our older cousins, who shares a name with Big Brother Pham so the Phamly refer to him as Big Big Brother, and my brother as Small Big Brother (cute!) - anyhoo, Big Big Brother Cousin busted the door open and they found me just sitting in there completely fine. To this day the toilet door doesn't shut properly because of young me. What a pest.


Little Sissy Pham and I finally made it back to our birth town in Germany in August this year, and it was predictably the best time EVER. Our beautiful cousins on both sides of the Pham made time for our visit and shared so many stories and memories we didn't know we had. I'm going to capture these memories in a Phamly Reunion series beginning with this post.

I am so grateful that Mum Pham and Dad Pham raised us to speak Vietnamese. It wasn’t a conscious decision they made, more like it was too difficult for them to learn English after burning through brain cells to learn German, the strangest standalone language in the history of mankind, so their English remained broken and we had to keep speaking Vietnamese as kids in order to communicate with our parents. And gosh darn, it came in handy in Germany where Vietnamese was the common language we had between three generations of Phams.

It’s bizarre hearing our cousins speak fluent German. Most of our Vietnamese relatives back home in Australia speak broken English (if that) with really heavy accents. It's probably bizarre to them that we speak Vietnamese with a foreign accent. One cousin said we were like the Vietnamese-American beauty pageant contenders on Viet programs who answer questions with funny Vietnamese because when we don't know the words to say something in a straightforward way, we find a workaround to explain what we're trying to say.

Conversation was sometimes slow as a result because my Vietnamese isn't great, and my vocab is largely centred around food because Mum Pham loved the kitchen so much. But being able to connect with extended Phamly in our parents' native tongue was so wonderful. I’ll share stories from our Phamly Reunion over the next few months. So many stories!

And that's how I became the third wheel on my own vacation.

Wait, let's start from the very beginning. Little Sissy Pham and I were planning a trip to Europe in 2011 for when the Eurovision Song Contest was in Germany. Unfortunately, Mum Pham fell ill and we postponed our trip but life happened. Jobs came and went, boyfriends came and went, then the more responsible one (not me) bought a mortgage and suddenly it was 2017 and we hadn't gotten around to our trip. So we decided this year had to be the year.

Little Sissy Pham has a new(ish) boyfriend and they're still doing the cutesy new sweethearts crap so instead of wanting to get away from him, she wanted to invite him. So that's how I became the third wheel on my own vacation crashing on couches while they slept in cosy beds. And yet, they were the ones who needed naps during the day (no gumption)! It worked out since I liked going out exploring on my own since Little Sissy Pham couldn't walk fast or far in her cankles.

5 weeks in Europe nearly killed the sloth couple. I was pretty tired by the end too, though I could have pressed ahead for another week of trekking around. By the last stop in Prague they'd given up on exploring and just went shopping, which is a shame because Prague city centre is one of the prettiest places I've ever seen. Every which way I looked it was beautiful.

There's so much to explore in Europe. Our trip took us from Paris to Barcelona to Marseille to Nice to Rome to Venice to Milan to Geneva to our hometown via Frankfurt to Berlin to Prague. We traveled mostly by train using a Eurail Pass, then roamed the streets of every city visiting as many sights and destinations as we could. It was exhausting and exhilarating.

Expect a string of Europe travel inspired blog posts to come!

When I learned that Michelle Law’s “Single Asian Female” play at the La Boite Theatre in Brisbane had a preview show on my birthday (some of you may call it Valentine's Day), I knew it was destiny. Hello, I’m Always Single, and I’m Asian so I love anything cheap including preview tickets. This night was meant to be.

I haven’t been single on Valentine’s Day the past couple years, but long distance meant I was solo anyways. This year I’m a free agent so for Single Ladies Valentine's Day I took a bunch of my single and not-as-single ladies to the show for Valentine’s Day.

I cannot recommend Single Asian Female enough - it is the best live theatre I have seen in years, possibly ever. You don't need to be single, Asian or female to relate to the characters. There is so much heart and soul and hilarity. No awkward or filler moments. Every little detail adds to the bigger picture. It had me in tears from laughing so hard, and from the heart wrenching & heart warming story.

Seeing people of my heritage and cultural background represented authentically live on stage filled a void I wasn’t aware was there. In all the plays, movies, shows, magazines I’ve seen, the South-East Asians are in Westernised settings. The best way I can think to describe what I felt watching the play is recognition and belonging. The women onstage were my mum (at one point, I accidentally cried out ‘that’s my mum!’ I was so shocked to see an EXACT moment my mother and I shared), the women were my Aunty, my cousins, my friends. So while I recommend this play to anyone and everyone, I especially recommend it to my Asian friends. It's rare and wonderful to experience something you can connect with on such a personal level.

Every now and then via my blog, I receive a message from a stranger who has been so excited that they’re not alone in thinking or feeling the same thing, that they’re moved to share their own story with me. Single Asian Female created so many moments like this for me and my girlfriends (none of them Asian except for Little Sissy Pham) - we left the theatre on a high and couldn't stop talking about all the different moments from the show we connected with. I hope Michelle Law, the playwright, is proud of her masterpiece that touches people on so many levels, and is perfectly told by a cast of brilliant actors.

The show runs until Saturday 4th March, 2017. As a birthday present to me, please treat yo'self to a night of laughs and love at Single Asian Female. If you read my blog, it means you like what single, asian women think so I promise you'll have a good time:

A holiday isn’t a holiday without Little Sissy Pham falling ill, but the little engine that could powered through my to-do list - kayaking with dolphins, snorkelling, horse-riding in the bush and lake, bush-walking in the national parks, visiting all the local beaches, lots of spa/pool/sauna sessions at the resort and eating all the things. Noosa holidaying is a fabulous way to spend a 30th birthday month!

Little Sissy Pham finally flew the coup. She moved out with The Bloody Vegan (her boyfriend who I lovingly call that every time I remember I have to cook a separate dish for him) last weekend. We sent her off with Mum's sharpest knife because we pray she'll learn to cook more than two minute noodles, though we don't think our prayers will be answered for a while.

Dad Pham has been very sad without her around. He can't remember the last time he was this sad. He was relieved for Mum Pham when she passed away and he was completely fine when I moved to Melbourne, but for some reason Little Sissy Pham moving to the other side of Brisbane really got him down. I should be totally offended but I'm busy discovering the great things about not having Little Sissy Pham around. This is what I've noticed so far:

1. Luigi gets to sleep in the car port.

2. My products fit in the bathroom cabinet instead of the nook in my wardrobe.

3. I no longer speak English at home so my Vietnamese might improve (even the optimist in me highly doubts this).

4. No fighting to do laundry.

5. I get my cat all to myself.

6. When I open the pantry all my food is still there!

7. I can set up an exercise/dance space.

8.  I don't have to make bulk lunches for work anymore!!

9. I can shower whenever for however long I want in the mornings or evenings.

10. I finally, finally get to buy my favourite toilet paper: Kleenex Cottonelle - oh how I have missed your sweet caress. Evil sis made me get Sorbent for her sensitive bee-hind. No more! It's fluffy ribbed Cottonelle in this house from now on!

Did I mention when I open my pantry all my food is still there? Woohoo!

This photo is evidence that Little Sissy Pham learned to walk just so she could run away from me, the crying gives her away:
This photo is of Little Sissy Pham resigning to a miserable life of my hugs:
Can't see the tightly controlled terror in her face? Here's a close up: