The Other Side of the Sister I Never Knew

Since young, I always imagined my youngest sister to be a generous and kind person. This trip changes everything I thought about her.

I never knew she was such a petty person who takes things personally. 

She asked me for the train ticket details. I specifically told her and my mother that it was Carriage 25. However, when she saw me getting into Carriage 25, she led my mother to the earlier carriage. Under normal circumstances, one would have followed her family member, or informed the family member that she had gone in the wrong carriage (if she thinks that family members had gotten into the wrong carriage. 

Instead, she silently took my mother to Carriage 23. They were going further and further from me so I shouted for them to come back. She explained that she thought it was Carriage 24. I told her,”But you were going to Carriage 23.” She insisted she didn’t but I knew she did because after getting up at Carriage 25, which was behind me, I found myself in Carriage 24 trying to catch up with them. And they were backfacing me and walking towards the Carriage before 24. 

When she came to her seat, she was upset that I said I saw her going to Carriage 23. She said,”Ya! You know everything!” I replied,”Ya, because I saw it happening.” 

Then out of the blue, she gave me a luggage lock and told me to go lock our luggage. The lock is hers. The idea of locking luggage together is hers. She has the number combi. Why would she ask me to go lock it? 

I told her I don’t know how to do it. She ignored what I said and left it with me. Of course. I will give her the benefit of the doubt and take it that she didn’t hear it. But you know people do things deliberately to find fault with you, right?

So after some time, she asked me if I had locked the luggage, just so that she could use “Wah lau eh” to ridicule me for being useless.

Well, I am not the one who went to ITE. I am not the one who gets upset about paying for my own trip. 

Throughout the trip, she keeps trying to turn my mother against me, complaining about the trip all the time, asking my mother if she was tired and if she needed breaks. Then return to tell me that my trip is too rushed and should have breaks. In short, she thinks we should spend at least half the day in the hotel to sleep.

Well, I really wouldn’t mind that if someone else is paying for my trip. But then again, I believe I am more appreciative of someone else’s effort, time and money than the average person. I wouldn’t take these for granted.

She also keeps saying “Mother and I do not want to do this.” “Mother and I feel (this way and that way)””Mother and I are not going to do this. If you want, you do it yourself.”

Are we not family? Why are you dividing our mother and me? Why is there a need to form an alliance and turn our mother against me?

When someone was in the toilet and couldn’t open the door, and my mother needed to use the toilet, she accused me of being a useless daughter.

I was the one who planned four full pages of itinerary and whose plan got dismissed as being brainless and inconsiderate.

The trip makes me see how ugly, selfish, rude, inconsiderate and insensitive she is. Nice and friendly to strangers but nasty to a sister who does not lose her temper. 

I hate to say this but we are able to gauge a person’s character and values by his educational level to a large extent. 

At the planning stage, she was avoiding work by deliberately leaving in advance when she knew I was looking for her to firm up plans or ask for her opinions. She refused to book anything when it was agreed that she would book first while I pay her back, since she doesn’t have an active income. 

Only someone who has planned an itinerary before would know how much thought and effort had gone into it.

The amount of nastiness and meanness that I have been receiving from her within these few days is enough for me to unfriend her on Facebook, together with her ITE friends. For the ingratitude that she’s so freely exhibited, I’ll probably stop teaching her son as well. 

I never thought it would come to this. I thought she was the only one who would not take advantage of my kindness. Looks like the Chinese proverb has its wisdom: 人善被人欺. No exception about it. Even your family do it. 

The Other Side of a Sister

I am in our Barcelona hotel right now with my youngest sister and mother.

You’d have thought that I am having a good time. Like all other holidays, something would mar the experience.

After two hurried and stressful tour group experiences, I didn’t want to take my mother on a tour group holiday again.

However, with my mother’s old age, I didn’t want to shoulder the responsibility of caring for my mother in a foreign land all alone so I asked my youngest sister to come with me, explaining how awful it would be to be targeted by pickpockets and crooks due to our aged-mother-and-lone-scrawny-Asian-woman status.

After some consideration, she agreed to do it. I asked if her husband would give her money to go on the tour. She didn’t say much but since she agreed, I thought everything would work out.

What I didn’t expect was that she was expecting me to pay for her share as well.

There were signs as we were preparing for the trip. I told her it would be better if she paid with her card so that I could pay her back in cash. She agreed. However, she would wait for me to book just about everything. 

Sign 2: She would not be involved in the planning. Whenever I asked her to plan with me, she would find excuses to leave or not turn up knowing I had set aside time to plan. She kept saying she’s ok with everything.

Today, I felt that I should be very clear about it. I showed her the tabulated sums of money that were her share to bear.

After that, things changed.

She would be unhappy over trivial things. 

Then towards the end of the day, she exploded, “Do you know you are very inconsiderate? I have to come for a trip that I have to fork out money for. I have to put up with your nonsense. Do you know how much I have been tolerating?”

Imagine how incredulous I felt. For this whole trip, the one planning and stressing out is me. After planning, you refuse to follow my plan and cancel what I have planned. Aren’t you the inconsiderate one? Shouldn’t I be the one who should feel indignant?”

I reminded her before the trip, I did ask her if her husband would be paying for her. She rolled her eyes. Then she said she wouldn’t mind spending two weeks in Spain but just going to Sagrada Familia!

I told her this is not Phuket or Bali where you just rest and relax. You have come so far and you say you just want to take things easy. I said, “Why didn’t you mention that when I discussed with you?”

She said she did tell me she wanted to start every day late, waking up at 10am or 11am and there’s no need to go to so many places

but I insisted that these things have to be done early and all those places have to be visited.

I said all these are points of interest. How can you go to a place without visiting its place of interest? Then you go there for what?

She continued to explode at me, accusing me of sleeping for at least 8 hours on the plane for the first leg - when the first leg was a 7-hour flight. I said I haven’t slept for 8 hours for a long time. I worked 15 hours a day. How do I get 8 hours of sleep?

She said,”Ha! Ha! Ha!” sarcastically and made contradictory statements, that I was disturbing her sleep by moving my arms constantly. 

Well, the one who sleeps for 10 hours every day is not me. 

Then she complained that I go to too many places. I said I wanted to hit 3 Casas (Casa Vicen, Casa Mila and Casa Balto), but since she wanted just one, we did one today. She started rambling over other places.

She said she wanted to return to the hotel to sleep from 2.30pm but I forced her to go out at 3.30pm. I said,” I was prepared that you didn’t want to go out. I even had my selfie stick with me.” She again gave a sarcastic smirk. 

She said she didn’t want to come, but I kept saying I was scared scared scared, that’s why she came. But she didn’t want to go to any of these places.

Of course I know she’s a housewife and doesn’t have an income. If I had a better person to ask, would I have resorted to asking her?

This is a side of my sister I had never known.

When she refused to plan for the itinerary, I told my third sister that I was worried that she would complain about the planning later. My third sister even assured me that she was a very relaxed person and would go with what I had planned. Now my third sister would say that even a relaxed person like my youngest sister couldn’t stand me. 

I am always at fault in the family. Always the faulty one. 

It’s only our first day of our 14-day trip. Imagine how awful the situation is.

I went to Casa Balto at 9.30pm when it started to turn dark to take some light-up pictures of the building. Really pretty.