‘Ah BuKien wants to discuss Aghere for her son,’ my mother announced to my father over breakfast one morning. They spoke as if I wasn’t there, but they expected me to eavesdrop. This woman, a family friend of my parents, had been intent on seeing me marry her son ever since she had lain eyes on me as a shapeless pre-pubescent in my mother’s hand-me-downs. My father laughed. Ha, the absurdity of it. He thought I was too good for Ah BuKien’s son. ‘That crazy antiquated relic thinks she’s still living in Confucian times,’ my father sneered. ‘She doesn’t realise that in this modern era parents don’t arrange their children’s hearts for them.’