The Hot Seat

Back in the days when my folks still hang freshly laundered clothes to dry on bamboo poles - bamboo poles housed in shiny bright colorful plastic sleeves - the way to do this, I learnt, was to unfold the 2 metre long plastic sheet and roll them over these 2.5 m bamboo poles. Obviously the sleeves will be too wide for the pole, then you take a kettle of boiling water and pour the hot liquid over this sleeves, and watch them shrink to fit the bamboo poles tightly. Voila!

So, back in the days..... when these freshly bone dried laundry come in from the scorching afternoon sun, my folks will bundle them up at the corner of the living room, creating quite a small mountain, bearing in mind that we had my grandma, my mom and dad, my aunt, my 3 uncles, and myself, living under the same roof.

The warmth was so inviting that, as a kid of less than 6 yrs old, I always dive into the clothes, and lay on them, absorbing the warm tingling sensation going through my body. My folks will warn me not to, that I will get heat rash for doing so. And heat rash I got indeed.