I live in the Commonwealth. Let me introduce you to my family.

I, like the average Singaporean child, have two parents, one male and one female. Usually I refer to them as "dad" and "mom" respectively, but for the sake of being scientifically correct, I shall not hesitate to go into details. After all, "mom" and "dad" are not terms that can be found in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Human Anatomy.

Then of course I have a sibling. I absolutely have no idea which pronoun to address my sibling by. Namely because till this day I have not been able to differentiate my sibling’s gender. But since "he" is a gender-neutral pronoun I shall hereby commence in using the words "he", "him" and "his" in any instance in which he is involved.

The last occupation my father had was an elephant trainer at Murphy’s Wonderful Circus. His duties included feeding the elephants, washing and grooming them, and of course training them to do captivating stunts like back-flips and forward rolls.

My father immersed himself into his job, and frequently worked overtime. But because the circus had to shut its doors on customers and staff alike, at 9pm sharp everyday, my father had no choice but to bring the elephants home to work with. We live on the 4th floor of a high-rise apartment, so I figured out that the neighbours for a radius of 4 units around were not really happy with us. Which probably explains the curse-words written in marker-ink on the front door every morning without fail. It is a ritual for the first person who opens the door on mornings to retrieve the paper(sometimes in shreds), to paint the door over. Because of this daily procedure, the front door has actually grown thicker by about 3 inches.

My father has just lost his job recently. He chose not to convey to us the reason, due to Alpha male ego, but I think it was because of that night when he was teaching this elephant to do a back flip, and after several hours of seemingly futile effort, the elephant finally did it. The only drawback was that it had back-flipped right out of the living-room window. Dad got us all to go downstairs with him and help scrape the remains off the sidewalk with tablespoons.

So now my father mopes around at home, watching the Year 1999 PGA Golf Championships, which we caught on tape, over and over again. He tells us he’s going to be the next Vijay Singh, often while pretending to putt with mom’s frying pan and a Ping-Pong ball. Mom is not a single bit pleased about it.

Speaking of my mother, she used to be a full-time housewife. But since dad got fired she figured it was her opportunity to make a break and she has successfully landed a job as a secretary in Ali’s Trading Corporation. She has no knowledge on using a computer whatsoever, and definitely less so of Tamil, so how she managed such a feat like that I do not know. I suspect she is getting the help of an Indian neighbour living two blocks away.

Ever since mom got that job we have been eating leftovers every night. Mom has kept leftovers from dinners since approximately 9 years ago in the fridge. Whenever we confronted her about it she told us it was to prevent starvation should Singapore be involved in a war. After all, she tells us, its part of what the government tells us to do as our national defence. So now she’s telling us that she needs to clear out the fridge to renew our "war-provisions".

Now, I shall move on to my sibling. He is 3 years older than me and received his primary education in a mixed school, then moved on to an all-boys secondary school. However, what really had me puzzled was that he received tertiary education in an all-girl’s school. Which I thought was very strange. Later I found out from mom that my sibling had been born a boy, but the surgeon had assumed a particular organ as the umbilical cord, and thus there had been an operational accident. Though it was not fatal, but it did lead to very confusing consequences.

My supposed brother has a weird hobby. He enjoys picking his nose and storing the results in a bottle on his bedside table. If I remember correctly he started doing this when he was 9. Its been about 10 years now, and he’s almost filled the 1.5 litre Pepsi bottle. I think he’ll finish it in about 2 or 3 months time. He tells me that he will send it to Guiness’ World Records for the biggest bottle of snot. Too often does he take the bottle and show it off to us at the dinner table. On days which that happens mom will spend about 2 hours stuffing the leftovers in the fridge.

So that is a brief introduction to my family. My friends tell me that they are a deficit bunch but I still manage to get by with them around, so I think they’re okay.