Today is Qing Ming, the Chinese tomb sweeping festival, where you're supposed to honour your ancestors. So, quite understandably, when we took a taxi to the crematorium yesterday, the cabbie thought that we were going to the columbarium part of the complex.

It was the first time we were going to the new crematorium/columbarium complex at Mandai and I wasn't familiar with its layout. The cabbie knew how to get there but didn't know where to drop us off. Telling him that we wanted to go the crematorium and not the columbarium didn't help, he didn't speak much English and clearly couldn't tell crematorium from columbarium (and who could blame him), and I didn't know the Chinese equivalent. Telling him "the funeral place" also didn't help, he couldn't distinguish funeral from the joss sticks and paper offering thing you're supposed to do at Qing Ming.

Finally he had a communication brainwave. "Ancestor or burn?" Which in a nutshell, got the columbarium/crematorium thing down pat.

"Burn," I answered weakly, trying to dimiss mental images of was going to take place in the next hour.

Eddie would have thought that's funny.