2003
Introduction:
There's this thing called an 'insurance agency' where I come from, and in 2001 my dad set up one of his own.
My dad's been in the insurance business for 22 years. He made a career switch when he was 36, and I will forever respect him for it.
He'd been an insurance agent eight or nine years before he set up his own agency. It was a big move that cost a lot of money, but my dad was ready to take that step. He had proven himself to be an excellent broker, his customers trusted him, and above all, he was always kind to people he served and people he worked with. My dad has a really good heart, it wasn't surprising.
I was 14 then. To me, Dad owning his own business meant little, but it felt sorta cool being the child of someone who was that capable.
I need to say that up till this point, I grew up very privileged. We weren't super rich, but I'm an only child, and I remember living very comfortably. We had a large apartment - my parents never thought they'd end up only having one kid - three bedrooms, one study, huge living room. My mum got rid of the balcony to enlarge the living room, and I got a library out of it because the lower part of the wall was converted into a row of bookshelves. I literally had hundreds of books. (My mother didn't let me go to public libraries until I was ten. She thought the books were dirty because they were passed from hand to hand. She either bought my books or had me read them at bookstores. Haha. Again, I was a very privileged kid.)
My bedroom was big. I slept on a queen-sized bed. I had a TV mounted on the wall that I watched all my anime and Japanese dramas on. (I'd been very into all things Japanese since I was 11.) I had cable which aired these shows, though I couldn't control it from my room, for some reason. Maybe it was so that my parents could always know what I was watching. Anyway, I was very comfortable.
The first time in my life I didn't live so comfortably:
In 2002, my dad's business failed because his parent company got into a scandal which then imposed something called an unemployment ban - effectively rendering his agency manpower-less. He couldn't employ anyone to work for him, to join his agency and sell insurance.
Eventually, we sold our home. We went to live with my grandmother, in her apartment. She had a three bedroom apartment, and my mum, dad and I crammed into one of her rooms. That room was smaller than my bedroom.
Honestly, it was pretty fun, and we knew it was temporary so it wasn't like we were suffering or anything. We got cable for my grandma so we could have cable, lol. My mum had to sleep in a tiny space on the floor. I felt really bad for her, but she said the hard floor was good for her bad back.
Dad and I slept on beds. Two single beds, arranged in an L-shape. In our room was a small TV with a VCD player and a computer desk with our old PC.
Looking back, I don't think we were poor. We sold our home. We had money. But after a few months, things started to take its toll.
Remember, I was 14. I had no idea how transactions worked. But now I'm guessing the money took time to come in, otherwise I wouldn't have witnessed my parents squabble about money, and being in close quarters with them meant I was privy to their disagreements, and I was listening to every word. I would sometimes get into rows with them because they thought I was using too much money.
In January 2003, I entered Secondary 3. (The new school year starts on January 2 in Singapore.) It's a strange time, Secondary 3. For the first two years of secondary school, Singaporean kids learn a smattering of English, a second language, Mathematics, Geography, History, Science, Art, Design and Tech and Home Economics. I might be missing out a couple of things, not counting PE. Anyway, in Secondary 3, we specialise. For my school, we picked six subjects that we wanted to take our GCE 'O' Levels in, and we'd study them from Secondary 3 and 4, then graduate.
I was really stressed in Secondary 3 because of the new subjects, because of the change in my home environment. To make things worse, in February, there was the SARS epidemic. It was a scary time - the headlines would report the death count every day and the total number of infected cases, the closure of a wholesale market where an outbreak happened. It was a sad time as well - reports of healthcare workers dying, families of the dead sobbing on the news, the departed sending messages from hospital before they died.
Singaporean schools have a holiday in March, a week-long break. We took that week-long break, then we went back to school for a few days, then the government decided schools should stay closed because of the epidemic.
I had nothing to do at home. I was grateful to be healthy, but I had nothing to do. My mother had little to do as well, so one day she went out to buy a couple of Japanese dramas for us to pass the time.
One of these Japanese dramas was Akimahende!, and whaddaya know, it had Nino in it. I'm gonna skip this part because I've talked about it before, but essentially I became an Arashi fan.
My first adventures as an Arashi fan:
I remember going alone to the huge HMV in the city to look for Arashi music. The Tomadoinagara single (Taiwanese press) was on sale. I bought it. I was so excited to find Arashi music in Singapore, and I played that single again and again on my portable CD player, wishing it had more songs.
School reopened in April. I was really excited to meet my friends again, and there were a few Kinki Kids, V6 and T&T fans in my grade who told me that Arashi was part of an organisation called Johnny's, but it meant little to me at that time. I was an Arashi fan, who cared about Johnny's? LOL.
SARS was contained in May 2003, and I was still living at my grandmother's house. My parents would still sometimes argue about money, but we also started viewing houses, finally. I thought we'd be moving out soon.
My day-to-day consisted of school, TV, and Arashi. Knowing I was really into Arashi, one of my T&T fan friends told me about this drama that starred Aiba-chan that had aired on the local channel a year earlier. She said it was a really good drama and it was a pity I became a fan after it finished airing.
I also found out that the bookstore near my home carried Wink Up. It was the Taiwanese version, which was awesome because I read and understand Mandarin, which means I would know what Arashi was saying. I still have those magazines. I would buy them every month. They were about 4 Singapore Dollars. I don't remember how much of my pocket money that was, but I remember stowing them away very carefully. Haha.
Now, one thing about my parents. They are lovely, but they are very, very strict. I was raised to listen only to classical music and hymns, and my parents really had to tolerate my love of J-pop. They would take every chance to lecture me about it, saying how I was wasting money on magazines and CDs, how I was idolising these things, how I had changed since I was a little girl.
I kept my activities as quiet as I could. I would use the computer late at night when everyone was sleeping, going on Napster to download Arashi clips. I would turn the sound down really low and giggle to myself. The one of the boys waking each other up in Hawaii was my favourite. I watched it so many times. You must remember this was a relatively new clip at that time, so it was really circulating, as new clips do. This was before YouTube. Ah, the memories.
I would also try not to let any of my music leak from my earphones because when my parents heard the beat, they'd know it was 'the devil's music' and want to lecture me. I was very careful not to turn the music up too loud.
Every Thursday night there was a Japanese drama that aired on the local free-to-air channel. It was called Fuji Hour, and I'd been tuning in since I was nine, because I was so into Japan. It started at 10 PM.
One night (and this was still at my grandma's house) I was feeling energetic so I stayed up to watch the Japanese drama, and when it ended I saw the line-up for the next two hours, and I noticed they were both Japanese dramas! I was pretty excited about this, so I stayed up for those as well.
11 PM's drama started and ended. The 12 AM one came on, and it was the first episode. I watched it and fell in love with the plot, and then I realised a couple of things: (1) this was the drama that T&T fan had told me about and (2) Aiba-chan was in it.
It was Mukodono, and little did I know 7 years down the road I'd fall in love with TOKIO as well.
What were the odds? Here I was, a new Arashi fan, and here was a drama that had been recommended to me by a friend, and all I needed to do was to stay up late on a school night to watch it. OH, WOW.
I remember those 12 weeks with so much fondness. I would come home and take a nap because I had to stay up from 12 AM to 1 AM on a school night, and I was so motivated because it was AN ARASHI MEMBER IN A DRAMA, OMG, and I'd turn the volume down so low because everyone (grandpa, grandma, aunt, my parents) was sleeping. It was such a wonderful time, despite the living arrangements and the epidemic and the drama at school.
Oh, right. The drama at school.
The drama at school:
Secondary 3 was when we picked the subjects we wanted to specialise in, right? This also meant we were getting new classmates. We'd been with the same classmates in Secondary 1 and 2, and there was only one other class in our grade. We sort of knew them (they were the class next door), but we weren't that close. When we went to Secondary 3, half the class was from my Sec. 1 and 2 class, and the other half was from The Other Class.
We didn't immediately get along.
I had some problems with some people, and it was weird for a while. Unfortunately. Not going to delve into details I don't remember very well, but it was an awkward, teenaged time.
It didn't help that I was one of the more prominent people in school. It had to do with many things, but one of them was my T-score, the score that I entered the school with back in Secondary 1. I was 50 points above the score to get in, I think, and that's actually crazy. My school was a school where people tried to get out of, not in. There were kids who didn't even choose to come to my school - their T-scores weren't high enough to get into the schools they wanted, and they ended up coming to my school.
Honestly, I didn't think much about any of this. I was just really glad to live so near my school. Distance was the only reason why I picked the school, and some people thought I was nuts.
Anyway. Because of this, I was seen as the really smart kid, and people had expectations of me, along with an image that I was smart. Some people definitely had the idea that I was haughty. I don't know if I strengthened that image, but I was quite self-aware, and if I had any flaws it wasn't haughtiness. I might've been very sensitive and quick to defend myself and my friends, but I never thought myself superior to anyone, that's for sure. I think it was because I was really bad at Additional Maths, Geography, Chemistry and Physics, so I never thought I was better than anyone. I mean, I was shit at those subjects, really shit, and that kept me grounded.
Back to Arashi:
Some incidents from living at my grandma's place still stand out, and to this day I connect them with Arashi even though Arashi isn't directly linked to those memories.
I guess it's because that was when I really became their fan. There'd been a lot of firsts for me: the first time I fangirled any real boys (it'd been anime people up till then), the first time I went to town on my own to buy a CD, the first time I was so into a group that I stayed up so late on a school night to watch a drama religiously for 12 weeks just because one member was appearing in it.
Arashi was connected to that timeframe, that time in my life that'd been so different from what came before and after it.
Every time I hear Fuyu no Nioi being played I think of these things, because Fuyu no Nioi was my favourite song on the maxi single:
(1) Getting the stomach flu and vomiting through the night
(2) Buying a bento box and making onigiri for the first time
(3) Crying through the night because my parents lectured me about how I used my money, and deciding to get a part-time job the next day
(4) Crying the next day because my parents didn't want me to get a part-time job because they weren't that in need of money
(5) Feeling awful because I thought they were just trying to be nice and we were really in need of money
(6) My friends coming over to visit me at my grandma's and seeing the difference in our living conditions
(7) Said friends surprising me on my birthday by coming one by one to my new place, when we moved in July? August?
(8) Said friends throwing me a surprise birthday party in collaboration with my parents, and my gift being money from all of them
It was really sweet. In Chinese culture it's okay to give money as a present if you're an older person, but my friends are all my age and it was hilarious and embarrassing receiving money from them, but they 'didn't know what else I needed'. Later, a couple of these friends bought me a Johnny's Junior strap that I wanted because it was orange and my favourite colour is orange, hahaha.
I'm very blessed.
In retrospect, I think Arashi came to me just when I needed an escape. I could've been moody and intolerable (because which emo teenager isn't) but because of Arashi, I had something to channel my energies into. I could engage/disengage from real life and just giggle through the night over Aiba-chan holding a stuffed toy and flashing a peace sign while looking sleepy, and go to school the next morning squealing to all my friends about this new boyband that was in my life.
Conclusion:
I'm very thankful. A couple of those awesome friends who gave me money have just visited me, one after the other, over the holidays. Chatting with them in this country I now call home was quite surreal. They were there when I fell in love with Arashi, and they're here now, and so is Arashi. It's all surreal. Seriously, Arashi just triggers so many feelings of thankfulness.
God, thank you for giving me so many wonderful things. Amen.
I was told over fic comments just a couple days ago that I was around for the golden years of Arashi. I don't know if I really was - there were years I didn't follow them as closely as 2003, and 2008 to 2011 - but one thing is for certain: these boys have grown along with me (and my friends), in so many ways. Jun and I share the same birthday, and we were five months shy of our 20th and 15th birthdays respectively, when I became an Arashi fan.
It's 2017. I look back at everything that's transpired so far, and I have so much to be thankful for.
There's this thing called an 'insurance agency' where I come from, and in 2001 my dad set up one of his own.
My dad's been in the insurance business for 22 years. He made a career switch when he was 36, and I will forever respect him for it.
He'd been an insurance agent eight or nine years before he set up his own agency. It was a big move that cost a lot of money, but my dad was ready to take that step. He had proven himself to be an excellent broker, his customers trusted him, and above all, he was always kind to people he served and people he worked with. My dad has a really good heart, it wasn't surprising.
I was 14 then. To me, Dad owning his own business meant little, but it felt sorta cool being the child of someone who was that capable.
I need to say that up till this point, I grew up very privileged. We weren't super rich, but I'm an only child, and I remember living very comfortably. We had a large apartment - my parents never thought they'd end up only having one kid - three bedrooms, one study, huge living room. My mum got rid of the balcony to enlarge the living room, and I got a library out of it because the lower part of the wall was converted into a row of bookshelves. I literally had hundreds of books. (My mother didn't let me go to public libraries until I was ten. She thought the books were dirty because they were passed from hand to hand. She either bought my books or had me read them at bookstores. Haha. Again, I was a very privileged kid.)
My bedroom was big. I slept on a queen-sized bed. I had a TV mounted on the wall that I watched all my anime and Japanese dramas on. (I'd been very into all things Japanese since I was 11.) I had cable which aired these shows, though I couldn't control it from my room, for some reason. Maybe it was so that my parents could always know what I was watching. Anyway, I was very comfortable.
The first time in my life I didn't live so comfortably:
In 2002, my dad's business failed because his parent company got into a scandal which then imposed something called an unemployment ban - effectively rendering his agency manpower-less. He couldn't employ anyone to work for him, to join his agency and sell insurance.
Eventually, we sold our home. We went to live with my grandmother, in her apartment. She had a three bedroom apartment, and my mum, dad and I crammed into one of her rooms. That room was smaller than my bedroom.
Honestly, it was pretty fun, and we knew it was temporary so it wasn't like we were suffering or anything. We got cable for my grandma so we could have cable, lol. My mum had to sleep in a tiny space on the floor. I felt really bad for her, but she said the hard floor was good for her bad back.
Dad and I slept on beds. Two single beds, arranged in an L-shape. In our room was a small TV with a VCD player and a computer desk with our old PC.
Looking back, I don't think we were poor. We sold our home. We had money. But after a few months, things started to take its toll.
Remember, I was 14. I had no idea how transactions worked. But now I'm guessing the money took time to come in, otherwise I wouldn't have witnessed my parents squabble about money, and being in close quarters with them meant I was privy to their disagreements, and I was listening to every word. I would sometimes get into rows with them because they thought I was using too much money.
In January 2003, I entered Secondary 3. (The new school year starts on January 2 in Singapore.) It's a strange time, Secondary 3. For the first two years of secondary school, Singaporean kids learn a smattering of English, a second language, Mathematics, Geography, History, Science, Art, Design and Tech and Home Economics. I might be missing out a couple of things, not counting PE. Anyway, in Secondary 3, we specialise. For my school, we picked six subjects that we wanted to take our GCE 'O' Levels in, and we'd study them from Secondary 3 and 4, then graduate.
I was really stressed in Secondary 3 because of the new subjects, because of the change in my home environment. To make things worse, in February, there was the SARS epidemic. It was a scary time - the headlines would report the death count every day and the total number of infected cases, the closure of a wholesale market where an outbreak happened. It was a sad time as well - reports of healthcare workers dying, families of the dead sobbing on the news, the departed sending messages from hospital before they died.
Singaporean schools have a holiday in March, a week-long break. We took that week-long break, then we went back to school for a few days, then the government decided schools should stay closed because of the epidemic.
I had nothing to do at home. I was grateful to be healthy, but I had nothing to do. My mother had little to do as well, so one day she went out to buy a couple of Japanese dramas for us to pass the time.
One of these Japanese dramas was Akimahende!, and whaddaya know, it had Nino in it. I'm gonna skip this part because I've talked about it before, but essentially I became an Arashi fan.
My first adventures as an Arashi fan:
I remember going alone to the huge HMV in the city to look for Arashi music. The Tomadoinagara single (Taiwanese press) was on sale. I bought it. I was so excited to find Arashi music in Singapore, and I played that single again and again on my portable CD player, wishing it had more songs.
School reopened in April. I was really excited to meet my friends again, and there were a few Kinki Kids, V6 and T&T fans in my grade who told me that Arashi was part of an organisation called Johnny's, but it meant little to me at that time. I was an Arashi fan, who cared about Johnny's? LOL.
SARS was contained in May 2003, and I was still living at my grandmother's house. My parents would still sometimes argue about money, but we also started viewing houses, finally. I thought we'd be moving out soon.
My day-to-day consisted of school, TV, and Arashi. Knowing I was really into Arashi, one of my T&T fan friends told me about this drama that starred Aiba-chan that had aired on the local channel a year earlier. She said it was a really good drama and it was a pity I became a fan after it finished airing.
I also found out that the bookstore near my home carried Wink Up. It was the Taiwanese version, which was awesome because I read and understand Mandarin, which means I would know what Arashi was saying. I still have those magazines. I would buy them every month. They were about 4 Singapore Dollars. I don't remember how much of my pocket money that was, but I remember stowing them away very carefully. Haha.
Now, one thing about my parents. They are lovely, but they are very, very strict. I was raised to listen only to classical music and hymns, and my parents really had to tolerate my love of J-pop. They would take every chance to lecture me about it, saying how I was wasting money on magazines and CDs, how I was idolising these things, how I had changed since I was a little girl.
I kept my activities as quiet as I could. I would use the computer late at night when everyone was sleeping, going on Napster to download Arashi clips. I would turn the sound down really low and giggle to myself. The one of the boys waking each other up in Hawaii was my favourite. I watched it so many times. You must remember this was a relatively new clip at that time, so it was really circulating, as new clips do. This was before YouTube. Ah, the memories.
I would also try not to let any of my music leak from my earphones because when my parents heard the beat, they'd know it was 'the devil's music' and want to lecture me. I was very careful not to turn the music up too loud.
Every Thursday night there was a Japanese drama that aired on the local free-to-air channel. It was called Fuji Hour, and I'd been tuning in since I was nine, because I was so into Japan. It started at 10 PM.
One night (and this was still at my grandma's house) I was feeling energetic so I stayed up to watch the Japanese drama, and when it ended I saw the line-up for the next two hours, and I noticed they were both Japanese dramas! I was pretty excited about this, so I stayed up for those as well.
11 PM's drama started and ended. The 12 AM one came on, and it was the first episode. I watched it and fell in love with the plot, and then I realised a couple of things: (1) this was the drama that T&T fan had told me about and (2) Aiba-chan was in it.
It was Mukodono, and little did I know 7 years down the road I'd fall in love with TOKIO as well.
What were the odds? Here I was, a new Arashi fan, and here was a drama that had been recommended to me by a friend, and all I needed to do was to stay up late on a school night to watch it. OH, WOW.
I remember those 12 weeks with so much fondness. I would come home and take a nap because I had to stay up from 12 AM to 1 AM on a school night, and I was so motivated because it was AN ARASHI MEMBER IN A DRAMA, OMG, and I'd turn the volume down so low because everyone (grandpa, grandma, aunt, my parents) was sleeping. It was such a wonderful time, despite the living arrangements and the epidemic and the drama at school.
Oh, right. The drama at school.
The drama at school:
Secondary 3 was when we picked the subjects we wanted to specialise in, right? This also meant we were getting new classmates. We'd been with the same classmates in Secondary 1 and 2, and there was only one other class in our grade. We sort of knew them (they were the class next door), but we weren't that close. When we went to Secondary 3, half the class was from my Sec. 1 and 2 class, and the other half was from The Other Class.
We didn't immediately get along.
I had some problems with some people, and it was weird for a while. Unfortunately. Not going to delve into details I don't remember very well, but it was an awkward, teenaged time.
It didn't help that I was one of the more prominent people in school. It had to do with many things, but one of them was my T-score, the score that I entered the school with back in Secondary 1. I was 50 points above the score to get in, I think, and that's actually crazy. My school was a school where people tried to get out of, not in. There were kids who didn't even choose to come to my school - their T-scores weren't high enough to get into the schools they wanted, and they ended up coming to my school.
Honestly, I didn't think much about any of this. I was just really glad to live so near my school. Distance was the only reason why I picked the school, and some people thought I was nuts.
Anyway. Because of this, I was seen as the really smart kid, and people had expectations of me, along with an image that I was smart. Some people definitely had the idea that I was haughty. I don't know if I strengthened that image, but I was quite self-aware, and if I had any flaws it wasn't haughtiness. I might've been very sensitive and quick to defend myself and my friends, but I never thought myself superior to anyone, that's for sure. I think it was because I was really bad at Additional Maths, Geography, Chemistry and Physics, so I never thought I was better than anyone. I mean, I was shit at those subjects, really shit, and that kept me grounded.
Back to Arashi:
Some incidents from living at my grandma's place still stand out, and to this day I connect them with Arashi even though Arashi isn't directly linked to those memories.
I guess it's because that was when I really became their fan. There'd been a lot of firsts for me: the first time I fangirled any real boys (it'd been anime people up till then), the first time I went to town on my own to buy a CD, the first time I was so into a group that I stayed up so late on a school night to watch a drama religiously for 12 weeks just because one member was appearing in it.
Arashi was connected to that timeframe, that time in my life that'd been so different from what came before and after it.
Every time I hear Fuyu no Nioi being played I think of these things, because Fuyu no Nioi was my favourite song on the maxi single:
(1) Getting the stomach flu and vomiting through the night
(2) Buying a bento box and making onigiri for the first time
(3) Crying through the night because my parents lectured me about how I used my money, and deciding to get a part-time job the next day
(4) Crying the next day because my parents didn't want me to get a part-time job because they weren't that in need of money
(5) Feeling awful because I thought they were just trying to be nice and we were really in need of money
(6) My friends coming over to visit me at my grandma's and seeing the difference in our living conditions
(7) Said friends surprising me on my birthday by coming one by one to my new place, when we moved in July? August?
(8) Said friends throwing me a surprise birthday party in collaboration with my parents, and my gift being money from all of them
It was really sweet. In Chinese culture it's okay to give money as a present if you're an older person, but my friends are all my age and it was hilarious and embarrassing receiving money from them, but they 'didn't know what else I needed'. Later, a couple of these friends bought me a Johnny's Junior strap that I wanted because it was orange and my favourite colour is orange, hahaha.
I'm very blessed.
In retrospect, I think Arashi came to me just when I needed an escape. I could've been moody and intolerable (because which emo teenager isn't) but because of Arashi, I had something to channel my energies into. I could engage/disengage from real life and just giggle through the night over Aiba-chan holding a stuffed toy and flashing a peace sign while looking sleepy, and go to school the next morning squealing to all my friends about this new boyband that was in my life.
Conclusion:
I'm very thankful. A couple of those awesome friends who gave me money have just visited me, one after the other, over the holidays. Chatting with them in this country I now call home was quite surreal. They were there when I fell in love with Arashi, and they're here now, and so is Arashi. It's all surreal. Seriously, Arashi just triggers so many feelings of thankfulness.
God, thank you for giving me so many wonderful things. Amen.
I was told over fic comments just a couple days ago that I was around for the golden years of Arashi. I don't know if I really was - there were years I didn't follow them as closely as 2003, and 2008 to 2011 - but one thing is for certain: these boys have grown along with me (and my friends), in so many ways. Jun and I share the same birthday, and we were five months shy of our 20th and 15th birthdays respectively, when I became an Arashi fan.
It's 2017. I look back at everything that's transpired so far, and I have so much to be thankful for.