a trip into the past.
while taking my shower, my thoughts suddenly drifted back 18 years into the past.... and i found myself fondly reminiscing my life in that period.
for those of you who don't know, i lived in kuching for 4 years (1990-1994) because my dad's boss had him transferred there to take charge of one of the company's factories which was in crisis... and so we went, my whole family and i. although kuching's officially a city, it was more like a town in most ways.
i'm suddenly struck by how different my life was in kuching than it was in KL.
i mean, for one, the crime rate was SO LOW, my mom basically let my brother (gene) and i do ANYTHING. we'd go out every evening at 4pm and cycle around the neighbourhood making friends. =D most of those friends were.. well, children of expatriates from australia, UK, USA and nordic countries. i remember them all having blonde hair and blue eyes. hell, we even started speaking like them at one point. of course my parents got along really well with their parents too. i remember this girl in particular.... her family was swedish... i don't really remember her name, but it was something like ida (or aida. i don't know the spelling). anyway, i remember her because she was the quietest, sweetest child EVER. and there was this other kid, grace, and her sister, isabel or something... they were australian, and oh gosh. isabel pooped on my mom's couch once, which was TOTALLY HILARIOUS. grace freaked out and told her mom, and isabel kinda looked really confused (with her baby blonde curls and blue eyes and all). and from then on, she was "the kid who pooped on our couch". hahahaha.
but besides being super close to my neighbours, my childhood there was idyllic, to put it mildly. my dad brought us to the beach EVERY week. hell, it was like i grew up on Damai beach. hahaha. at first it was SUPER exciting. gene and i would go looking for seashells ALL the time. we even started this whole collection which ended up filling this whole huge box... which i think is still somewhere in the dark corners of my house. but... we quickly got bored of seashells just cos they were so PLENTIFUL there. so, we started making sand castles... which unfortunately, always crumbled and gave way. =( so we gave up on that too. and then we'd go swimming in the sea and try to lie in the wave bumps! we'd float and stare at the sky, unaware of where we were heading (once, gene went out so far into the sea that my mom TOTALLY freaked out and started screaming her head off).
i remember once, my dad brought us deep-sea fishing with his friends! (i don't remember if the boat was rented or if it'd belonged to one of his friends) shit. what i would give to be able to go deep sea fishing now. how completely awesome is that?!?! anyhow, i remember them having this big bucket of water on the boat so that they could keep the fish they'd caught in there. it was sad to see those fish go, though. =( i actually expected them to just catch the fish and then throw them back into the sea! i really did. to save those fishes from being our dinner, i even bugged my dad to let me keep one of them as a PET. HAHAHAHA. gosh. kids do the darnest things.
hmm... oh! and i remember seeing lots of sea turtles on the beach too! some iban guys would steal their eggs and sell them at the market to make $$$. don't know if that's still going on now. to tell you the truth, i'd actually eaten them turtle eggs.. and.. they tasted REALLY good, too. -_-""
another weekend ritual of ours was to hangout along the riverside pier... which was always awesome. there were popcorn sellers all along the piers.. you know, the colourful popcorn??? pink, blue, green, yellow. oh gosh. i remember LOVING that. anyway, we'd just sit by the pier (mom, dad, bro & i) and watch the sun set.
being outdoors so much also equalled lots of injuries, though. we practically became so immune to scrapes and stuff that nobody made a big deal out of it anymore. hell... my dad once laughed his head off when i tripped and fell while holding a huge guava. =( it wasn't funny to ME, though. also, my brother and i once got ring worm infections on our legs. EWWWWWWWWWW, now that i think about it. ringworms aren't really worms--they're actually a type of fungi. STILL DISGUSTING. you should see what it does to your skin... it's even MORE DISGUSTING. you get this huge WET SCAB on your skin (it goes round and round like a ringworm) which oozes pus. YUCK! i can still picture it in my head till this day. i get the SHIVERS when i think about it.
well we got the ringworm from playing in the mud. yes. we played in MUD. gross, eh? we'd trample in the mud looking for tadpoles. HAHAHAH. we thought they were FISH... so it wasn't half as bad. so we(my bro and i) like secretly caught a whole truckload of tadpoles and put them in my barbie box (HAHHAHAHA) and dumped water in there... and to our HORROR, a week later............ THEY GREW LEGS and started hopping around. HAHAHAHHA. my mom was positively LIVID. so my dad had to throw the whole barbie box out. disgustinggg!!
oh, and my dad had this friend (i still remember his name! we called him uncle anthony) who owned a farm (uncle anthony's farm was what we named it hahah)... and my bro and i fell in love with his baby rabbits this one visit... so we persuaded our parents to let us have one. and we got to pick one from the litter! of course I got to pick, and i chose this white furry bunny with red eyes. i never knew why he had red eyes then, but now i realize that he was really an albino bunny. haha. so we named him... SHIT. i don't remember what we named him. sorry, my brother and i named EVERYTHING. our fish was harry, and all our soft toys had names too. like chong ying the bunny soft toy and something(i forget the name here again) the elephant and so on.
so anyhow, the rabbit grew older and became obnoxious. he would hop around and poop and pee everywhere, to my mom's dismay. but it was FUNNY to us. hahahaha. unfortunately though, my mom got too sick of it pooping everywhere and gave it to her friend (who i heard cooked it for dinner. *tear*) oh, and our having a rabbit spurred this RABBIT frenzy in our neighbourhood. suddenly, ALL the kids started having rabbits as well!! kinda cool eh?
holy shit this is turning out to be a HUGE post. hmmm...... maybe i'll continue part two next time. let me collect all my memories and i'll churn everything out for you then =D seriously, growing up in a small town is so much livelier and more exciting than growing up in the city. when we moved back to KL, my brother and i practically died of boredom. my mom wouldn't let us even go to the park to play because it was too dangerous. our bicycles sat in the store room and collected dust until we decided to just throw them away.
but anyhow, till next time. i hope you've enjoyed these stories! toodles!
for those of you who don't know, i lived in kuching for 4 years (1990-1994) because my dad's boss had him transferred there to take charge of one of the company's factories which was in crisis... and so we went, my whole family and i. although kuching's officially a city, it was more like a town in most ways.
i'm suddenly struck by how different my life was in kuching than it was in KL.
i mean, for one, the crime rate was SO LOW, my mom basically let my brother (gene) and i do ANYTHING. we'd go out every evening at 4pm and cycle around the neighbourhood making friends. =D most of those friends were.. well, children of expatriates from australia, UK, USA and nordic countries. i remember them all having blonde hair and blue eyes. hell, we even started speaking like them at one point. of course my parents got along really well with their parents too. i remember this girl in particular.... her family was swedish... i don't really remember her name, but it was something like ida (or aida. i don't know the spelling). anyway, i remember her because she was the quietest, sweetest child EVER. and there was this other kid, grace, and her sister, isabel or something... they were australian, and oh gosh. isabel pooped on my mom's couch once, which was TOTALLY HILARIOUS. grace freaked out and told her mom, and isabel kinda looked really confused (with her baby blonde curls and blue eyes and all). and from then on, she was "the kid who pooped on our couch". hahahaha.
but besides being super close to my neighbours, my childhood there was idyllic, to put it mildly. my dad brought us to the beach EVERY week. hell, it was like i grew up on Damai beach. hahaha. at first it was SUPER exciting. gene and i would go looking for seashells ALL the time. we even started this whole collection which ended up filling this whole huge box... which i think is still somewhere in the dark corners of my house. but... we quickly got bored of seashells just cos they were so PLENTIFUL there. so, we started making sand castles... which unfortunately, always crumbled and gave way. =( so we gave up on that too. and then we'd go swimming in the sea and try to lie in the wave bumps! we'd float and stare at the sky, unaware of where we were heading (once, gene went out so far into the sea that my mom TOTALLY freaked out and started screaming her head off).
i remember once, my dad brought us deep-sea fishing with his friends! (i don't remember if the boat was rented or if it'd belonged to one of his friends) shit. what i would give to be able to go deep sea fishing now. how completely awesome is that?!?! anyhow, i remember them having this big bucket of water on the boat so that they could keep the fish they'd caught in there. it was sad to see those fish go, though. =( i actually expected them to just catch the fish and then throw them back into the sea! i really did. to save those fishes from being our dinner, i even bugged my dad to let me keep one of them as a PET. HAHAHAHA. gosh. kids do the darnest things.
hmm... oh! and i remember seeing lots of sea turtles on the beach too! some iban guys would steal their eggs and sell them at the market to make $$$. don't know if that's still going on now. to tell you the truth, i'd actually eaten them turtle eggs.. and.. they tasted REALLY good, too. -_-""
another weekend ritual of ours was to hangout along the riverside pier... which was always awesome. there were popcorn sellers all along the piers.. you know, the colourful popcorn??? pink, blue, green, yellow. oh gosh. i remember LOVING that. anyway, we'd just sit by the pier (mom, dad, bro & i) and watch the sun set.
being outdoors so much also equalled lots of injuries, though. we practically became so immune to scrapes and stuff that nobody made a big deal out of it anymore. hell... my dad once laughed his head off when i tripped and fell while holding a huge guava. =( it wasn't funny to ME, though. also, my brother and i once got ring worm infections on our legs. EWWWWWWWWWW, now that i think about it. ringworms aren't really worms--they're actually a type of fungi. STILL DISGUSTING. you should see what it does to your skin... it's even MORE DISGUSTING. you get this huge WET SCAB on your skin (it goes round and round like a ringworm) which oozes pus. YUCK! i can still picture it in my head till this day. i get the SHIVERS when i think about it.
well we got the ringworm from playing in the mud. yes. we played in MUD. gross, eh? we'd trample in the mud looking for tadpoles. HAHAHAH. we thought they were FISH... so it wasn't half as bad. so we(my bro and i) like secretly caught a whole truckload of tadpoles and put them in my barbie box (HAHHAHAHA) and dumped water in there... and to our HORROR, a week later............ THEY GREW LEGS and started hopping around. HAHAHAHHA. my mom was positively LIVID. so my dad had to throw the whole barbie box out. disgustinggg!!
oh, and my dad had this friend (i still remember his name! we called him uncle anthony) who owned a farm (uncle anthony's farm was what we named it hahah)... and my bro and i fell in love with his baby rabbits this one visit... so we persuaded our parents to let us have one. and we got to pick one from the litter! of course I got to pick, and i chose this white furry bunny with red eyes. i never knew why he had red eyes then, but now i realize that he was really an albino bunny. haha. so we named him... SHIT. i don't remember what we named him. sorry, my brother and i named EVERYTHING. our fish was harry, and all our soft toys had names too. like chong ying the bunny soft toy and something(i forget the name here again) the elephant and so on.
so anyhow, the rabbit grew older and became obnoxious. he would hop around and poop and pee everywhere, to my mom's dismay. but it was FUNNY to us. hahahaha. unfortunately though, my mom got too sick of it pooping everywhere and gave it to her friend (who i heard cooked it for dinner. *tear*) oh, and our having a rabbit spurred this RABBIT frenzy in our neighbourhood. suddenly, ALL the kids started having rabbits as well!! kinda cool eh?
holy shit this is turning out to be a HUGE post. hmmm...... maybe i'll continue part two next time. let me collect all my memories and i'll churn everything out for you then =D seriously, growing up in a small town is so much livelier and more exciting than growing up in the city. when we moved back to KL, my brother and i practically died of boredom. my mom wouldn't let us even go to the park to play because it was too dangerous. our bicycles sat in the store room and collected dust until we decided to just throw them away.
but anyhow, till next time. i hope you've enjoyed these stories! toodles!