Sisterly Reminiscence

Just had dinner at parent's place again tonight. And we kinda brought up this old memory of me & sis cycling to the nearby kedai runcit to get my mom some onions when I was 12. We got chased by a couple of dogs (actually I remember they were only few months old puppies heheh) and I cycled soooo fast with my sis behind me that I lost control and cycled into a tree. Of course all the onions terpelanting all over the grass & the bicycle front wheel was bent. It was one of those old-school bicycles with a basket in front. How cool was that?

In this day & age, children no longer have the entire neighbourhood as their playground. Most are confined to their homes with their Macbooks, Ipads and Wii. Parents too, welcome this confinement due to rising crimes of kidnapping or human trafficking. They too have the opportunity to travel the world and see what other parts of the world is like.

Although we had never had a computer or traveled anywhere as children, I am so thankful for my awesome childhood... because entertainment & adventure was not provided to us, we used our imagination to dream up these sources of entertainment & adventure. I could never have had such an awesome one had I not have a little sister to share it with. It wouldn't be at all fun to do any of these things alone. Some things we did:

1. Before we slept, we'd have our imaginary adventures we called "kongabout". We'd set the premise of the adventure, then go along the adventure together through a conversation + narrative. Sometimes it is a different premise every night but at times it is a continuation of the story the day before. We'd continue until 1 of us gets too sleepy to talk or fall asleep.

2. We'd record ourselves singing, in harmony... sometimes to the piano, sometimes a-capella.

3. We even recorded ourselves acting in short stories where the characters in the story are ourselves & our cousins. (I know its weird but I'd give the world to find those cassettes again)

4. We'd go back to Penang during the year end school holidays. Occasionally we would also buy cute animal shaped Eden cakes and lepak at Youth Park or at the Botanical Gardens where we get to see the monkeys.

5. We'd go to our uncle's bungalow where we could swim, and can play hide & seek for hours coz the house was so huge, you can hardly find anyone. We'd even climb up his tall fences to go curi-curi play with his neighbour's fluffy white dog.

6. We'd make glutinous rice balls together with mom during Winter Solstice & see who can make the tiniest balls.

7. I remembered we even built "tents" with our blankets in our bedroom to have our pretend camp-out sessions.

8. We played batu seremban & getah at school, we were both excellent at it!!

9. We'd play with stray kittens together and get scolded for dirtying our hands with their germs.

10. Even as we got older, we performed in the school choir together. We were in the same schools in both primary & secondary school.

11. We have a singing group together called Karla Ryka, then changed to Dejavu, then changed to Citadel. The 2 of us and our friend Kim. We'd walk to school on Saturday mornings while we sing in harmony the whole half-hour walk there. We performed in our school's talentshow, other school's talentshows & even got through 1st round of Asia Bagus.

12. We'd stay back after school together just to lepak with friends, & even played in the mud in our school field.

Good times... Awesome kan? =)