Some Of My Earliest Memories....

I remembered pouring blue watercolor into the small white bathtub trying to make it look like a real swimming pool.

I remembered lying that I hit a sharp cupboard end when I cut myself badly with my dad’s shaver

I remembered the moment my mum taught me how to tell the time while she’s dressing me in my pajamas

I remembered the ordeal my parents went through each time I spot a Mickey Mouse watch at the malls in any color that I did not have. “But I don’t have the blue one / I didn’t get the red one.” I’d insist on getting them although they were all the same.


I remembered being knocked over by a cousin while she was on a wooden swing in Malacca, and I flew into cow dung. And how the adults were trying to stop my wailing by telling me it was ‘mud’.


I remembered the first ever Japanese word I knew, -‘ChiJin’, uttered frequently by a Japanese cousin. I still don’t know what it meant.

I remembered how my mum had to take a day off from work to shop for this little doll called ‘My Child’ cos I would not stop weeping.

I remembered always pretending to be asleep on the way home after a long day just so my dad would have to carry me

I remembered having a tiny ginger kitten for a day and my mum gave it away cos it pooed at her vase

I remembered knowing every word in every song in ‘The Sound of Music’ and ‘Annie’

I remembered the afternoons where my mum would give me a ‘surprise’ package, wrapped in cheap brown paper, and I’d always knew it was my new pacifier.

I remembered my frequent nose bleeds.

I remembered lying to my brother about a trip to the doctor for my nose bleeds. I lied about the doctor sticking a gigantic needle up my nose (in fact, he had only shone a light into my nostrils).

I remembered crying when I take bus rides. I have no idea why.