When I was your age

Yesterday night right before entering slumberland, I had a bit of down the memory lane trip in my mind. My mind is a funny place. It always remembers things, places and people whom I know that I will never see again. It's like when I left my last company. I know I can always visit. But things will never be the same again.

This trip however stretch even further than that. Back to basics...back when I was innocent. Back to kindergarten. Sometimes it remembers high school days, sometimes it's some place I visited. But this time, it's kiddy land.

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Back in the days, I lived in Ipoh from age 1 to 7 till I came back to KL (where I was born) to start my primary education. The days are in Ipoh was fine. My aunt's Catholic so I attended tons of mass and generally enrolled into missionary/Christian kindergarten. One was St John's. I can barely remember the building. It's all fuzzy. I found two picture of St John, the church building itself which is like next to the kindergarten.

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It does look like some ancient church building from Motherland but trust me, it's Malaysia alright. I recognized the side with the row of funny doors. Anyway, back to the kindergarten, I remembered it was a two storey building. The flooring were made of thick and unpolished wood. It has a huge ass staircase that leads to classrooms on the first floor. It's all very Enid Blyton and old English feeling.

The thing I remembered most was the quiet playground. It was quite nasty actually because it was quite wet and muddy in certain areas. Frangipani trees were planted around the playround and I remembered collecting them from time to time. Yes, I was quite a sissy even back then. Prefer flower over ball. In my mind, the image is always in mono, eerily quiet and the air is filled with frangipani's scent. Scary.

But those memories are like really fuzzy. I wished I could visit the kindegarten one of these days. So far, I have been back to Ipoh with my family ever so often but never to that place. I guess it will be a little weird, what would I tell my parents? I want to see the old place? Not everyone think it's sane or healthy to hold on to the past. No one cares about reminiscing. But there's just something gratifying about the thought of visiting it. Even for once. Like it's been nearly 20 years since I last step foot on it. Maybe it doesn't even exist anymore. It would be fun to walk into that place and see what has changed, or hopefuly not changed.

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Today, as I was browsing through some books online (yes I was quite free despite the early morning crisis) I bumped into this artist called Edward Hopper. This is one of my fav piece called Nighthawks. The theme of his work is always about city life and common places that general American can associate with. It reeks of loneliness even though it's in the city. It looks as though time stood still for a moment. It personified the feeling that most of us can identify with, lonely even though not alone.

Visit Edward Hopper

P.S. No ciggie - this might just work well. I am getting so sensitive to smoke - as in it stinks. But I am eating like a piggie.

Comments

darn ed said…
whoever who thinks revisiting those ol kiddy memories are worthless oughta check into one. Days like those were gems and fluffy and care-free. And worth revisiting every now and then. Me myself still say hi to Mrs Olga Lee , my former kindergarden teacher whenever I saw her back in my bumfuck hometown. And it's always nice when to see how tiny those chairs and desks are. And how we used to be tiny too ( not anymore ) !

Nice one, gf !
William said…
I have a colleague who loves Hopper. Always as his desktop wallpaper. The only thing I remember about kindergarten is a girl with a coconut tree hairdo who used to hold my hand and my nun principal.

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