One of the earliest memory I have is waking up to the sound of karaoke during the weekends in my first house I ever lived in. My father is a lover of karaoke and I think he continues the tradition of turning on songs during the weekends till today.

My mom wasn't a fan of the songs my father likes (just one of the many disagreements they have) and the only song I ever heard her sang was this.

I remember sitting on her lap while she sang the lyrics to this song. Naturally, this became one of the first songs I learned to sing in my life and the music brought me back to those days when I was still a toddler.

I often wonder what were her thoughts while singing this song. My mom came from Malaysia and most of her friends are based in Malaysia. Was she missing her friends? Was she reminiscing her school days? I guess I'll never find out. But what I do know is that this song reminds me of my childhood.

I have really good memory and I remember the littlest things that are often forgotten. Like how I once wet my whole pants because I slid down the slide of a playground before checking if it's wet. Then my mom had to bring me to some stores nearby to buy new pants hahahha wtf.

Or even something as mundane as watching the seconds hand tick on my clock and wondering why don't I ever catch the hour hand moving. And walking in to a room then forgetting what did I go in for then retracing my steps and fearing that I am getting senile wtf I was like four years old at most?! Damn imaginative wtf I think I watched too much TV.

How we used to have family jogs and cycle every weekend. And how my mom bumped into a flasher once wtf but mobile phones weren't common back then so she couldn't report him.

How I used to have this interactive track which was really fucking cool. I could buy more cars to add in to my collection and play on the track, and I wanted a pink train/bus badly. My father naturally wanted to get it for me but my mom disagreed because I think we were having some sort of financial crisis back then. But my father doted on me a lot and they had a quarrel over this and I got my train/bus in the end. What a spoilt brat wtf. Anyway, I found out when I reached home that the train/bus didn't even fit on my track wtf.

How my father used to hold my hands while I go down the slides because he was THAT afraid of me getting hurt hahaha. Or him carrying me downstairs while I was crying because I couldn't sleep. I was probably in my terrible twos back then and I remember him just carrying me around and showing me places and telling me little tidbits of stuff. Like how he used to be a delivery man for Prima Deli (I think).

And how my mom was heavily pregnant with my brother but still brought me around Clementi, where we used to stay, in search of new playgrounds. I already was quite a loner back then so I mostly kept to myself and played with myself.

I remember my mom carried me across the monkey bar and I pretended I was a squirrel looking for nuts wtf. Because she said she could only do it once since she's heavily pregnant, I stayed on the playground for a long time appreciating that moment before finally going down the slide. I don't know what was I thinking?! Maybe I thought staying up there longer would make my mom's efforts more worth it wtf. Lolol. I was such a weird kid.


I think despite everything that happened, my childhood was still good and my mom did everything she could to give me a normal childhood. In spite of everything, I'm still grateful.