I realized that come the end of this year, I'll have stayed here longer than I have stayed anywhere else in my life.
It's kinda weird when I look back on it. I've only been here three years.
Still, for now that time hasn't come yet.
The part of my childhood that really defines my proper "childhood" was the three years I had in Jalan Mohammed Amin. Certainly the biggest place I've ever stayed in.
Somehow that time just seems so far away.
Three years isn't a long time, but when its from six to nine, it really is.
I've had at least seven homes, including the one I'm living in now. That is quite a fair bit. One home in Kuala Lumpur, three homes in Johor Bahru, and three homes in Singapore.
0-3 Gasing heights
3-4 Aloha Towers
4-6 Non chit (I actually have no idea how to spell this)
6-9 Jalan Mohammed Amin
9-10 Rosewood
10-13 Casablanca
13-16 (and maybe for not much longer) Thomson view.
I was too young to remember my first home, my first memories start in Aloha towers.
Naturally it was hard to get friends in the neighbourhood. Honestly who even remembers your nursery friends anyway? And we all know what friends from kindergarten ever amount to. Hands up if you're still friends with one of them and you never well encountered them in the same classroom ever since.
So if you think about it, other than church (I never really had any proper friends there) my only friends would be from around the neighbourhood. (due to the transient nature of your school friends, I thought I had found good friends when I was six, but that's for another time)
I only ever got to know my neighbours when I stayed in Jln Mhd Amin.
Now you see, my house at that road was on a hill. There were two roads running parallel to each other, one along the top of the hill, one along the bottom. Perpendicular to these roads were other roads, one of which was Jln Mhd Amin. There was a side road.
Oh heck. Here's a picture.
Oh dear I don't know how well you can see it, but the red square is the little lane I lived in. My house is the one in the top right! The house opposite mine on the lane was always empty, or "abandoned" no one ever lived in it. We treated it like it wasn't there. The house at the bottom left was known to our family, but the only children they had was an autistic child who was about one or two years younger than me.
Right next to my house lived a family, a european woman and a local doctor. He was colleagues with my father. They had multiple children, all grown up and a girl my age.
And so lets begin the story of the proper childhood friend I got.
She was never a best friend, but really though I had better friends than her from time to time, she was the constant. We weren't especially close, but hey she was special. I never bothered with her that much, but hey. I was six. And nine. Whatever. That's the girls are yucky phase. Ok, didn't stop me from having a tomboy "best friend" in school but still. I guess its cause I took her for granted, took for granted the fact that she would always be there.
Things change unfortunately.
I was a nerd. (some might say I still am, but I'll violently disagree) What else do you call a socially awkward (note: a lot more than now) boy who was described as quiet, and had his hobbies listed as READING.
yes, thats hobbies with an s.
That's all there was.
I was the quiet weird one next door; she was the cool one. Her house was huge, and had weird persiany designs all over it. She listened to westlife, I said I hated westlife just cause she said she liked it.
Birthday parties were something I had only read about before. She had a huge one, it was the first time I stepped into her house, she had a huge pool. Yeah you can see it on the map. I think that memory will stay with me for a long time. There were just so many people. The balloons and the clowns.
And there was me wandering around in the midst of it, wondering where she was.
I guess there was something about her that intrigued me. I was always the "smart" one, on a different plane from everyone else. There was me sitting and going oh no as kids a year older than me in international school cried on their first day in class, and throwing myself into a world of books.
But she was smart. She had a sharp wit, and a sharp tongue. She was the only one I ever encountered in my sad sad little life that was my age, yet on a higher level. I guess she was flirty, but only as flirty as 6 year olds can be. Confident and daring. I met her a few years ago, she was still her, strikingly confident and at ease in social situations. And I'm still the socially awkward one.
She was certainly attractive, and I guess perhaps she influenced my idea of attractive.
Which is horribly disturbing to think that six, nine year olds are secretly crushing on each other.
Watch your daughters people.
Of course that's not to say it was mutual. I sincerely doubt she had any sort of those notions towards me. I was after all, me. But hey, we had some sort of friendship, that I guess was worth a lot more than I gave it in the end.
But yeah, I met her a few years ago at a party that my father's friends threw. I was still trying to find myself, and on the outside, I was just as attention-catching as her, just as confident, entertaining just as easily. Didn't fool her though.
She laughed along with me, at me for the night as I made myself the centre focus of all the kids there. They loved it. And she seemed to as well, until at the end of the night she turned to me and said.
"So really, whats the real you? I'm not seeing any of that."
And bam, just like that, I realised I guess she would always be a step ahead of me, that I hadn't gained any ground at all. But as she said that, and I seethed inwardly, I realised sadly that she didn't know me anymore. I didn't really know her either.
Ah, tis sad how things are lost.
Oh nostalgia.
Labels: nostalgia
