The earliest recollection I have of my childhood was when I was 3 years old and staying in Pulau Ubin. I can still remember what my paternal grandfather's house looked like - a white-washed building built with wood and cement.
Little Yuxi eating a rambutan, with his favourite brown bunny plushie beside him.
It had 3 bedrooms, a living room and a kitchen. My grandfather reared ducks in the backyard though his primary business was tending and harvesting his pandan plantation. We had a rambutan tree in front of the house and it offered the sweetest rambutans I've tasted so far. We also had plenty of durians from our durian tree.
There was nothing much to do for entertainment so I sometimes walked alone and barefooted through forests to look for my dad. I also cycled around on my little red bike on the limited cement flooring in my house.
4 year old Me with an iconic Spock hairstyle I would emulate later in life.
But we did have our own modes of entertainment. I often watched my dad drown caged rats in a pail of water. He even brought a dead snake home one day. He tied it to a rafia string and let me hold the other end of it. I entertained myself by running around and imagining that the snake suddenly came alive and was after me.
I would tag along as my dad delivered harvested pandan leaves to dumpling sellers. I still miss time spent on the lorry singing along to Hokkien tunes.Pre-School Days
I spent my kindergarten days in a HDB flat in Pasir Ris, just opposite Downtown East. The swimming pool was awesome then. I still wonder why they changed it. Pasir Ris was a great neighbourhood; it was so beautiful, quiet and quaint. I loved to cycle in the many estates and buy sweets from the underground minimarts.
Celebrating my 4th Birthday in the Pasir Ris HDB flat.
I can still remember my first day in Kindergarten 1. Like every other child, I didn't want to go to pre-school. My grandfather coaxed me with candy and I promised to take a look and then go home. Imagine my surprise when I was left there behind locked doors. I cried my eyeballs out.
But I soon grew to love kindergarten. I loved nap time and the water games. They had this inflatable pool and they would put lots of toys in it. Waterguns, floating ducks and random plastic balls. We also played team games like putting sponges into a pail of water and then running back to squeeze the water into a 1.5l pet bottle.
Toys consisted of Lego, barbie dolls and vehicles/utensils for playing a well-equipped game of pretend. We would watch attentively as cartoons like Tom and Jerry, Mickey Mouse and Little Mermaid were screened.
I had a best friend called Xiao Long. I still remember how jealous I was when my mom gave him a box of 32 crayons for his birthday. And it's really funny how this girl called Sabrina agreed to be our girlfriend on alternate days.
I was really doted by grandparents on both sides. My paternal grandfather brought me to eat fishball noodles every night and nurtured my sweet tooth with endless supplies of candy. He was a chain smoker and I often thought he must like cigarettes because they were sweet like candy.So one day, I asked him for a cigarette and he actually lit one up for me. I took one huge puff and coughed like mad. I vowed never to touch a ciggie ever again. Was my grandfather wise or unwise in doing that? Talk about reverse psychology.
I stayed over at my maternal grandmother's place often and she took great care of me. I also tried to take care of her by holding her hands and telling her to walk slowly down the stairs or she might fall down. It's kind of comical now that I realise I must have been the more trip-prone and wobbly one.
I still remember her washing my face with a warm cloth and scrubbing my shoes clean. She brought me to church many times; I still remember vividly the magnificence of its stained-glass windows as sunlight poured in.
I often played with an older cousin. There was this one time when an uncle bought a pair of cowboy toy guns for each of us. When my gun became spoilt, I threw a tantrum and asked for my cousin to exchange his with mine. When that too came to a state of disuse due to my hyperactive fingers, I learnt a great lesson in life, "Never covet what is not yours because something bad will always happen in the end to take it away from you anyway."
Once, my teacher caught me making two Lego figures kiss, complete with "Muack Muack" sounds generated by me. I had learnt it from the telly at a young age. I was so afraid because my teacher threatened to tell my parents.
The childcare center, Small Wonder, brought us to an orphanage. I handed out Smartie chocolate boxes to them. Although the details aren't so clear to me now, I recalling feeling sorry for these less fortunate children.
Primary School
I stayed at a nanny's place for 1 year when I started Primary 1. I miss her family because they were really good to me. I sort of love that disciplined life too. I still remember how good her dishes tasted. Also, the treat of the day came in the form of a grape-flavoured vitamin.
I moved to Woodlands when I was eight. I was a pretty eccentric kid. I picked pink spectacles and went to school with my nails painted red one day. I didn't like to comb my hair either. Looks like some things never change.
I wasn't good with animals or using common sense. I caught a baby bird down at the void deck once. As it had not learnt to fly yet, I wanted to domesticate it. But my dad chided me and said it woud die or pass diseases to us. I had to let it go.
So I did, out of my ten-storey window. It was only minuites after I released it that I remembered it couldn't fly in the first place. I saw its dead body on the bonnet of a car.
I also had two turtles and I loved them lots. I cleaned them by brushing their shell with a toothbrush and soap everyday. One day, one of them slipped from my hand. It died the next day.
I loved singing karaoke songs like Yesterday Once More, I Started A Joke, I Swear, 25 minutes, Words, Colours of the Wind, Wannabe, 2 Become 1 and Stop. I even sang My Heart Will Go On and got 4th prize at a karaoke contest.
I listened to golden classics like I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, Lemon Tree, Rhythm of the Falling Rain and music from The Corrs.
The Singer Wannabe and His Sister.
Those days were pure fun. Whenever I heard shouting noises, I would run to my window to see if there're kids playing catching, blind mice or ice and water downstairs. The playground was so awesome then. Built of steel girders, it was like a two-storey house. And we climbed up to dizzying heights to stay out of the catcher's reach.
And because it was filled with sand and not the crap synthetic rubber used nowadays, we could jump 1.7m from the the second storey to evade capture. I played soccer with tennis balls in basketball courts everyday till 6pm. After receiving my BCG injection, I immediately went to play soccer.
It was a bad move as the tennis ball hit the spot directly and I felt hot juice coming out from the BCG spot, not to mention a searing pain. That's why my BCG looks like a map of Singapore now. And nope, it's no small red dot.
Dodgeball and Chinese Chess were my class's favourite games too. There was once we were learning how to play baseball during Physical Education. There was some plastic ball holder and all we had to do was swing at it. I turned behind to muster a forceful swing and landed it hard into the stomach of a girl called Melissa.
I was damn irritating and quite a problematic child. When I was 12, I swung my plastic briefcase at my classmate and caused him to lose two teeth on the spot. Reason being, I was chasing my friend Bernard for fun after school. He asked Wei Liang to stop me in a joking manner.
I asked him to budge 3 times. My dad always told me to give people 3 warnings/chances. That's what I did, being an obedient son.
The Digimon craze made me a bad student and I would gather outside shops to battle with fellow Digimon trainers. I had a Teddymon, which was the strongest Digimon then. I went on a holiday to Beijing and my mom didn't allow me to bring the portable gaming device along. Teddy was no more after 5 days.
I've met two saviours on my education path. Mrs Chiang, my form teacher, told my dad to keep me in EM1 though my grades put me at the bottom of the class. I wasn't interested in studies then, or ever.
The day before the Maths PSLE exam, I took my Maths textbook and flipped through it once in 5 seconds and went to bed. After each PSLE exam, I would hang out with my friend Yeoh Yong at playgrounds.
But Mrs Chiang never gave up on me. She gave us remedials everyday and somehow my intelligence helped me catch up. She was surprised I got 247 points for PSLE. And I owe it all to her.
There were two girls I fancied. One was a bespectacled Canadian Chinese girl called Michelle Ho. I still remember her name because I set it as my password. She looked so sweet with her glasses. I still see her sometimes and have even thought of calling out her name. Imagine how freaked out she'll be.
The other girl was a Fann Wong lookalike called Huiling. I made a call to her house once. Her mom picked up and I told her how Huiling looked like Fann Wong. I was hopelessly besotted with her sweet voice and tiny frame.
Secondary School
I went to Anderson Secondary School but found them uninspiring educators. I was in the badminton team for 3 years and played in a doubles team. I still miss the training; I had no idea what great wonder it did for my stamina and footwork till now. I can still own people in many sports with that agile foundation alone.
I miss the North Zone Competitions though the best results we ever got was 3rd place. We were kicked out of the Nationals as soon as we were in. I remember getting thrashed by Anglican High 15-2, 15-3. But to me, badminton's fun factor is getting thrashed.
The stronger the opponent, the better the game is. Because it feels good when you make small triumphs against them. I get an adrenaline high whenever I returned an opponent's lightning quick smash like it was set in slow motion.
Badminton's all about agility. I love playing the front of the court, tapping here and there. I was fast enough to take both players on at the front and I was sometimes able to zero in and place a resounding tap to their forehead or body. Man, was I proud of that unique skill.
After I quit badminton, I played basketball till 7pm everyday. It came to a point I could shoot from any point without even aiming. It was all intuition and I had a unique shooting style I named 'Zeus's Lightning'. I loved thrashing people in 1-on-1 matches. I could score very well in a team game but I wasn't much of a team player.
Preoccupations at that time included Neopets, Magic cards and an online game called Runescape. Well, they all played a part in ruining my studies. I was in love with a Neopet species called the Uni and you could paint it with a Faerie paintbrush to make it a FaerieUni.
I bought booster pack after booster pack of Magic cards, spending an estimated $1,000 on the game. But I didn't have the brains or patience to play the strategy game well. The decks I formed were of big, ugly creatures that just wanted to overwhelm my opponents by brute force alone.
My second saviour was Mr Ho, a highly qualified PSC Scholar who taught tuition. My L1R5 was always 32 and above. I was tutored in A'Maths for 3 months and I brought home an impressive 16 for my L1R5. He certainly knew how to revive my brain. All he did was give me question papers to do and he would only come round a maximum of four times to teach you the solutions to questions you can't solve.
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