First, the procedure:
Remove the blog at #1 from the following list and bump every one up one place; add your blog's name in the #5 spot; link to each of the other blogs for the desired cross pollination effect.

1. Loose Leaf @ http://looseleafnotes.com
2. Black Currant Jam @ http://blackcurrantjam.blogspot.com
3. Pei Yun @ http://oceanskies79.blogspot.com
4. Rantings of a Kontrabassist @ http://www.pinkified.blogspot.com
5. Debussy @ http://www.debussy.blogspot.com

Next, five things I miss about my childhood:

This really gets me thinking very hard. I can't seem to find five specific things I miss about my childhood. Guess I'll just write generally what comes into my mind. This is going to be a long post man... there are so many memories of my childhood. I'd advice you to skip it though, spend your time on other more productive things!

I miss living in the old flat... also in Jurong West, but "less west" than where we live now. One of the reasons was the neighbourhood... it has a more homely feel about it. There are no shopping centres there, as compared to Jurong Point here, instead there is a market square kind of thing. This consists of the wet market (with the food stalls lining the borders of the one-storey structure), a few coffee shops scattered around, fruit stalls, other shops selling all sorts of things, banks and the 4D kiosk which always has a long queue trailing out of it into the narrow pavement beside a carpark.

Every Sunday, the four of us would have our breakfast either at the market or at one of the coffee shops. Our favourite stalls included a yong tau foo stall in the market (my favourite, but it's quite expensive for breakfast so we seldom ate there), a fishball noodles stall also in the market (five big fishballs and a generous helping of noodles for just $2! though I think it's no longer so cheap now), a roti prata stall in a coffee shop, two vegetarian stalls in two of the coffee shops, and finally a dim sum stall in a coffee shop. We frequented this stall most often because you got to pick from a large variaty of dim sum and porridge etc... most things comes in plates of four (just nice!) and when you divide the total cost by four, it seems pretty worthwhile for a hearty breakfast.

After breakfast, we would go to the wet market. My brother and I would stay at a pet shop (situated in the row between the cooked food stalls and the raw food stalls) while my parents did the shopping. This row is made up of stalls selling flowers, fruits, and some drier groceries like curry powder, spices, tau kua etc. (Actually this says quite a lot about the hygiene level of the market... cooked food, raw food, and animals all in one place! Now I think the pet shop has been shut down for quite some time already, which makes it a tad more hygienic.) We loved looking at the furry animals and fish displayed there and we didn't like having to squeeze with the people and wet plastic bags in the wet market. It was also a plus for our parents because they wouldn't have to bother whether they lost us while we tried to follow them into the crowded wet market. Most times my parents just went in for a quick trip anyway, in those days we had all our meals at my grandma's house so we didn't need to shop for food. They always stocked up on fruits though, the whole family loves all kinds of fruits... maybe with the exception of my brother, who has a limited list of the fruits he eats. After the wet market, we would also visit the other shops if we needed to buy anything like stationery etc.

Another more important reason why I miss living in the old flat was because my grandma lived in the flat directly opposite ours... which is why we had all our meals there. Since after my mum's maternity leave ended, I've been deposited in my grandma's house while she was at work. I think out of the four of us (two cousins, my bro, and I) on my paternal side, my grandma took care of me most... mainly because we lived in the flat opposite hers while my two cousins lived in Bukit Merah. I only have a vague memory of my grandpa, he died when I was two... my brother doesn't have any memories of him at all (he's two years younger than me). I can't really remember events concerning him, but when I look at a photo of him in my third uncle's room, I remember his face from long ago. When I was in primary school, my grandma told me stories about how my grandpa always got impatient trying to put me to sleep in the sarong. No matter how much he bobbed the sarong up and down, I would refuse to sleep and he would lose his temper and leave me alone. My poor grandma would have to juggle the tasks of preparing dinner and at the same time making sure I didn't fall out of the sarong or anything. She also told me how, for some reason, I loved to shake my head when anyone talked to me... maybe I didn't understand them... and my grandpa would tell me to "nod [my] head, don't shake [my] head".

My brother was not so lucky, when he was born my grandma already had her hands full taking care of me... so he went to the care of a nanny living in the same block as us. He went there on a weekly basis, meaning he stayed in the nanny's house most of the time... my parents would bring him home on weekday nights for quite a short bonding period with the rest of the family and then he'd return to nanny's house for the night. He only got to come home during the weekend. This is quite unfair to him, but my parents felt they couldn't take care of both of us at the same time. Maybe it was because of me, they've told me how I simply refused to sleep when I was a baby... and my mum said she always got a shock when she woke up at night to see two eyes gleaming at her in the dark from my sarong. Haha tiger's predator instincts... lol. Both my grandma and my parents also had a hard time feeding me... I would only drink one quarter of what they put in the bottle before I stopped. I just wonder why I still looked so chubby in my baby photos? I should have looked malnourished instead. I think the whole thing was because my grandma is the kiasu type... my mum says she fed me like thousand times a day, during my feeding times, and then even during my non-feeding times. No wonder I always only finished quarter of the bottle and yet looked so round! And they always tell me, when we were young, my brother was more guai than me... apparently he never gave the nanny any trouble, except he had a weird habit of crawling around the house and bumping his head into objects. But they say he never cried, he simply changed direction and continued his exploration of the house... he always had blue-blacks on his forehead. Another oddity is that I never learned to crawl... I just progressed from sitting around to using the walker thing with wheels that are supposed to teach babies to walk (I loved to zoom around in that!).

When I went to nursery, kindergarten and primary 1 & 2, I would be at my grandma's house during non-school hours when my parents were still at work. My favourite activities there were to lie on her nice comfy bed while she ironed the clothes, watching TV shows during the afternoon (my main source of education on understanding and speaking cantonese), and watching her prepare dinner... sometimes I would clear away the things on top of a stretch of cupboard, hop on, and fall asleep there. My grandma always said it was a miracle I didn't roll over and fall onto the floor, the space was really narrow! I also remember afternoon snacks of the so-called "soda biscuits", along with the packet of milk distributed to us in school everyday. The main purpose of this snack session was to occupy me fully while my grandma took a shower... hahaha she didn't know that even if she didn't let me eat, I'd still stay rooted in the kitchen waiting for her because I was scared of being left alone in any part of her house, it seemed pretty eerie to me then! She'd also eat some biscuits after her shower... sometimes I was allowed to dip my biscuits into her black coffee (I love it!), but she always nagged that "little children cannot take too much coffee". My grandma also always helped me cut out the questions that came in worksheets to paste in my exercise books before I answered them in the book... she says I always made the edges jagged... and she also joined me when I had to colour pictures in those worksheets.

Most of my fondest memories of my grandma's house are of school holidays. Both my brother and I went there every morning when our parents left for work. We had lots of fun entertaining ourselves with make-belief stories and games. I think our favourite was sitting beneath the dining table and pretending we were in a space ship... we'd fly into space and have all sorts of adventures there. Of course my grandma was totally against this game, the table was supposed to be dangerous apparently because it would crush us if it falls. But that's a hilarious notion... the whole table is heavy (two adults are needed to carry it), and the legs are very firmly joined to the table top... it was impossible for two young children to topple the table, or for it to collapse for no good reason. Sometimes our two cousins also visited during school holidays, and then it would be more fun... we turned the whole house upside down with rowdy games invented mostly by our cousins with some suggestions from my brother. (They are older, so they had the last say in the rules though.) What else can you expect from three active young boys, games that didn't involve running around the house etc? And then there was another cousin... a girl, my third uncle's daughter. Sometimes she got to join in our games, but after a short while her strict mother would sternly order her back into their room. I never saw her or heard any news of her again after her parents divorced... everyone kept quiet about the matter because my third uncle was in a bad mood most of the time. Apparently her mum took her back to Taiwan. Our uncle later became our favourite relative, he doted on all of us and indulged us by joining in our games whenever he came home... possibly to make up for the loss of his daughter. When my brother started primary school, both of us went to a daycare centre during non-school hours... my grandma didn't want to take up the responsibility of taking care of the two of us.

I sort of miss how close my family was then. There was only one television set so everyone watched the same show together, when we got our first computer everyone had to share it too. Both my brother and I also had to study at the dining table with our parents keeping their sharp eyes on us... later when we had two computers, both of us had to do our 10/10 PC Tutor assessments at the same time (all in the name of fairness) to reduce arguments about who studied more or played more. Now there are two television sets, one for the living room and one for my parents' room... there are still only two computers, both in the study room, but we can't care less about what the other person is doing on the other computer. My brother and I had our fair share of conflicts too, most of the time I got angry at him because I felt that my parents doted on him more and I always had to give in to him. But we seldom argued, I seldom showed my resentment towards him... and when we were older he said he thought I was "a very nice sister", I was quite touched... after what I felt towards him! (But of course he didn't know that.)

Yep, we shared everything. We shared my bedroom until I-don't-know-when, when he moved into his room... we shared the piano and piano lessons (two-hour-slots during which we would switch from piano to theory after an hour), and we shared crayons etc during art lessons. I was always older than the other students during such lessons because my parents thought it was better to enrol both of us in the same classes... which meant our classmates were his age. The only exception was piano, which I started learning earlier... he started in yamaha before switching to my teacher. When he went to the yamaha thing, my parents decided to enrol me too, but I felt so stupid there because I'd already learned such things during piano lessons and they had silly activities (according to a person of my age). Swimming lessons were less awkward, I wasn't totally the odd-one-out because our class consisted of children from very young up till about my age. We also shared in our acts of mischief... when tamagotchi was popular, we couldn't see how we could convince our parents to buy them because they were so expensive! So we saved up and secretly bought our own... we hid them in the table drawer in my room (his table didn't have drawers) but later my mother found out.

In a way we still share things now, like the Harry Potter books... we share the costs and take turns to read. (We can't wait for the next book!) We share our tidbits sometimes, we just can't study without eating anything, especially without chocolate! My old school things are always passed down to him, i guess he's very gracious to accept them without whining about how he always has to use my old books (to think I actually jealousy thought I had to give way to him all the time). Of course I inevitably have to help him with school work sometimes, but I guess everyone needs help... he helps me get all the cracks and illegal stuff, things I'd never have found on the net because I'm not as resourceful as he is! We had actually planned to share the cost and use of a camera, but too bad, since I'm going to birmingham my parents decided to get me the camera to bring there.

Ok, sorry for the long long post rambling on and on about my family... I'm just feeling ultra grateful for them, especially my brother. And maybe some guilt for snatching away his chance of studying overseas, though he graciously gave it to me saying he wasn't thinking of going overseas.

Finally the tags. I pass this to...
1. Yushan
2. Pohning