gawd...i think i\'m getting old...>.<

all these (ridiculous yet entertaining) criticisms actually made me think a lot about my childhood

was talking with A the last night, reminiscing actually, about childhoods. it's been a long time since i talked about it, since there just doesn't seem to be enough ppl around that actually spent their childhood in nz.

and we were going through exciting times, memorable times, stupid and silly things we did. and of course all the cartoons and shows we grew up with, singing snippets from many of the well known ones.

pokemon had a different theme song back then. but pokemon was actually one of the later series. we actually got to watch how it all began. it kinda stopped showing after the orange leagues ro soemthign, so all these 'new' characters like May were unknown to us. i dun think pokemon is still out anymore... but the new pokemons are less like the cute original cuddly sweeties, and more like the digimon series, which i hated (and A agrees). pokemon kinda started dropping out when digimon started showing. they're both kinda history now....

i remember getting up 7am on saturday mornings just to watch the saturday morning kids program. it was basically just tv hosts and cartoons and stuff. that show is still on, and some of the hosts (no longer young) are still there, but it seems...i dunno, less innocent then our times.
some of the stuff i remember watching are 'pinky and the brain', can't remember how the plot goes now! but still have that tune in my head ('the pinky adn the brain, the pinky and the brain....') and we didn't have hi5 or blues clues. we had teletubbies (twinky winky, dipsy, lala, po!! ^^), and barney the dinosaur (barney is a dinosaur... i love u, u love me, we are firends like friends shud be with a great big hug and a kiss from me to u, wont u say u love me too!), i vaguely remember watching alladin by disney's though not the movie, and jackie chan cartoon???? and men in black (which kinda scared me back then :( ) there was also disney's 101 dalmations, in episodes. occasionally had some american soaps like, was it fun house? somethignlike that....
and how can i forget suzie!!! (or was is susie) it's like the thing i virtually started watching as soon as i got into nz! just coz mum thought it was educational..... and i was surprised to actually see her again in tots to teens mag last year. she hasn't changed a bit!
and there was tweetie and sylvester, hulk cartoon(a lil scary to me), and rag-something or the other...its 'theme' song is still quite popular on the piano now, 345671 75654 34567127176 345671 75654 34567127176543. it was about these babies, i think one was called tommy, and there were twins, girl and boy, whose parents can only tell them apart coz the girl wears a bow.

i also remember every week we'd go get movies out on the $1/week days at united video down the road. my favourite back then was beethoven (on tape, yep, coz dvd's weren't around back then), there was beethoven 1 adn 2, 3 4 5 seems to have come around after i moved to A. also watched a lot of the old disneys movies, and stuff like free willy and flipper, adn all those animal ones. i probably saw eveyr single animal themed movie for kids made pre 98. and there was also pipi long pants and stuff. also remmeber sneaking looks at dad's videos, like huang fei hong and stuff. they gave me nightmares....
my first movie in nz i think was dr doolittle, when it first came out. this one by robin williams, i htink it was called flubber or something, was also popular when it first came out. i didn't get the chance to see it, coz didn't used to have money for movies :( but it came on tv about a year later.... robin williams had some good comedies back then, like mrs doubtfire and that jum-something (this enchanted board game these two kids found and started playing)

the famous harry potter was rly popular when i was in yr 6, 2000. EVERYONE was reading it, and there weere HUGE long lists of book reserved for those 3 (or was it 4) books in the school library. i was still into animal ark back then :) read every single book (all like 60 odd of them) from the library.... harry potter just didn't tempt me. i only first read harry potter a few years after that, and got hooked, and bought myself the entire collection, all 7 of them, in one go :)

babysitters club was another popular one, but that was when i started intermediate. jsut kinda read around them. i also remember reading Shen diao xia lv, condor heroes, the original scripts by jin yong, coz for some reason the intermediate school library had them! it was like the first time i got to read chinese books in nz outside my own collection. read them (all 4 books) about 2 or 3 times, also read she diao, and yi tian tu long ji. but i liked shen diao best. i also remember there was a half comic like collection of famous people, in chinese, that was in the school library. had read all of them over lunch breaks, like beethoven adn mozart and curie and edison and da vinci and all of them. i remmeber very very vividly, that in the comic strips showing young beethoven, the dad was like teachign lil beethoven to play the piano, playing him a concert C, then beethoven played a C and F together, saying to his dad: doesn't that soudn better though? coz i since then, i've wanted to know whether C and F makes a good sound together. i didn't have access to a piano so i didn't know...

i remember doing a lot of stupid things when i was small

like when we first got to nz, i decided to fly the traditional chinese kite auntie gave me before we left china, it was in the shape of a chinese swallow. and i flew it in the tiny driveway we shared with the other flats, and the kite got caught in our neighbour's tree. the neighbours said they're happy for us to chop off some branches, but dad didn't dare... :( i've always wanted another chinese kite...never flown one till this day *sob*

and all those times we had to swim during summer, we'd have to get changed in our classroom (boys wait outside while girls changed, then swap around) and carry our towels to the pool. we had to go past the carpark to get to the pool, and the carpark had pointy stones, and it wasn't 'tarred' down. everytime i think i'll be brave enough to get past on bare feet, just so i didn't have to carry my shoes, and to 'race' with friends, but everytime we end up squealing and hopping while the stones pricked our feet, and timidly make our way back after the swim :)

i've never met anyone who shared my name all these years, it's not that it's a very rare name, but i guess it's more of a pet name than a proper name. like, how, most of the 'matt's are really matthews, no one really names their kid just 'matt'. i guess i'm a bit of an exception. just this once i saw this 'name piece artwork' thing that was being displyed in some other classroom window, adn one of them was my name! turns out her full name was josephine, but she wrote her pet form to make art easier.

i remember getting a certificate in year 3, for knowing how to draw 3D shapes, like cubes and cylinders and stuff. and all the teachers were wowing, and i was just htere thinking...this is so dumb and embarassing!!!

i was such a tomboy back in R, i'd run around playing tag and stuck in the mud with a group of about twenty boys. i was the only girl. i'd take off my shoes and socks, coz mum still gave me lil dressy shoes to were back then. i wasn't allowed in the sand pit, and when i couldn't resist the temptation mum always found out and told me off. i remember having to do 'gymnastics' for some function and we had to get into small groups adn choreograph our own dance using ribbons. i choreographed the whole thing for my group! i was such a natural leader (read as 'bossy') though i can't dance for my life :P mum came and watched the show and said i looked like a stick...>.
also back in R, i spent every holiday playing around the lakeside. i'd go to the restaurant mum worked at for lunch and dinner, it was a family owned one, adn the boss was malaysian and she loved kids. the good thing about them is that they always cooked proper food for the 2 employees for dinner and lunch, not leftovers. and they'd always have at least one meat and vege and fish dish. the boss might eat leftovers from the tables but they never let employees eat. they were very nice people, they would cook extras for me, so i can eat with them, and often cook extra dinner, and make mum call dad over, so dad didn't have to eat alone at home. in fact, when dad decided to leave for A in 1999, the restaurant owner, alice, actually cried, and told dad to go to A alone: mum and i can stay at her house and live with her.

dad worked in a taiwanese owned souvenir shop by the lake. (the lake was the main attraction of our samll R town, the town itself was a very well known tourist area, coz of all the mud pools and natural springs). the manager was a young taiwanese, Jackie's owner actually, before jackie's existence lol. the manager was on quite close terms with us, coz mum and dad were 好客, and RC, being single and didn't know how to cook, often came around for dinner after work. renny liked kids, and he often took me out. there were always samples of lollies and colostrum and chocolates in the shop, and those became my junk food. RC didn't mind, he'll let me help out in the shop with labelling and stuff, all the lil errands you get kids to do :) we're still on close terms with RC. he's now married with two kids of his own. i can no longer hug him and get close with him the way we used to though lol, but he is one of the oldest friends we have, that we're still in contact with. RC is one of dad's business partners in their new investment plan, so i'm seeing him a lot. he still teases me sometimes =.= one of the bad things about knowing someone since u were a kid!
AC, another co worker of dad's, was also quite close with us. she is taiwanese, divorced with a girl a year younger than me. she came to nz quite early, and worked hard with a man we (AC's daughter JC) called grandpa. grandpa owned one of the biggest farms of R town, and AC had worked and learnt hard how to work a farm with grandpa. eventually grandpa sold most of the farm to AC, who had most her extended family in NZ to work and manage the family owned farm. AC often took me and JC out, or took me over for sleep overs. they had a cat, and a huge great dane named, i think, oasis. oasis was a cattle/horse herder, i've only seen him out at work once. grandpa still works at the farm even though he has sold it to AC, in fact grandpa almost merged into AC's family. he's sometimes stay at AC's house, they've kept a room aside for him. the one time i saw oasis out at work was when he was working iwth grandpa. grandpa was driving his tractor and oasis was running alongside. AC's farm had just about everything! they had both horse riding and deer hunting premises for the public, as well as more private cattle farming facilities. i used to go out horseriding with AC and JC, and once there was a pig who had piglets, and when we tried to pick up the piglets the mother pig got rly pissed....

(can i just make a note here, that i actually wrote a whole bloody lot more....so much that the system automatically logged me out?! what is here is simply what i had 'ctrl+c'ed half way through.... gawd i'm so pissed i can smash my computer....)