What's Left of Yesterday

I'm sure, for everyone, there must be a place or two that is/are dear to our heart, a place that we value eventhough it's already vanished.

The place can be our childhood hometown, our school or wherever we ever passed our time.

It is a place where you did those and those with people whom you love or come to treasure.

Let me take my childhood hometown as an example.

I grew up in a bay surrounded by rolling hills.

Nothing could be so perfect.

The glowing sunset.

The mornings to school.

The wet market. (along with the coloured chicks)

The beach with the sea and stary night.

That feel of a seaside settlement.

It's small and it provided me with a great childhood.

It's a place where I lived my life at the most minimal yet never I felt that things aren't enough.

In fact everything was abundant, the sea, the sand, the cousins, the fishing line, the frequent trips to secluded bay with families.

The bay that we used to go to ~ Teluk Duyung aka Monkey Beach

It's a place where I discovered my passion for books and nature.

A place where I met that an-ear-studded Stevey.

The place where my brother would roll his tongue and hands with the mildly smashing waves (only he and he knows how to do those)

I love my elementary life.

But I've lost a great deal of what happened during my elementary.

In fact, I recognise only a few fellow students from my elementary class.

I remember participating in every quiz that I could get my pencil and paper on.

I remember sacrificing my recess time to chase my friends in acilut or ice-water.

Oh and that circle that we formed to just step on each other white shoes in pepsi-cola

and the stupidiest of them all, chasing after grasshoppers under the scorching sun.

That's the life in elementary.

As a kid, most of the time outside school, I was out and about with my cousins.

By the river fishing out ikan pelukang - once, my Mak Lang came chasing after us. Anwar was badly rattaned after that

In ayaq-acaq area, removing banana trunk to harvest a canful of fat worms for fishing.

In the bushes digging out a large tapioca for eternity just to forget it in the very bush.

Or on my Pak Lang boat, fishing for a salt water fish when we grow tired of the river - this however is danger area due to our uncle who regularly patrons that jetty.

This is the jetty

Life was full of colors.

and it was great, no doubt.

So, it's normal for me to have that sense of longing after my family moved to Bayan Lepas.

I kept coming back during my high school years.

I reconnected with the place, but unfortunately, not with the people.

Friends from elementary are still there but there's no way for me to contact them, and the reasons are not strong enough. (however, thanks to Facebook, we reconnected, yippie!)

My cousins follows in their elder siblings path.

I have two other cousins the same age as me, both never attend high school.

When the place aged.

When the friends get married, some even already have child!

When the school changed almost 80%.

When the barrack beside our old home is occupied by 100% new faces.

I realise the place that is dear to me already slipped by.

But I'm glad the memories live on. =)

First photo from flickr.

Second photo from flickr too.