My best friends

Many will ask me how I went through my childhood with so conflicting cultures and opinions. Having seen it first hand, trust me when I say, there are very many distinct differences about the Indian and Chinese culture. Like Russel Peters said, the Chinese will try to take every penny from you and the Indians will try to keep every penny. Can you imagine the internal conflict just on that point!

However, I had a very fulfilling, fun and I think appropriate childhood. The mainstay for my "normal" childhood were my friends. In primary school, I didnt really have too many good friends. Also at that age, we were more interested in getting ourselves dirty in the mud playing football, rounders, catching, chopping, marbles, taichi, hop n run and a whole bunch of crap games. It always involved running around and hurting someone.

I found my best friends in secondary school, the height of puberty. Some of them came and went but the main group stayed. No matter what I may say about them, they are the best things that could have happened to me. I was the poorest among my friends and definitely the dorkiest. I had the weirdest looking school bag (tearing at the seams), bell bottom pants and always short of spending money. But they always made me feel at home and welcome (either that or I was too thick skinned to get the hint).

For example, my friend Peng Koon actually gave me a pair of his pants for me to wear at his birthday party. Well, in all fairness, either he was too embarassed by wat I was going to come in or he just wanted to get rid of his old pants. Regardless, i was very touched. Also he always helped me out whenever I was short of cash but most importantly he never asked for it back. There was Kok Hin, who was and still is a little wierd. He will take the trouble to teach my brother when I wouldnt bother to. There was also Ooi Khuan who will welcome me to his home and lunch whenever we have library duty in the morning. I will stay in his house until school starts in the afternoon. there are countless other stories that my bunch of friends have touched my life and the blog is too short to mention.

There was also Jer Shyan whom I got to know in Form 4 and the first word he spoke to me was "masturbate". All the sexual innuendo words was always spoken by us in its crude and vulgar form. It was the first "dirty" word we knew that was from the dictionary. Then there was Chee Onn who was always checking his hair in his 20 cents pencil sharpener mirror.

Of course my friends must include Valerie who is also a Chindian but a heck lot better looking. I loved her from the first time i saw her that mid Jan day in 1983. She is still my best friends and the godmother to my daugther. (We guys all know what that means sex wise). It was also through her, I realized I had a poetic talent. I wrote many poems after that, that helped in my quest for love and lust (hey it was the height of puberty; everything involved some amount of lust). ;-)

We dont keep in touch as much anymore. The occasional phone call or IM is at best. I havent seen some of them in 8 years. That is kinda sad but life is such. We all have families and job priorities now and most of them also have English names now. I know Peng Koon went through a whole list before settling for Derrick.

Anyway, it my future blogs, I will be including stories about our exploits as it comes to me. I am not getting any younger and my head is full of useless information so can't remember too many now. These guys are my mainstay of sanity and are a very big, important and humourous part of my life. I do hope I was of the same to them. God bless these guys and gals!