Once when we were younger my sister and I were on the bus with our grandpa. We were sitting upstairs and then we went downstairs 'cause he wanted to ask the driver which stop we should get off at for this restaurant in North Point. I didn't hear him and thought we were getting off. So my sister and I got off the bus waiting for our grandpa. We watched as the door closed and the bus drove off. We ran after that bus up until the next stop 'cause the driver couldn't just stop randomly and finally we were reunited with our grandpa and we were at the restaurant too.
Can you imagine how scary it was to feel lost in a place that looked so unfamiliar?
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The summer my sister and I visited HK by ourselves, we slept in the living room where there was a sofa bed. It was cool. I remember sleeping forever even when my grandparents were up and walking around. I sat there and watched Sailormoon religiously. Ate cherries out of a plastic basket thing - and there was an ant that bit my tongue. We went to Wellcome and bought sweet corn and black currant pastilles when the shopping bags were still that red type on yellow plastic.
I remember the old apartment too - we would make dragon tails out of a plastic rainbow slinky and play with paper lanterns. The doors were the old school folding doors that locked with a hook. There was a bunk bed and I think I had top bunk. I remember walking up the unlighted cement stairs (but nowadays, they freak me the hell out - no thanks to The Grudge) and downstairs would be lined with street vendors and their little lightbulb lamps and the giant woks with the gas fires under it. We would play on our grandparents' bed and once, I play-threatened my sister's bunny toy out the window...and it fell :( I'm terrible. Another time, I threatened to throw this other bunny off the top bunk into the living room - there were just bars separating the top of the bunk from the living area - like a mini cage for me haha....and I accidentally dropped it when she rushed towards me...into a plate of soy sauce chicken wings...haha to this day, that bunny is still stained. It wouldn't wash off.
There used to be a turtle in the kitchen too. A pet turtle. There were two, but then it became one. I think my mom said it ran away - but HOW?! I'm pretty sure we didn't eat it, they were pets. And the fridge was green. There was a little sliding glass shelf where we kept the drinking glasses. I liked the way the water tasted.
Oh and by the old apartment, there was a park we used to go to - it's still there - I just remember this endless metal slide - the type that your leg/butt gets stuck on haha. Our "cow fu" (uncle) would play bball with his high school friends then. AND one time, up those long long stairs which you can see from the Kennedy Town Pool, we went there for a haircut - so old school, with giant metal fans blowing breezes through the place. It was like an apartment that was transformed into a hair "salon". There was also that path that you went up past the swimming pool which led to a school - that's where we had our first ever Putonghua lessons, our grandpa would walk us up there and come pick us up afterwards. We made friends with two girls - much older than us at the time (we were like 8 or 9) - one them was called Sylvia too! They took us to McDonald's for ice cream once and we were penpals for a little bit. They mailed us stickers when we were in Canada.
Sometimes after swimming, we'd want to eat "gai dan jai" (the little bubbles of waffle batter) but grandma would be like: dinner is at home. We went swimming with both our grandparents a few times...we'd hang out in the deep area. My grandma just sat off on the side of the pool - my sister and I would take turns diving to retrieve the locker keys and sometimes tickling our grandpa's feet. It was cool to swim when it was raining - I would watch the rain hit the surface of the water from underneath with my goggles on. Water is cool - it's like a mirror if you look back up at it from the bottom of the pool.
Oh and we'd go through our "cow fu"s desk drawer all the time and play with his stationery. That was fun, we even tried to play badminton in his room when he wasn't there. Man, we sound like troublemakers.
And I drank a lot of Yakult.
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