Memoir (Elementary School)

Let me continue my story.

Immediately after I entered elementary school I stopped all my acting jobs, partly because it wasn't that exciting anymore and partly because my family didn't want me to continue on, they want me to focus on study.

I was like a good for everything kid when I first entered my elementary school. I love all the teachers in my class and they obviously loves me too. I feel like I got some sort of previlage and extremely honours when my Year 1 maths teacher gave me some pictured story books privately and exclusively for me to read. I got full marks on like every subject. I was selected into the choir and the athlete's team (I know). I sang solo in front of the school...

Until like Year 3 things changed. I quitted the athlete's team because I'm not performing well (expected :P), I don't like the new Chinese teacher (which I think it's only because the first one was too good, and thinking back, she did actually pay a lot of attention to me and gave me enough effort) and I even started a fight with her at Year 4. I quitted doing homework at some point, from when she had to take me to her place after school and I had to finish my homework there before allowed to go home. I start fights with like every single classmate back then, and some of them actually went quite violent and caused injury to another kid when I was Year 5.

Back home I was changing too. I do remember we used to have a fold up dinner table in my grandfather's house, and that table was for me to study before dinner, quite a slippy surface and I usually place two sheets of newspaper on the table while I　was studying. And gradually I actually started reading the newspaper when I'm bored of the homework, and I love tearing it after reading too, pinning the paper with my finger nail and rip it so the bit of paper folds back beautifully under it while tearing away.

Back in those days there was so many 'game houses' around where arcade games are available, and they were described as the place where all evil incubates. While we were warned strictly never to enter those places I started playing them anyways when I was Year 4, but stopped at Year 6. Samurai Showdown IV was my absolute favourite back in those days and I later become quite good at it attracting other people in there watching me play. I still play a bit of it sometimes on the emulator in my computer. My grandfather started tracking me down those places and if he found me there he'd be absolutely furious. Once I was caught in a game house and on that day the dinner was my favourite steamed pork ribs, my grandfather didn't shout at me but he just keep taking all the ribs from the dish and I had to do the same to protect my share, the result is the rest of the family just watched us and there hadn't been any left for them as we took all of them within 1 minute, including the juice.

In contrast with my athlete's adventure me in the choir actually went quite well and the music teacher actually referenced me for a place in the "youth's palace" choir of the city, which is quite an honour given that there was only two people in my school selected in. What I did quite wrong that I still regret was that after I was selected into the youth's palace choir I stopped going to the training in the school choir, throwing an attitude on it which made my music teacher quite sad. After I graduated I had visited the school once but I didn't see that teacher and failed to say all those thank you's and sorry's. I started learning piano when I was year 2 too, not being exceptionally good and eventually dropped it when I was in middle school, focusing back on the choir.

soccer was the favourite game amongst the boys back in those days. As we have an early finish every friday the gang would head to a lawn in a nearby museum and kick it off. We don't have a proper field or even a proper ball. An empty bottle is out ball and two bags laying on the ground indicates the goal. That lawn is actually overly grown for our purpose as soccer but we had heaps of fun until dark or the security kicks us out, whichever comes first. I usually don't need to do much as I am just at the back, mostly chatting to the goalkeeper and when the ball comes about kick it out. Seems like we won most of the time against another class.

Later there was a hype in table tennis and we are all crazy of it. While I don't have those quite expensive bats and stuff and I actually played quite crappy. There was a guy in other class though, quite good at this and actually won a few tournaments in the city level. He taught me some of the tricks and I got a bit better, but only at serving. Eventually table tennis didn't get to me that much.

Back like 30 years my father was actually a traner in badminton so I actually played quite good badminton under his training, sometimes on the weekends we go out to rent a real badminton field in the Sports University where my other grandparents live. I still have the bat with me which is more than 10 years old now but I haven't been playing it for a while.

Sex started to become the topic of our talks around Year 5 but back then no one actually knows what happens, we are just all curious and tend to laugh at funny names relating to sex. Rumours are around that this guy is going out with that girl and stuff and they do admit it, just not that sort of going out though. I myself didn't have an "official" "girlfriend" back then but rumours are out there anyway and my friends actually know that there was a girl that I've been getting on well with in the class for years. And my friends are like quite happy for me when that girl was randomly selected to sit beside me by the supervisor of the class. Nothing happened between us though, but I do steal money from home and buy her birthday presents back in those days.

Today is her birthday.