About A Girl - In The Beginning.

In the beginning.

In the beginning, I spent the first years of my life in Indonesia, on an island called Tanjung Pinang, back then just two hours ferry ride from Singapore.

Houses looked by and large, like this. The sea was my backyard, and I would spend hours and hours mersmerised by the little fish that nip-nipped at the water just beneath the surface of the water. I watched the sea roaches that infested the dock at my late grandfather's pier, fascinated by how they always skittered away from me, leaving a definite width around my foot - it's almost like I had a force field. I knew I was something kinda special, then: the sea roaches feared me, muhahahahhaaaa

Ahem.


Well, someone told me they were of great medicinal value, but I never found out if it's true. I never knew to be afraid of land roaches and would merrily stomp on them, until recently: land roaches come flying at you! 

I also had a grand time teasing the little crabs that lived under that house - I'd poke at them with a stick, try to smack one off the pier stilts and into the water and congratulate myself for being such a sharp-shooter when I succeeded -

I didn't quite understand loneliness then.



At our pier, there was almost always a vessel docked, and it would always have dozens of little wooden boats, called sampans (pronouced "sum puns"), picking people up and dropping people off. These people will walk through my late grandfather's storehouse, through the little wooden-slatted lane where I went to, every day. I would sometimes climb the sacks and sacks of rice (or beans, or red onions, or potatoes, even rubber - now those stank) that were stored there, pretend I was a pugilistic someone, observing these peasants going about their business.

Every now and then someone would ask to have a splash of water at our well in our adjoining house - we had a well in that house, one we draw water from. Oh, we had our own water engines, but the washing was usually done there. I loved to draw the water, because my aunts-in-law kept little fish in it. I was always trying my luck to see if I could catch them. I'd always toss them back, though.

When I wasn't doing any of those things, I was running circles around my aged chain-smoking grandmother. She would then tell me to sit down, and help her play an obscure type of solitaire, which involved eight columns, with alternating opened and closed cards. The first column had three cards, the very first one closed. The following column, four, and the next, five, six, and the final three having the same number of cards (I think). All 52 cards were utilised.

She smoked the type of tobacco that came in hand-sized packs, the type that needed rolling in paper which in turn came in tiny tiny packs of a hundred, about a square inch in size. And she would play solitaire. Occasionally she would be too immersed to notice I'd stolen her cigarette papers and pulled several cigarette papers out of the pack. Other times I would help her roll cigarettes - all of which were rejected by her.

"Too fat," she'd say. Or, "too soft".

Then she'd unpick the carefully-rolled work of art and roll her own. And lick it too, so it'd stay rolled. Looking back, it's nothing short of a small miracle, but I'd never wondered how every cigarette looked the same - it just was. Like a scrawny chain-smoking grandma was.

My uncles, I knew only three uncles then. There was Second Uncle, Fourth Uncle, and Little Uncle. Second Uncle was the go-to guy when you got into trouble in Tanjung Pinang. He was head of the police there, which in local terms was a big swinging banana. He was well-connected, to the government and to the underworld, and everyone called him Chief. He was also the dude you bribed if you got into trouble.

Fourth Uncle assisted Second Uncle, and they enjoyed a pretty good run from the seventies through to the nineties. My father was a childhood friend of theirs, and they were thick as thieves during the time. Between the three of them and a few others, they packed a can of whoopass few dared to try a second time. Little Uncle - he ran the family shop then, at the front of that little lane called - well, the exact name of that little lane shouldn't be revealed.


When I finally started kindergarten, I spent a large portion of my time at Tambak (where my mother and I lived), running and shrieking, sliding down a rough concrete slide that rubbed holes in my underwear (drove my mother insane) and wondering why other children cried when their parents left them at school.

I wasn't worried - I knew how to go home.


I played hard and I loved popsicles and would have a double serving each time - the runs I had because of a chilled tummy was almost always worth it. I also discovered coin-slot game machines then, those awesome machines! I was also suddenly begging my mother for more money to play those games with.

Then I began school, proper...