Hello, I blog!

While roaming around my neighbourhood (and playing Pokémon GO) this evening, I passed a brightly-lit bungalow.

I took a cursory peek in and saw a large family gathered in the living room, talking and laughing.

My mind flashed back to many years ago where we (me and my extended family*) would gather in an aunt’s house and a similar scene will unfold. In fact, this happened pretty often back then.

(*Extended family – my mum has 8 siblings, so the full extended family is huge. But our particular close “group” comprised my mum and her two sisters plus their spouses, grandma and my closest cousin D.)

I still recall distinctly a particular year when D and I roamed his neighbourhood at the stroke of midnight, yelling “Happy New Year!” at every single house we passed, after an evening of extended-family festivities at his house.

I saw us at my aunt’s former house at Jalan Novea Selatan, where my aunt would prepare baked chicken and mushroom soup for dinner, followed by an evening of conversations over mahjong (for the older generation), or television/Playstation/badminton for D and I.

Another evening at the same aunt’s house flashed through my mind, when her family rescued a bunch of 4 kittens stuck under her bathtub (until today, it’s a mystery how they got there). And D and I spent the entire evening bottle-feeding and playing with these little furries.

I even blogged about all these back then. I still see them in my archives, although they are only private to me now.

Time has passed and we hardly gather anymore as we have new priorities. Although I still remain close to the same people, mentally but not physically.

Good times.

I let my mind continue wandering to the past while I strolled around, Pokémon GO still running on my phone. Then, I snapped back to reality and continued catching Shuppets, Duskulls and Pikachus with Halloween hats.