Random stories from childhood

I've been thinking in the last little while about various stories of my life. I think most of it is pretty boring, but when I try to re-tell it to myself or consider it from a more mature perspective, I find they are quirky. So I thought I'd try to re-tell some of them.....
In no particular order:

* Our family has been in Australia for seventeen years. I remember bits of it hazily, the whole leaving part. We had been staying at my mother's brother's house in KL and my aunt was pregant at the time. The day we left for Australia was the day that my cousin was born, so when his birthday rolls around each year, we remember how many years we've been here.
It was quite strange. I don't really remember much about it, except that at the airport, my parents and extended were very sad. Everybody was crying. I didn't understand why, I just thought we'd see them again soon. Youthful ignorance...

* I got my first mobile phone at the age of about seventeen. It was an old model from my cousin, which I didn't mind. It was the first time I had a phone! It was pretty exciting. I remember trying to figure out predictive text by myself for the first time and getting so confused and frustrated that I vowed to not use it. But I asked a friend of mine and she explained it all. Since then, I've used predictive text.. :P

* Taking Food and Nutrition classes at high school were great fun. They were essentially cooking classes. It was an elective in grades nine and ten, which I elected to take. I pretty much didn't know how to cook before that. I still don't feel overly confident in the kitchen, but the classes were good at least for letting me try stuff! I also took Cake Decorating in grade ten, much to the amusement and enjoyment of my brother. Subject selection in pre-TEE serious years requires one to put in a ranking of subjects that one would like to take. Not all of them have to be ranked, indicating that you don't want to take the subject at all. I indicated Cake Decorating at No. 5 (my last preference), thinking that it was such a low rank that there was no way that I'd be taking it. Much to my surprise, however, it turned up on my timetable. I was actually an average student in that class, but again, not very confident. And possibly the funnest slack class because of what we were doing, although I have to admit that I didn't enjoy the people in my class overly much.

* In year 8 Maths, possibly in the first class (which was already somewhat streamed), Mrs Sawyer gave us a diagnostic test. It was possibly one of the easiest things I'd done, and subsequently got it all right. The teacher soon after spoke to me and told me it'd be boring to keep me back through high school if I had already learnt lots of the stuff. So she had a meeting with my parents later, and my proposed maths schedule for the next few years was as such: I would take Yr 8 maths as per normal, and in Yr 9, I would study both Yr9 and Yr10 Maths. The teacher for both my yr 8 and 10 maths was the same so she could spend one day a week teaching me the material and helping me out. And then the plan was that by the time I got into Yr 10, I could take one of the Yr 11 maths, and in Yr 11 take one of the TEE maths, giving me more space in my schedule to fit in another TEE subject if I so desired. So in yr 10, I was going to one of my yr10 math classes with friends in my year, but my maths class was the Yr 11 Geometry and Trigonometry class. Now, it is a fairly strange concept in Perth (or at my school) at least that girls in different years are in the same class. The system works by what grade you are in. So, I felt a bit of a loner in this class, even though I knew of most of the girls. Thankfully, there were some very kind people, and the class members as a whole were nice. As it turns out, I was doing well in Yr 9 with the extra maths simultaneously, but ended up going on exchange halfway through yr10. Therefore, when I came back to St Mary's in yr 11, I re-enrolled in Geometry and Trigonometry (with possibly the same teacher??) again and took the class (and the subsequent year) as per 'normal' with my year.

* In pre-primary, which I attended for about two and a half months when we first moved to Australia, we had a Christmas event at the end of the year. Our class put on a 'production' of Wombat Stew. (Classic!). I remember I was one of the animals and had to wear a mask, and dance around in a circle. Fun.
Then 'Santa' came to give out presents and visit us. Our parents had been prior to this to provide a present for their child that Santa could distribute. I don't think I ever believed in Santa, and this was well and truly confirmed at the age of five when this Santa gave me a present, and it was a box of coloured pencils, very similar to a number of other boxes of very similar coloured pencils we had in a drawer at home.

* My brother and I used to share a room at at old house. The room itself was actually fairly large. We had a cavity in the wall where the old TV sat - spoiled children much?!?! Admittedly, we didn't watch it that much...although I do remember towards the end of our time there watching some cricket (for the most part, dead boring to me!). My bedtime was usually earlier than my brother's, but sometimes if I hadn't fallen asleep, I'd hear him being tucked in. Or sometimes he was noisy, and I'd get woken up and be very annoyed! He also breathes quite loudly which used to annoy me out of my brain that sometimes I'd poke him until he turned the other way... :P

* I've had relatives and other family friends tell me that I have my maternal grandfather's facial shape. It's funny, I don't really communicate much with my grandparents as both of my mum's parents don't really speak English (my grandfather not at all), and I suppose largely because most of my childhood was spent growing up away from them. So to have a physical link to my grandparents (besides the obvious one) is something that makes me think that I really am identifiable with my family, but still in a distanced way.


That's it for today's installment. More random stories to come another day....