The Visit

We went back to visit Hong Kong some times but i would never want to live there again.



this is what it was at night there. kind of like time square except more crowded.


i'm not the first generation here but my children will be. i'm always going to be a fob. (fresh off the boat) fob is what chinese people call people like me. if you were born in the united states, they would be called abc, ( american born chinese)

Fair Lawn

Before High School started, we moved to Fair Lawn. it was a nice quiet jew town. it's a jew town because a bijillion jews live here. i went to Fair Lawn High School. for some reason, for a second i thought i was in high school again. weird. maybe because i used to blog when i was in high school and i don't do that anymore.
this was what high school was. playing around with friends day after day. high school was easy as pie. there is where i met the friends i have today. it was the best times of my life so far.
i was always shy at first to meet new people but then i made a lot of friends and also passed every class with an A and some times a B. i think i only got two B's in high school, the rest were A's. i didn't really have to try too hard cause clifton's education was far ahead of Fair Lawn High School's. everything they were teaching i learned in middle school already.

during this tme, my daddy had been trying to pass the exam that with make him a citizen. some time during high school, he finally passed the exam and because my brother and me are his children, we were automatically citizens as well.

Then i graduated high school!

The tragedy

My little cousin was diagnosed with Leukemia when he was only about 6 years old.

I took care of him since
he was born and til
he was 6

6 short years with him
and he was taken to the hospital

I remember that night
the ambulance came to take him away..

I was watching tv with him
and he said it was cold..

I got a blanket for him
and wrapped him up in it
and held him in my arms

He still said it was cold
and I held him tighter wondering
what was wrong with him

So I put my cheek to his head
and he was cold..ice cold
and I'm like whoa.. it¡s not that cold

So I told him to go brush his teeth and go to bed

He said he was too cold to move

So I carried him there
and helped him brush his teeth.

He makes sucha cute spiting sound
when he spits out he water

Any way

So I carried him to his bed
and covered him with blankets

He and Id sleep in the bed with him..
it was a twin bed

Cause he was usually scared of the dark.
And he needed me there to keep him company

So I stay'd and he soon fell asleep
while I was holding him
and I went back up stairs in my room
to go get ready for homework

Soon I heard screaming downstairs
and wonder what was wrong

I went down stairs and
I see my grandma holding Savio

While his nose was gushing out
blood and coughing up blood

There was blood everywhere

His mother was on her way home from work

So was his father

They called for an ambulance..

And they dressed Savio up

His mother carrying him

And when they walked out
of the house to the ambulance

It started snowing

I was starring out my window
as they took him away.

Here's the link to my blog on that day for further details.

Second house

the second house was in Clifton. i went to school # 1. i attended second grade there till the end of middle school. i lived on Hillman St. my family and relatives that moved with us, started a restaurant business. it was a chinese restaurant called the singing bamboo. it had buffet and dining area and a bar. my parents were never home cause they were working at the restaurant with my aunt and uncle that lived under us. i lived in a two family house. i would spend most of my time wiht my little cousins. we were 5 to 6 years apart in age.
i don't think i really started to understand what anyone was saying till third grade. i took up the violin and played all the way till the end of high school.

First house!

The first house that i ever lived in, with no jumping around, was in new york, queens. it was the best house ever because the staircase was really long and i used to slide down it a lot. i shared a room with my brother, bunk beds again. we lived here for like a year i think. i went to school in new york. PS174. i don't know how i remember the name of my school but some how i do. haha. i still remember what my teachers looked like and how class was like. i remember that i didn't know any english. my mother told me that i would play with other kids and speak chinese. my mom also said that i would come up to her and ask her what those kids were saying cause i didn't know why they were speaking weird. i learned little by little through kindergarten to first grade. i remember how i would have to write the word cat and i didn't know what i was doing, only that i was tracing the dotted lines. i don't think htat method helps when you don't know what the teacher is saying. i probably just thought i was drawing. before i left my house, i had just graduated first grade. for the graduation presentation, the class had to sing songs for parents and visitors. i think that since i didn't know english, i didn't have to sing, only that i had to sit in a rocking chair in the middle of the stage just to pretend to rock a baby teddy bear to sleep while they all sang around me.

Travel

i had to travel to place to place when we got to America. i don't know why we had to keep moving, but we kept visiting relatives and staying over for a few weeks and then moving again. we also visited a lot of America's landmarks as tourists. here was the statue of liberty the first time that i visited it. i didn't really understand what i was doing there but i just thought that we were on some long vacation. we were just visiting family that was all across the united states. we were in California first, we also went all around Arizona. then we went to visit our grandmother in New York, Brooklyn. we also went to Boston, Florida, Maine, Pennsylvania, Virgina, just to name some of the states i've been jumping around in.

The Trip

Land of the free, America.

I left Hong kong when i was four. the plane ride was like 23 hours. my mother said i couldn't sit still for a long period of time so i was running around the plane.
the first thing that happened when i got to america was that i was kidnapped by a black little girl and was held captive and tortured with kisses til her mother pried her fingers from my face. i was confused and amused by how people were different in america than in hong kong.

the first place i stayed at that i can remember is in California at my aunts house. it was a big house that was colored like peaches. i also remember that my relatives took us around and we went fruit picking, i'm pretty sure it was peaches. we went around California and it was a bit like hong kong, with the temperature. it was hot in California and it's also mostly hot in hong kong. at the location in California where i was, it was spaced out. there wasn't bunched up buildings or buildings that were super high. it was almost like the part of china that had fields of crops. i don't think i really understand what had happen or where i was but as long as i was entertained, it was a okay in my book.

Education

I remember going to school there and it was horrible. the schools were so strict. even though i was just in preschool i had to write like 8 pages of homework a night. if you say something without raising your hand, you get hit with sticks. that kind of thing scars a child's childhood.

Electronics

Back then the old computers looked like the one in this picture. there were lots of floppies i remember and the screen was really small. it was a big lump of metal that had no color on the screen big black and green font i think. i remember i used to play this game on the newest computer i could remember. it was at his job when my daddy brought me to work with him. it was a game called prehistoric. it was a game where you were a cave man and you killed dinosaurs with a club. i remember that to get in to the game, you had to type things. i think that was the doc program back then.

Now that i think back, technology back then was so bulky and hard to use. so much typing for commands and things just to get a file you want. it's so much easier now with the mouse to point and click.

Memories

The fields were vast and endless in china. That's me there sitting in front of the field. aw don't i look adorable haha. well back then i helped relatives with their farms of stuff. i don't really remember doing that but i found pictures of it so i guess i did. there was one memory i remember of big fields. i was playing around in the fields and i tripped and fell and skinned my knee and i wouldn't stop crying till they gave me candy haha. i'm a weirdo.



i remember that my other relatives that were still in Hong kong were living in areas of vast fields. i lived in an apartment. though it was small, it was what everyone else in hong kong was living in too. this is what the door of my apartment looked like. and so did everyone else. it was a gate and then a door. most of the time, people put a drape or cloth over between the gate and the door. i don't know why but i remember that everyone did that. the apartment didn't have any doors except the front door. the bed room was just off to the side of the room. i was in a bunk bed with my brother. to the back wall, was the kitchen and a counter that seperated the kitchen and the living room/ bedroom. the bathroom was a room to the back corner that had a drape over where the door should of been. i guess that just shows how many people were living there that the apartments were all one room. i think i was on the 37th floor.


One of the best memories i have of Hong Kong was that my mom got a huge box and it was filled with baby chicks. every day my brother and i would feed them and play with them. it was the best. they were fluffy and soft and cuddly. one day, my mom told me that she was going to take the chickens ( they were fully grown by now) out for a walk. i said okay and watched tv. she came back and cooked dinner and it just so happens to be chicken. i asked my mom where they went and she said i was eating it. it seems funny now but back then it wasn't that funny.

My family went everywhere, we traveled the world and went to every place known to man for children to play in. i have been to every disney world and most of every park known to man.

The Reason

So I asked my mother why we had to move to America and the conversation was like this:
(translated in to english of course)

me: why did we have to leave Hong kong?

mom: because we wanted you and your brother to have a better life and more opportunity.

me: thats it?

mom: and Hong kong was going to be given back to China soon.

me: what?

mom: hong kong was under Britain rule for 99 years. soon, it will be given back to China. we don't like the chinese politics and how they run a country. they are restictive and horrible. many people already had left for America because of this.

me: oh, wasn't there a rule where you could only have one child?

mom: not yet. not when you were born.

me: okay.


So it was cause there is freedommmmmm!
and better opportunity and education.

March 2, 1988

The day I was born.

I was born in Hong Kong. In modern times, it's like the New York of America or the Tokyo of Japan. Hong Kong is a flashy tourist place now.





Back then, it wasn't like that. As I remember it, it was a place where everyone in the neighborhood knew each other. All the homes were small and everyone lived in apartments.
Now it's all big buildings that look like it'll fall on you when you look up at the top from the sidewalk. It is quite scary haha.

Back when I was born, Hong Kong was still under Britain rule. My brother was born on February 24, 1986. my grandparents and other relatives have already moved to the United States for a better life. After four years of living on Hong Kong after my birth, my family and me moved to the United States too. Time for a change.