wow, 2 posts in a day, it’s been so long since I did stuff like these!
Well, I was listening to some music and going through some new photos and suddenly I got hit by a bout of nostalgia.
Well of course, I can never resist posting some duck photos. Those of you who know me real well (as in, from way long ago), would know that duck-feeding was an idle past time for me. As for why? Because I could. And it was fun (hey, what 9-year-old would pass up the opportunity for some duck-feeding glory?)
So, to get back into the whole reminiscing point. Last week, or the week before last, for some weird reason, Dad said he’d like to go back to the Seac Pai Wan park to see how it is. The Seac Pai Wan Park is all the way over in Coloanne Island, and nowadays unless you’re looking to go to the semi-Zoo they have there with family, there’s really not much other reasons to be there.
Well, before the semi-Zoo/government-run “Eco-Library” presence, the odd building they had there was the Restaurante 1999 (”1999 Restaurant”). It was a quaint not-quite-little restaurant in the (very far out) outskirts of the city. Well, it was my Dad’s business, so yeah, I am actually quite intimate with this park. Running and biking around the park since a young age does that to you, don’t you think so? I’ve had birthday parties there, taken in stray dogs from there, scraped my knees several times, fed the ducks so much there.
I never realised I missed this place until I came here again with my Dad. The nostalgia hit me really hard this time. That was such a beautiful place. I remember the mean Rottweilers dad kept there, I remember the secret back garden (see right) where we used to play so much, where we buried a few pets that died on us, I remember all the secret passages we tried to look for in between the bushes, how when we reached the waterfall but were scared to walk past that huge wet rock, all those biking trips around the place trying not to fall off. I also remember picking up a duck egg from the little island in the middle of the pond, finding Foxy, in the park, slowly coaxing her to come home with us, when Fufu was born, trying to get her to listen to me, seeing Pussy getting run over by a car but miraculously standing up and continue running towards us… the memories are rushing in again as I type this…
I don’t think whatever I write here does any justice to my memories… these previous memories of a time now lost… Those times, although not exactly the happiest of our times, but still it seems, without those times and without those experiences and memories, I would not be who I am and where I am today, and so I can say that I do not feel sorry for anything. I’m just a little surprised by the force of this little burst of nostalgia.
Coming back to present day, what can I say about the place? It has changed. Alot. The usual pink colored restaurant building is now a yellow expanded building, and so the old al fresco or esplanada area is… gone. The concrete ground has been revamped and is now a brick/tiled grown instead. I won’t deny that now it’s alot neater and cleaner, but hey, I have my own impression of that place too.
This visit has also opened my eyes to something. I think I’ve fully grown to be a city girl now. Or sort of. oh, I so used to roll in the grass and run around without a worry about nature or anything else. At all.
This time around, when walking that secret passage way to the secret back garden, I found myself looking around in worry, and I actually jumped back when I saw a huge spider’s net and a huge black spider on it. I’m sure I wouldn’t had been fazed by it if this were some 15 years earlier, heehee… oh, what a wimp I am now!
And then there are the new animal cages and the semi-Zoo in place. During the restaurant times, there was no zoo, only the huge bird area (still exists) and another huge cage with a pair of peacocks (the usual green, and the white one). The peacocks are gone now, although the bird area thing is still there. I’m not sure if there are birds inside or not though, I couldn’t see from outside. I saw some piggies, lots of chickens, ridiculously lots of goats (my mortal enemies… a story for another time!), some monkeys and some other animals that I couldn’t remember off right now.
I might try to make a habit of going there more frequently now… or maybe not. I want these memories to be precious and I’m really glad that I made this re-visit. To see that, although changed, this place still exists… I am glad of this.
There are more photos over at Flickr, as always 
