February 9, 2014

Random anecdote

I've been reading an autobiography of some actor and found it amazing how he could describe incidents that happened when he was a kid so vividly. Sure, I guess the writing process wouldn't be easy, but it seems like a nice journey through time to be able to revive all the deep-seated memories. Maybe he really does have an ESTB?

Anyway, thought I might give it a go as well, trying to recall some childhood anecdote or something.

When Pokemon first came out, I was obsessed with the TV show. Really obsessed. If I'm not mistaken, it used to air on a local TV channel called NTV7 on weekends. Of course, this was back in the day of dial-ups, and not the era of torrent-everything-with-high-speed-Internet we live in now. Besides, I was way too young to be torrenting stuff anyway. Have you seen the ads on the side of torrent sites?

I remember the paroxysms of glee (my attempt of trying to incorporate new vocabulary into my 'writing', though it may seem more like blatant plagiarism ...) when Pokemon would come on the TV. It was a big deal back then, even though the episodes are short and the commercials between parts are obscenely long. I believe the feeling of how fast time passes is relative to a person's age. A year would feel longer for a 5-year-old child than for a 40-year-old adult (I went from man to man/woman and came to a conclusion of using the non-gender specific term 'adult' ... just thought you should know) since the time in consideration is only a smaller fraction of his or her entire life span up till the present.

That whole bit about time is a little overkill ... but I'll leave it there.

Anyway, I always had this lingering memory of me waiting to watch Pokemon when I went to my uncle's place for the weekend. I wouldn't be allowed to watch Pokemon downstairs since I'm a kid (how discriminatory?) and had to depend on the TV upstairs that functions archaically. Pretty sure we had Astro then, which I believe is what Americans call "cable". The one upstairs, however, still relies on ... the thing that's opposed to cable (can't be arsed to do more research, since this isn't really my autobiography now, is it?).

So I would try my best to be in front of the TV (as if kids have any say in where they could be at a specific time), ignoring the calls for dinner (oh god my vocabulary) which was deemed extremely rude just to watch Pokemon. I always resented how kids that do not attend to the requests of adults immediately were portrayed as kids with bad behaviour. I think we had moral education classes back in primary school where we had to choose the "morally correct" behaviour with questions like "Tim's mom called him to take out the trash when he was playing his Gameboy, what should he do?". Are you sending me to hell because I disobeyed my parents on such a minor issue? Doubt so. Then again, does hell really exist? Then again, moral education didn't mention hell at all, being not religious and all. Do I have ADHD?

Holy crap, look at the amount of digression.

There are days where I went though hell (rushing home, ignoring adults and risk being called disobedient) just to sit in front of the TV, only to realise that the TV channel decide to cancel Pokemon and replace it with something else that kids wouldn't give a damn about. It was utterly devastating. I could still feel how disappointed and angry and miserable I felt back then. It was devastating.

Actually, I think I still feel the same way when Modern Family decides to skip a week or two.

Holy crap, this thought journey made me realise I'm not exactly different from little me. Should I be alarmed?

ps. Frozen was not bad. The Railway Man was amazing.
-Kritz

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