A bowl of porridge

A bowl of porridge……

Have you wondered what can a bowl of porridge do???

Yeah, it might be a sense of care for the sick ones, a kind of love to your beloved darling, an exhaustion of having unhealthy food outsides, a memory of your childhood where the picture of your thoughts brought you back to the year of 1993, when you are still a mile cutie kid under the special and affectionate care of your mummy, and the endless references in one’s life.

It can be an unfortunate day, or it can be the greatest gift of yours….

So bad! I’ve messed up all my plans for today. It could be as cruel as a homeless puppy losses its direction home. My initial plan was to spend my whole afternoon with two of my friends together with my long-waited girlfriend for the golden hours in The Curve’s Redbox. Why is it GOLDEN hours for us? Hehe…. This is because four of us have lost our students’ priority that is STuDent’S CARD, and if we couldn’t get to book for these golden hours from 11 am to 2pm, we need to pay for adults’ price. Yeah, should be grateful to announce and yell as loud as possible, as happy as we could, we are now big brothers and sisters to those younger kids…. …. we should have more rights to speak with people out there. Again, another thing to make it clear here is that “more rights to speak” refers to “a more convincing speech” produced. Okay, back to my topic here, erm.. I have planned to go to the International Book Fair held in KLCC after that. Sigh… What I can blame now? Do I need to blame for my carelessness, stupidity or my “can’t help pleasure for food”? Perhaps, I need to blame the dirty, cruel vendors who don’t put cleanliness as their first principal for their business. For this, I’ve vomited since early morning where I was forced to wake up, and visited toilet countlessly.

However, it is because of this, I discover a greatest gift of my life…

My honey, sweetie, dear, darling, and whatever nicks that could be used for my irreplaceable partner of my life; she is a real kind human to be existed in this world. “She maybe the person I can’t forget, maybe the one I will regret…..” From this, you could probably tell how important this girl is to me. Not to say the endless house chores that she had done for me, she has cooked a bowl of porridge for me. Upon your time of reading this, you may probably think that how a bowl of porridge can cost you right?

For me, this porridge is the greatest gift of my life. It brought me back to the year 1993, when I was ten years old as a small kid. Lantern Festival that will be celebrated each year was coming soon. That day, I was suffering from the same illness, a very hard time for me to visit the toilet without counting how many times they could be, and it’s the same for me to vomit all the indigestible food from my body. That hard time bought me the most sentimental gift of life. I was lying on the sofa in my living room of the wooden terrace house in my hometown Layang-layang. Teep tup teep tup, the walking steps came nearer and nearer to my ear. It was my mummy whose hand was carrying a "Tang Long" or what people called as "lantern" in English, which was modeled as Ninja Turtle. Ninja Turtle was very popular in the past, in my childhood that can only be kept as a memory.

To bring all the childhood memories back now, no matter how bitter those times were, what I can taste now is all sweet memories. The memories let me wonder that my mum really care for me, let me cherish all the people that happens to encounter me in my life, let me feel that there’s always an irreplaceable mummy at the present as well as my forever partner in life, and for these I should always remind myself to treasure everyone that pass by me every moments.

So, do you know now that how precious a bowl of porridge for me in my life? Just similar as the Ninja Turtle Tang Long in my childhood, the bowl of porridge that I’ve eaten today will stay as my memory forever.

Written by April Ong, 26th August 2009.