90s
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
90s
Most of us remember what the 90s was like, the way everything felt so brand new like fresh paint down a corridor. If you thought that the fashion statements in the 80s were bad, the ones in the 90s weren't all that much better either. I don't recall much of the 90s personally, since I spent the better part of those years finding my spot in a foreign country, getting used to a bunch of foreigners and not to mention the constant terror that the school so inaptly provided. I was a child, and no child should be terrorized by the school teachers and the way they waved around their feather dusters. School wasn't too much fun back then, but at least all the times in between were very enjoyable, and probably the most carefree periods of my life. The joy was in the way the class counted down to recess, or the way we would sneak out of the school during recess to buy candies from the shop underneath the HDB blocks. Of the ten years that we call the 90s, I spent two of those years in an ugly kindergarten uniform, while the another six in the primary school uniform that looked as if it was designed after a plate of broccoli. The green wasn't really green but a distant and ugly cousin of it. All in all, I was an ugly little kid back in the 90s, but it's not like I realized or cared too much about it either.
Viva la 90s.
Most of us remember what the 90s was like, the way everything felt so brand new like fresh paint down a corridor. If you thought that the fashion statements in the 80s were bad, the ones in the 90s weren't all that much better either. I don't recall much of the 90s personally, since I spent the better part of those years finding my spot in a foreign country, getting used to a bunch of foreigners and not to mention the constant terror that the school so inaptly provided. I was a child, and no child should be terrorized by the school teachers and the way they waved around their feather dusters. School wasn't too much fun back then, but at least all the times in between were very enjoyable, and probably the most carefree periods of my life. The joy was in the way the class counted down to recess, or the way we would sneak out of the school during recess to buy candies from the shop underneath the HDB blocks. Of the ten years that we call the 90s, I spent two of those years in an ugly kindergarten uniform, while the another six in the primary school uniform that looked as if it was designed after a plate of broccoli. The green wasn't really green but a distant and ugly cousin of it. All in all, I was an ugly little kid back in the 90s, but it's not like I realized or cared too much about it either.
I am sure I am not alone here when I say that I have had fond memories of the 90s, and I am proud to say that I am a 90s kid despite the fact that I was born in 1986 in a hospital in Taipei. I remember those awful cartoons they used to show at six in the morning on weekdays and eight on weekends, and the way I'd wake up bright and early before school just to catch them despite hating the dubbing. Mediacorp used to buy horrendously dubbed Japanese animations by Chinese voice actors, and they'd make the characters sound ten times older than they actually are, not to mention the irritating accents they'd inject into the dialogues. It was excruciating, but it's not like we had much of a choice at six in the morning at that time. I remember the cartoon about a superhero with a tomato as his head, and I also remember them showing the animated version of Garfield for a while. Other than the tomato-head superhero, there was Captain Planet, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Voltron in the earlier years of the 90s. Television back then was the cradle of life, the life of every children back then. Television made the 90s worthwhile.
It is the modern classics now, but it was the realm of Goosebumps back in the 90s. Every boy had a Goosebump in their hands, while every girl had a Sweet Valley High, or an Archie comic to read. The boys would then use the stories they have read in Goosebumps to scare those girls, which really isn't all that scary now that I think back on it. I was a crazy fan of R.L. Stine, I collected every single book in the series and went on to collect even more from his other series. Ghosts of Fear Street and Fear Street, everything. Book #42 is still missing from my collection by the way, apparently one of my friends borrowed the book called "How I Learned to Fly" and failed to return it. But I was dumb enough not to keep tabs back then, so I guess it was partially at fault. Goosebumps wasn't the only source of fright for the children back then, everybody wanted something to temper with their nerves. Everybody remembers the show they used to broadcast just before dinnertime on television - Are You Afraid of the Dark? Yeah, everybody was freaked out when the boy was turned into a lizard, and then the bonfire would be extinguished at the end of the show, leaving the viewers screaming for their parents. We had a love hate relationship with our television back then, what can I say.
Before DVDs, before VCDs, there were LDs, or laser discs. I'm not sure who came up with that brilliant idea, but those discs were bigger than my head back then. It could have doubled as a mirror at home if you wanted to, but most of the time it just looked like something out of a science fiction movie, like a giant razor blade or something. I remember my sister buying the Backstreet Boys live concert LD once, and that giant disc cost a little more than fifty dollars back then. She watched it for a grand total of one time, and it was left to collect dust on top of the CD collection. I guess the idea of an LD just wasn't all that appealing, which was why shops in the neighborhood still had VHS tapes all over the place. I remember this young English tutor back then introducing to us the Child's Play series, and we thought that it was going to be a family comedy when we tried to rent it at the rental store. It was strange how the pretty English tutor I had would introduce such a violent horror film to two children barely over the age of eight. I don't think we ever got to finish those tapes, I think my mother returned them after the first ten minutes of the movies. The English tutor was blamed for the next day, we never heard from her again.
In contrary to a lot of common misconception of my friends, there was actually a period of time when I was crazy about sports. After all, back in those days, it was either you played basketball on the courts, played soccer on the fields, or stayed on the sidelines as cheerleaders or nerds. I didn't want to belong to the latter group, which was why I actively involved myself with the various ball games, and being taller than the other kids sure gave me an edge at basketball back then. I remember those glorious days when Chicago Bulls was the best basketball team in the entire world, I remember the moment when Michael Jordan took that shot in the last minute against the Utah Jazz and then winning the title that year. It was in June of 1998, and I was in Taiwan for my June holidays in my aunt's house. My uncle was a closet Chicago Bulls' fan, but he supported the Utah Jazz and loved Karl Marlone only because I loved Michael Jordan. He basically liked whoever I disliked, just for the fun of it. Still, I remember when Chicago Bulls was the best team in NBA - whatever happened to that.
There were other things about the 90s that I remember of course, and one entry would certainly not be enough to name them all. I remember when every student in school were forced to buy lukewarm milk and to brush their teeth by the drain. I remember each and every word to the lyrics of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Hell, I even know (or think I know) every word to Macarena by heart. I remember how everybody was crazy over Sega 32-bit consoles, the first generation Gameboys, and Yo-Yos. I remember the taste of those tubes of fruit-flavored ice which we used to buy outside of our school, the way we had to break them into half in order to suck them out. I'd do that at the top of the stone slide outside of our school while everybody else ran around in circles in the playground. Playgrounds back then were still covered in sand, and it sure beats the ones that we have today.
Last but not least, the music. 90s had some of the greatest musical acts ever. It was a time when musical legends were born, and how musical legends were worshipped as a deity of some sort. Sure, the so-called legends like Madonna and Michael Jackson has been around for quite some time by the time the clock reached the 90s, but it was during this period of time when they were officially crowned as the queen and the king of pop. Of course, one of them remains the queen of pop while the other is just getting weirder and weirder. I am proud, however, to tell the world that I was, and still am, a fan of the Backstreet Boys. Let's face it, this boy band dominated the 90s, selling over 75 million records worldwide thus far and had some of the most memorable songs ever to hit the airwaves. It was alright if none of us looked like Nick, sang like Brian, had the bad boy vibe going on like AJ, or whatever. If you knew how to sing like them, dance like them, or even hum one of their tunes, you were cool. Even now, I can still do a little bit of the dance moves they did for Larger than Life, and only the truly privileged friends of mine have seen it before. Pop music was so cool back then, remember these?
Viva la 90s.
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