I reflect as I type

I remember when I was young, I would sit next to Ronald McDonald in Changi Airport and my grandfather would take photos of me with a Nikon film camera, of me frowning underneath a stripy yellow arm that embraced me, though coldly. Very old school, yes. I used to be quite frightened though—beneath the artificial glossiness of his face that would have been caked with plaster and thick crimson paint smeared over his empty grin, it was almost human and alive. I imagined a man trapped inside that hollow shell. I thought it would come alive to haunt me in my dreams, just like how I thought Thomas the train engine would.

I slept in my grandparents' room when I was perhaps 4. My grandparents would lay mattresses on the floor and my grandfather would sleep near me on the mattresses on the floor while my grandmother slept on the bed with a hot water bottle. I thought that was a strange system then, considering the bed was big enough to fit both of them and still have space for me, but I guess they didn't want me to scared or afraid. But I still was, anyway. I had nightmares of a a game show on TV where a supervillian would pick a random address to plant a bomb encased in a metal suitcase, and it happpened that, on one Sunday, they picked my house and I was begging my dad to go to church earlier that day. And to my horror he didn't want to. So I woke up and in the darkness, I saw a white figure floating in front of me. But it was just my grandfather's clothes.

And, also i once woke up to the sound of Japanese war planes—coming from a BBC program on the radio. The mattress had bears on it.

But, mostly my childhood memories are immortalized in photographs of me that I find difficult to be ashamed of. Afterall everyone looks cuter when they were young, right? However I still continue feeling bad about being a somewhat ugly baby 14 years ago.