YESTERDAY ONCE MORE - Paddling Down Memory Lane

NOTE: I wrote this post in October last year (2005) and it was posted on my blog; and since it had been a year already now I thought that I'll share it here again since most of you must be unaware that I had a blog last year (maybe never even heard of the word 'blog' then!). I hope you enjoy the story and the photographs as this is one of my favourite post. Please let me know if you like it (or don't! - but you must be strange! ha ha)
Cheers!
Francis Ho
Kuching
October 2006

P.S I'm sure that most of you would'd recognised that the title is from a Carpentar's hit song (one of my favourites); so try to imagine hearing this song in the background playing as you read this post! I hope you like it. Enjoy.

When we were in our early teens, the three of us (Anthony Bong Joon Khoi, Dr. Edward Tan and yours truly) were nerdy kids (we are much older now but still nerdy!) and were never too keen on sports - preferring to sit it out in the school library rather than the football fields if we can. However there is one sporting activity outside the school curriculum that we love.

Anthony used to live behind where the old Capitol Cinema was (now Tun Jugah). It is now roughly where Holiday Inn is. It was a wooden house right next to the Sarawak River. When Edward and I visited him (on our bicycles) one of the favourite activities we looked forward to was to paddle in a leaky dug-out sampan tied up just outside his house. Both of us did not know how to swim then but that never deterred us! Neither do we know what a PFD was then either and I don't think we cared then!

Now some 34 years later, the 3 of us are paddling together again - this time on modern roto-molded polyethylene Perception Kayaks made in New Zealand. Edward who now lives in Singapore is on holidays with his family here joining Anthony who is now a boarding school principal in Bau. We launched our kayaks at 6.30am but not before Edward has given us each an "anti-mosquito patch" to stick on - a recent Singaporean kiasu dengue-phobia induced behaviour!

Anthony was making hoots of delight as he paddles off, reveling in the freedom of the smooth, silent sensation of moving under one's propulsion that you can only experience on a kayak. Edward was sitting with me on a tandem taking the bow position; tentatively dipping his paddles into the water. He soon relaxes and was soon paddling like "a pro" as he puts it! Meanwhile Anthony was paddling like he has done it his entire life. For the three of us - it was yesterday once more. It was hard to believe that three decades had slipped by as we felt like kids while we re-kindled our old friendship on the waters. In a way we are forever young.

We paddled and we chatted about old timess - savoring these precious carefree moments; forgetting the roles and responsibilities we now have now as adults and fathers.

How we wish this moment could last. But time and tide slips by and all too soon we had to head back to the jetty and to our lives where love ones, deadlines and responsibilities awaits.

It was a short hour and a half long paddle, but a time all three of us would remember forever, long after we have forgotten all the other many stuffs of life. We got out of the waters feeling grateful, nostalgic and lifted.