I'm not one for walking down memory lane. I kinda like to focus on what I have right in front of me and strive for those things I dream for my future so I rarely look back. And it's not because there were lotsa bad memories I associated with my younger days since I'm not that old to begin with.
If I were to look back, I would say I had great fun back in my primary school and my secondary schools. I guess I'm lucky in the sense that my experience in whichever schools I went to as I grew up, primary to lower secondary to high school, had all been better compared to the previous one. And now that I'm in the university, I am having the best years of my life. So, in a sense, I never really have to look back and long for the days when my life in the past was so much better because, somehow, my life in the present is always so much better compared to the past.
Yes, it was simpler back then but there's so much to life than simplicity (not that I like too much complications) and growing up does mean shedding some simpleness to assume some role of responsibility. And yeah, people always say it's easier to be a kid because you don't have to worry about the world crumbling right, left and centre but I kinda like being an adult and having a full control on my own life. Plus, you're as old as you feel and if people were to ask my age, I would say I am 22 years young.
Having said that, one of the easiest way to evoke all the memories of your younger days is to listen back to those old songs that used to be your life soundtracks ten years ago and god bless YouTube, we can all now watch those music videos of singers we used to like back in the 90s when tape and VHS casettes were like the most ingenious inventions ever!
One song that really defined the 90s was this cheesy song called Fiona (it was kinda and 'in' thing back then for male singers to have at least one song named after a woman in their entire musical career) by 4U2C, an old Malaysian boy band of sort.
I apologise if some of you can't understand what the song was all about. Suffice to say that the song was one of the cheesiest love song ever to exalt a woman. Whatever language your mother tongue is, I'm pretty sure there would be a boy band that sings about the same thing in your language. I ain't gonna try translating it into English or I would be puking out the lamb curry I had for dinner just now. And the extremely cheesy and delicious Lasagne I had for dinner yesterday.
It's kinda funny how one video could bring back random memories because one thing would always lead to another. Watching that video, looking at how young and ridiculous AC Mizal was, I was reminded of this once famous Malay TV show called Gerak Khas in which he starred in. Centered around the lives of a group of policemen and detectives, the show really made wave in Malaysian film industry (I remember my grandmother insisting on wanting to watch the show when I wanted to watch somthing else. She would remind at like ten o'clock in the morning when the show only aired at nine o'clock at night!) thanks to the acclaimed director Yusof Haslam and speaking about him, who could ever forget the whole Sembilu and Sembilu 2? I could still remember the times when my siblings and I would go to our neighbour's house (who happened to be our relatives) to watch the movie because our house didn't have the VHS player. Back then Awie and Erra Fazira were like Malaysian version of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston. Of course, neither couples are together anymore.
Now, if you have the boy band, it would be only natural to have the female counterpart of it and one of the famous girl groups back then was this group called Feminin (how apt, right?). There was one time when they were gonna perform in a mall nearby and I asked my uncle to take me to watch them. My uncle said he would take me only if I sang the song below to prove that I really liked them. Let's just say I didn't get to see them.
One good (maybe bad in this case because I ended up wasting a good two hours on YouTube) thing about YouTube is that it has the 'Suggestions' column where it lists down videos similar to the video you are watching. I guess it's the one reason that led me to keep on watching one cheesy video after another. Here are some of them:
This song was like the national anthem for Malaysian youth in the 90s. You have to know the song and you have to revere it even if you don't think much of it! Pretty much every aspiring guitarists learnt to play the guitar for the first time by learning the cords for the song.
A pretty typical theme for sad songs in the 90s.
I have to admit that this was my all-time favourite. How can people not fall for the line 'hidup tanpa mu, bak pungguk rindukan bulan' which translates into 'living without you is like an owl longing for the moon'? I wasn't even really longing for someone. Maybe the Power Rangers pencil box, yeah!
Back in the 90s, Malaysia did have its own share of cheesy pop songs with funky dance choreography to match to give Backstreet Boys, 'N Sync and Spice Girls a run for their money!
More cheesy, lovey-dovey songs. I seriously don't know why I liked them because back in the 90s, love and breakups were not the themes of my daily life. I was just a scrawny kid who barely crossed my precious one-digit age into the two-digit age group and all I had in mind was whether I would hold any position on the school prefect board or whether my Digimon would win the fight during recess or if my Tamagotchi pet would live through the night as I slept because I couldn't clean the shit!
I couldn't quite recall what's allowed back in the 90s but I don't remember flashy and shining and sparkly vests being in fashion. In Hong Kong, maybe!
Now fashion really is one way to see how much things have transformed over the years. There was once upon a time when baggy t-shirts and pants were like the 'in' thing but these days, everyone wants to wear some tight-fitting clothes that fit just nice with the shape of their body.
This was kinda like the cutest song back in the 90s
There you go. I hogged YouTube for a good two hours I forgot what I was intending to watch in the first place! It was fun recalling those moments of innocence but hey, I kinda like being not-so-innocent =P!
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