Francis' Essay
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Hi all,
This is Francis' essay. I think this is a very good piece of work with excellent text structure and varied use of vocabulary. It is also very creative in the way that it has been written and the conclusion is also very well done.
“Now, when I was your age…” seems to be a perennial phrase adopted by elders, for reasons rather ambiguous to persons other than themselves. However, one roughly can, from the sentence and the way the person relates whatever comes after it, deduce that the person seeks a comparison between his time, and ours. For better or for worse is not known, and as such, we listen to such tales of their youth with a slight interest, in the hope of gleaning a measure of their thoughts, be it their optimism for the future, or their favour for the old.
It was with such an interest, thus, that in my tender age that I listened attentively to these tales, though it was noticed that, with the elder, or my grandfather, he invariably never had an acute aversion to the old, or a particular fondness for the new. His tales were spun around his life in the village, or kampong, as it is called in Malay, his pastimes and his beliefs, which is expected from such an opening to the tale.
As I grew older, my interest in those tales slowly diminished, having been spoon-fed the same thing from time immemorial. However, today, on a routine visit, the steady glint in my grandfather’s eyes promised something other than the ordinary, allowing me to label the fervor in his eyes, extraordinary. His sun-burned hands slowly started coming alive as his lips started moving, much related to a dancer moving gracefully to gentle music, and the room too, started coming alive as he slowly spun his words into the wonderful fabric of a story…
“Now, when I was your age, we did not have the peace that you enjoy now. Unfortunately, I was born shortly before the Second World War, which sadly deprived me of the ample joys of childhood. Japanese soldiers went around bayoneting everything that moved, and bombings soon became a daily occurrence. There was an aura of fear permitted by the Japanese, with the spreaders being common Chinese such as me, and fear flitted around and through our hearts. Once, there was a sudden search of our homes, and my family and I evacuated in time to our Malay neighbour’s home. They dressed us in their clothes and quickly taught us a few simple words of Malay, thus saving us, as the Japanese were mostly only after the Chinese…”
At this point, I smiled to myself. The stream of words was dammed up by my thoughts, which were, at the time, focusing on the act of one neighbor helping another. To think, that even in those times, compassion and sympathy existed in the breast of man, when to this day, acts of cruelty are found on a daily basis.
As I was contemplating these thoughts, my grandfather came to a close. “It seems that though my memories seem to be failing, it still has room for this one unforgettable act of kindness.” I found myself thinking, I could not agree more.
Written by: Francis Neo
Class: 1A
A bit too short