Contrary to my post before, I decided to run quickly through and remove anything I thought might be offensive. This is still a very unedited post though, so use the newly re-enabled comments (I finally got around to coding the layout to handle comments again) to correct me if anything is unflattering or should be removed. Enjoy, this could be a fun post if you’re mentioned, to see what I remember about you.

I was writing a post about web design and somehow it turned into this huge reminiscing drabble of my childhood. No, not the one in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. The one here in Holmdel. I know, why the heck would I do that? I don’t know, I didn’t mean to. Originally, I started tracing things back, trying to figure out why I became so entangled with the web & web design, and I was hoping to come up with a good essay topic or at least a read-worthy blog post. But as I moved further and further back, I found that I was thinking a lot about the past, Holmdel, and how I grew up here. And then I realized, “Hey, I’m leaving here in a matter of months.” And I was sad.

A lot of names are thus mentioned in this post. Hmm. It’s not an edited or well-written post either, so fyi this is a ramble that moves backward in time through my head. It’s just my reminiscence.

Okay so why now? Well it started when I found that a certain friend of mine, Kim (Masa), was shutting down her last domain and moving her blogging to LiveJournal. I felt sort of sad because I’ve enjoyed reading about her life on the west coast (she’s 1 year older than me and lives in Cali and she’s leet because she can drift in her Nissan 240sx). Also, she was one of my first hosts. She used to own a site called Toukijin (http://www.toukijin.net but now it’s gone), and then Shizune.net. She made beautiful designs and never ceased to awe me with the cool layouts and stuff that she made. The earliest sources of inspiration for my web design work and internet exploration were really related to her stuff.

Now, how did I find her? Backtracking, I realized it was from DDG (DayDreamGraphics), an anime/azn related design resource. She created a design there I think and I liked it and talked to her and then found that she was hosting. And why was I there? Because, tracing back, I remembered that I used to go to AETheReality, which is another web resource. And tracking back, I got there from my initial interest in that show that all the little kids watch today…ah, Naruto. Yeah, I was in love with that show from about…6th grade…to about…8th grade. I started watching when there were 30 subbed episodes and stopped watching when it hit about 100 subbed episodes. And then I read the manga (yes that’s right, no azn can be a true azn without having read manga at one point or another of their lives!) and then…well that was that.

I designed my first big site, a Naruto fansite, back when there were literally hundreds of Naruto fansites. Narutofan was small, SimplyNaruto was pretty big (run by a guy I only know as Neji), Naruto Bloodline’s webmaster was a friend of mine, NarutoGuide’s webmaster went over to work for NarutoCentral, NarutoChuushin was by FAR the biggest site, run by the awesome UltimateDBZ, and at one point I was hosting all 300+ chapters of manga on MY home server (ah yes, that was when I first learned to run a server on my shoddy windows 95 machine and a strange server software called DeepBlue or something. Today, NarutoFan is the biggest (Tazmo prevailed in a nasty web/legal/catfight against Trigunflame). And it was around here when I started using BitTorrent (which at the time was a tiny program that nobody knew about except anime freaks who needed full episode downloads). It was also when I found that great (illegal) site, SuprNova.org.

Now, all this stuff really tracks back to me being a 6th grader who wanted to watch movies and cartoons on demand. I was, after all, a 6th grader. Someone at church told me about DragonBallZ (which I never took an interest to), and from there I learned about DBZVortex and SaiyanVortex, the biggest DBZ sites in the history of the internet (and now I can’t even find a trace of them, which is very odd!!! they were absolutely huge, with tens of thousands of visitors!) and that is what lead to me find AnimeX.com, one of the first sites ever to use video streaming (hooray for streaming naruto!) — and mind this was what, 6 years ago? I was in 6th grade. And AnimeX lead me to Naruto (which is the above paragraph) and that’s how those are connected.

And since we’re moving backwards in time, 6th grade Naruto web-making makes me think back to 5th grade, when I first discovered the joys of emulation (which was my first web-making inspiration). I created EmuLoad, my first “real” website ever, and hosting tons of emulators and roms that I got (I didn’t know they were illegal) from various sites (CherryRoms and whatever). I remember talking to Albert Chen, who ran a site called CodeLooking (for cheat codes) and apparently Albert made money or something from his site but I wouldn’t know.

Of course, all of this connects to me being a 5th grader who discovered his father’s monochrome Palm III and fell in love with gadgets and tech in general. 5th grade was Ms. Fullilove, the year Ben Seifer knocked half my tooth out in Badminton. It was also the year of beyblade (which carried on until 6th grade, when me, gokturk kiris, dave song, andrew nevins, kelvin chen, and a bunch of nerdy kids started ripping each other’s beyblades apart with these huge weight disks that sparked when they hit each other). And that makes me recall the playground, and me as a puny 4th grader who played knockout with Chris Ma and a bunch of other guys at recess. 4th grade was the year that I discovered the wonders of broadband internet and macromedia shockwave games. And that leads back to a brainless 3rd grader who downloaded a virus onto his dad’s new laptop (Lycos Bonzi Buddy, it’s still around but it’s only adware now, and not so much a “virus”).

During that same year, Esther started using AIM, but poor Sam who got a screen name couldn’t find anyone in his grade who shared his interest in exchanging messages real-time over this thing called the internet.

And then, since I had no friends (boo hoo) on AIM… I really can’t help but think of my friends as little kids! Why wouldn’t they IM me? What were they all doing?

Well now…3rd grade, that was the year I had Derek Young and Andrew Lin in Mr. Scillachi’s class (he’s the Principal of village now) and I remember that we’d compete on the timed multiplication tests for stickers that Mr. Schillachi put around our name tags. Andrew always came out on top, and I in second. We’d wait for the teacher to fill up a jar of marbles (one for every day we were good) so that we could have a party. Those were the days…ah and in my class, I also had Andrew Apicello, Melissa the aussie girl (more on her later), Josh Lindau, Ben Edlin (I think), Sarah Edlin (which is his twin), Paula (who would end up being in my class like 3 times in a row or something, and I have this really odd memory of 5th grade, walking into the room late for the first day of school, and then noticing that she was STILL in my class, walking up to her, and thinking “You’re STILL in my class?!” — hope I didn’t freak her out or anything cause I think I remember staring at her really hard and thinking how this was possible because as far as my limited knowledge went, you weren’t supposed to have the same person in your class more than 2 years…until the teacher was like “sam…” and I found my seat), shannon surpin, shane hausman (another tag buddy! he went to some marine academy for high school I think), oh and I think Shelby was also in my class again. Hmm. I remember this was the year I started walking to school, because I moved from Lexington Court to behind Indian Hill (and I still live here now haha). I remember Karate, and meeting Jon Lu. My best memory of 3rd grade was definitely go-gos. I started the craze in my grade, and Josh Lindau bought a huge case of go-gos after playing with me and Andrew Lin. My best go-go was Heavy Metal, and eventually I got two Eggies and a Jaws.

Most of all, I remember tag. Me, Eric Lin, Willy Kania, Allan something (still never found out his last name but he’s in Willy’s grade), and later Will Sawicki (who got picked on a lot cause he was the youngest and sometimes he was cocky and annoying haha so we always made him “it” and called that it was “freeze-tag” as opposed to regular tag so that he’d never have enough time to get us all). We played tag every day after school, from 3rd grade to 6th grade (well in 6th, Willy and Allen were in Satz so we ended up getting some younger kids to play, namely Robert something and I think maybe Jason Kahn). Tag was life. Life was tag.

Moving ever backward in time, I think of 2nd grade, which was the year in which I first met Eric Lin (Tag buddies!) because he was a transfer student from Taiwan and I was enlisted by my teacher to translate for him when he had to be in our class and not in ESL. He went to Oak Hill Academy for middle school, and then moved to Edison. And of course I remember Bernard Zhou (yes, the kid who doesn’t do his homework) because I had to call him to tell him to do his homework (grr) and we drew comics together from 2nd grade to 6th grade, and I remember Jaskaren (like Bernard, moved to holmdel from NYC in the middle of the year) who seemingly hasn’t changed one tiny bit from when she was in 2nd grade (voice, height, expression, everything the same), and then there was Shelby (she had a very different style back then as a 2nd grader, though she hasn’t changed much in appearance to me at all, except height), and we had Mike Metzger (his dad was my HYAA basketball coach, cool guy, sort of short with black hair I think, and Mike had mad ups and pwned everyone at basketball), and how could I ever forget Ambika (she and Mike lied to Ms. Bergen about poker chips that we used in class for something and our team won this contest illegally and when Ms. Bergen found out she flipped out), and we had Morgan MacEntee (who was sort of weird. after 8th she went to some art high school but I guess she was a cool kid in 2nd grade because she was on “our” team — metzger, me, ambika, and morgan), and of course I remember Melissa (ahem, so she was this girl who was Australian, and I had a crush on her, haha first crush… I think it was because she was really nice and we sat next to each other and I liked her accent or something), and then we had Julia something (she was mean so we can forget her), and Dorrie Lee and Stephanie Huang I think (I only remember because us three, the azns, did advanced grammar work under Ms. Bergan while the rest of the kids did easy stuff like learn how to read, other than that I don’t really remember what they were like).

I have an interesting memory of Dorrie and Stephanie. I remember the three of us sat there doing work and all of a sudden I asked “How do you spell because?” And Dorrie replied “That’s easy. B-E-C-A-U-S-E.” And Stephanie was like “Are you sure? Wait…B-E-C-A-U-S-E. Yeah. B-E-C-A-U-S-E.” And that’s how I learned to spell because. Good story.

2nd Grade was the year I first met Ms. Slovik, who had a huge impact on me. I don’t remember what year, but she had a set of like 20 computer drawing tablets (crude models by today’s standards, but they were advanced for back then), and I remember immediately taking a liking to computer art. She called me back for a second drawing session while the rest of the kids had classes because she saw that I really liked it. I miss her, she moved to florida when I was in 6th I think. I still have a watercolor sunset/hills picture that I painted in 2nd grade. It hangs on my closet door.

2nd grade was glasses. My first pair of glasses corrected a higher degree of vision than Esther’s second pair. That’s what you get when you have a kid who doesn’t know how to stop reading books. 2nd grade was REDWALL, and my first Redwall book was The Bellmaker. Amazing book.

2nd Grade was the year of Pokemon, where Jeremy Chiang (moved to Cali) was one of the first kids to beat it (Blue Version) and Ken Curran used Charizard (and I envied him for having a grey gameboy black-and-white), and Mike Sasso gave me 3 pokemon cards which I somehow traded and managed to amass some 500+ cards with anywhere between 15-20 star/holographic cards. Ah, Chinese school was all about pokemon cards. Jeremy Chiang actually gave me three Badtz Maru erasers that I really liked and he always shared his lunchables with everyone. Really nice kid.

2nd Grade was the year I had to go on stage with Kev Hsu during Chinese New Year in a lion costume and everyone said it was funny because I was a lot taller and since I was the back end of the lion, it looked like the lion was…yeah.

Was it a lion or a dragon?

Wow. I miss 2nd grade. Ms. Bergen laughed when I drew her a christmas card with a penguin on it…and I never change, do I. She said the penguin was fat, and asked if I thought she was fat. I said no, and she kissed me on the cheek. And I just thought to myself “ew…my teacher just kissed me on the cheek.”

2nd grade was the best year of my life.

I have this weird parallel in my head that connects Morgan to Erik Lew, because both were in my 1st grade class where they were the cause of much trouble to Ms. Taylor, so much so that after Erik wrestled Ms. Taylor, he was transferred to Ms. Simpson’s class. Actually, Eleana Little did something similar, surprisingly. She too was transferred to Ms. Simpson’s class. My only memory was her getting mad during a lesson about weather, and then somehow she was wrestling Ms. Taylor. Come to think of it, she was rather misbehaved as a little girl. It’s sort of hard to believe today (seeing as she is very docile and on the quiet side), but yeah! And then there was this kid Dylan who always wore a Pittsburgh Steelers jacket. He would also wrestle Ms. Taylor. What is up with little kids and wrestling Ms. Taylor? Right, and 1st grade was my first trophy for Chinese Speech Contest. High Honors ever since, up until 8th grade, which is when I quit Chinese School.

1st grade was also the year I played mad kickball with Billy and Harry Wang and Jimmy Cusick and Esther and Rebecca Tung. Karen and Rebecca weren’t very nice to me (they were 2nd and 4th grade girls, I was a 1st grade boy), so when I had to go over their house (sometimes we had to go to their house because both our parents weren’t home), and I talked to their mom a lot. Mrs. Tung gave me lots of Capri Sun. That was yummy.

And as we move backward in time, I automatically draw this weird parallel from 1st grade to Kindergarten, where my few memories involve building a wooden car in Mrs. Freestone’s class, and meeting people like Brianna DiAntonio (didn’t even meet her since until around last year or this year, I didn’t know she was still in Holmdel’s school system until I saw her in HHS last year). My memory of her is the day after Winter Break, when Mrs. Freestone asked if anyone “saw the Ball drop” and she replied “I did!” and I just wondered “what is this Ball they speak of?”

I also remember Connor Priscillo (I have no idea where he went, I last saw him in 8th grade). There was also Katie Pahira (I have this weird memory of spinning her on the merry-go-round that no longer exists. We both were laughing and she kept saying “faster, faster!”) Hmm… I’m pretty mad the merry-go-round doesn’t exist anymore. I loved it a lot. How could I forget Ben Katz (went to a different high school but he was always a bit of a strange kid) — he got me in trouble because he was attacking me with Karate during a fire drill and I in self defense struck back at him. Oh man I remember Takihero, my first friend in Holmdel (and the only full Japanese kid I’ve ever seen in Holmdel; he moved after the year). Ah, imagine little Justin Levatino!!! (I thought he was a funny kid for some odd reason and laughed every time I saw his face…I think he wore glasses back then). Also, I remember Kyle Mowery (went to his birthday party and ordered hotdogs but ended up accidentally eating another kid’s nachos…yeah weird memory). I will never forget Anne Chen, who lent me her awesome helicopter eraser pencil-sharpener to play with for a few days because I thought it was so awesome. I remember the school store, a place where we could get all sorts of goodies. I remember the Christmas shop, and getting marbles from that. I recall taking the Baseball Bus with Chris Ma, Gina Orsini, Takihero, and I forget who else. We weren’t allowed to talk and we had to dance along with the YMCA. It was odd.

And then my memories just stop.

I think it’s because Holmdel defines me. I grew up here, and I’m going to miss it. I think of the house in Annville, PA where I spent the first five years of my life as home in a lot of ways, and if people ask me my hometown, I have to really think. But usually, it will come down to Holmdel. I’ll tell people “Yeah I’m from Holmdel, NJ,” because from November 1996 to this day (which so happens to be December 7, 2008), I’ve lived here and made this my home. 12 years. Not as long as some people (haha Stan), but still pretty damn long.

And what’s my point…well, I always tell my mom that I’m not going to be the kid who gets homesick. But now that I think about it, I probably will be homesick, very much so.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 7th, 2008 at 3:51 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.