I was in highschool and I begun to date my ex-girlfriend this year (she’s now my wife).

I was 21 in 2008. The cat in my profile pic, Oscar, was born in April that year, and I adopted her in June. She died of complications from kidney disease last July, at the age of 17. Time moves too fast.

Markets crashed, got laid off from a good job that I was only at for 9 months making decent money (they didn’t want to let me go, but went by seniority), went on unemployment for like a year, tried taking care of a child that I wasn’t ready for, played too much WoW during that time and almost ruined my marriage. Yeah, not great.

Nonooonoonoonoono. People born in 2008 are NOT 18 years old! This was just a couple of years ago!

I was 18 in 2008 so this feels really weird because back then it felt like the year I was born was ages ago (it was in a different millennia though).

Lol, in the first part of 2008, I was obsessed with the new Smash Bros game that was about to come out. The marketing was drip feeding info day by day, and it was all working perfectly on me. Throughout those early months, I could tell you how many days until it released in the US.

I turned out not to like that game so much.

In 2008, Iron Man had just come out and blown everyone’s minds. iPhones were still quite new, so was Facebook. Obama got elected and everyone was excited by the first black president, even here in Australia.

I was a bit of a deadbeat, I had a reasonably ok job but I was living in a tiny flat and spent most of the money I earned on drink and drugs, didn’t have a steady GF. I was into all sorts of extreme sports then and that led to a pretty serious biking accident requiring multiple trips to hospital. Was very lucky it wasn’t fatal.

It was 2008 and that was the turning point.

Maybe due my brush with death? I started to turn my life around. I stopped smoking. Changed my scenery. Quit my dead end job after finding better one. Moved from the city to the countryside to be with my girlfrend then got married.

It’s hard to think all of that would have happend if that tree hadn’t been growing in that particular spot for me to crash into. Things could have gone very differently.

I was 29, single and back-packing in SE Asia, then Oz, working in dive bars, hostels and selling strawberries for beer money. It was a bizarre time in my life that I enjoyed tremendously.

I was in Guangzhou, China.

I vaguely remember the hype around Bejing Olympics, but I never cared about sports so… eh… don’t remember much of the actual thing, only the hype around it.

I was… um… 6 years old?

In 1st grade, public schools didn’t allow my brother for not having a Guangzhou Hukou so we went to some privately-run paid one, which according to mom, it was worse than public schools.

We lived in some apartment in a… kinda… “slum” part of the city.

Parents was either working all the time or was looking for work all the time.

Maternal grandmother was at home to watch us.

No internet, no sure if because of our neighborhood not having it or because of money issues…

But we did have some paid subscription cable(?) tv thingy… so that was all the entertainment there was… a lot of um… I think kids cartoons? memory is kinda blurry.

So I’d walk to school with… usually grandmother, but sometimes, very rarely, one of my parents that somehow had free time. Probably dad because he didn’t have a stable job… but I don’t remember much.

No free lunch in schools, so you either paid for lunch or you went home for lunch…

I remember just walking home by myself, cuz grandma thought it was fine? Cuz nobody would kidnap me in broad daylight right? Right? (👀 mom told me about the supposed “lots of kidnappings” in China, idk how serious that actually is tho)

Its like 5 flights of stairs to the small apartment unit, I don’t think it meets western building safety codes lol.

So I had lunch at home, then go back to school like approx 1 hour later.

Then finish the rest of the school day and go back home, usually someone was there to pick me up at dismissal. I remember mom always warning me to never trust a stranger that claims to be picking me up. Cuz apparantly there’s a lot of kidnappers. That “stranger danger” thing terrified me lol

Don’t think I ever remember hearing Cantonese (the lingua franca and “dialect” of Guangzhou) used in school, not by peers, no one.

Teachers had meter sticks to “displine” “misbehaving” students

The schools used blackboards and you write with chalk. There were no smartboards anywhere to be seen. No projectors.

All instruction just using this small student handbooks that each student had, and teacher wrote stuff on the blackboard.

I think summers we go back to our ancestral village? Dad and mom were from different vilages and I think usually I go to my mom’s village, cuz that’s where my maternal grandmother lives.

Mom told me that maternal grandfather took me to the stores and had ice cream… but I don’t remember lol

In Guangzhou, I remember sometimes, my parents took us to the McDonalds near us, but its more like a “vibe” memory, don’t remember much about the food or the taste of food, its over a decade ago. But I remember having ice cream.

I vaguely remember this one school trip… to idk where lol… all I remember was being on the bus and I think I threw up… car sickness lol… we didn’t have a car and so I don’t get used to it.

I think its either this year or 2009 that I had the incident of my older brother (5 years older than me for context, its not a fair fight due to age difference) fighting me then I ran away from home for a few hours… was so scary to be alone in the city for a few hours… still traumatized…

I remember the malls

I remember being at that store and asking my parents to buy stuff…

this one time I ask them to buy these board games so I can play with my brother… (yes that same brother that want to fight with me all the fucking time)

I remember the metro system… the platform safety door thing was so fascinating to me

that’s all I remember on the top of my head right now. I think that one traumatic memory kinda casted a lot of the blurriness of the memory, and leaving there made it so much easier for my brain to just repress most of it…

Edit: Also I had zero friends… :( So yea I basically spent my early childhood with my sort of abusive older brother… 😭

“Why are you all concerned about boys? Have you heard the song Time to Pretend by MGMT? Why are you not concerned about the song Time to Pretend by MGMT? Do you not miss the playgrounds and the animals and digging up worms???”

Enrolled in college older than most to escape only getting retail, part time job offers and the recession caused by financial institutions, get a stem degree to pursue an interest in mathematics and science, & improve myself and my community through education.

I believe I was with my husband then. Depends on time of year. I was with him, but not living with him until like February of that year. Cause December 07 is the anniversary things. So 20 years soon.

I was working then which was nice. Wish I could again.

Happy birthday!

I was in high school and honestly having a great time. My friend group was pretty solid, I remember having a decent bunch of fun classes, and that was the first year I had a cell phone. Having a phone and a friend with a car meant that I was granted a lot more freedom.

My friend with the car would pick me up at 6am on the weekends and sometimes on school days and we’d go snowboarding, pushing each other to be better and to have fun. We did a lot together besides just that, and I spent a lot of time at her place, which was nice to get away from mine.

It was a good time :) I hope your teen years haven’t been too fraught with all that is happening in the world and you’re able to have your own freedoms and fun

Many happy returns, sorry you had to be born into this post 9/11 mess.

I was in college, in the process of discovering a lot of things. It was a very formative year for me and I don’t necessarily regret my choices but I wish I’d have had some more discipline during that time.

The housing crisis and recession was in full swing, and my wife had to close her retail business as a consequence. Shitty times, but absolute bliss compared to today.