at age 4, my family moved from the town that was originally my birth place to a different town in a different island.
since it was my father's job demands, we moved to a home in the housing complex where the office itself located in the same place.
the housing is located on a fringe area of a very busy industrial town.
stories said that the location was once a palm plantation, about 5 km from a well known tobacco plantation area.
even when all the palm trees was chopped down and the location being converted for the housing, the wild animals that had live in it for ages are not gone, at least not all of them.
and so they become a part of our daily life.
dealing with cobras below your windows sill was hardly a big news.
nor handling the wind-rifled hunters that breaks in to kill the wild birds.
the sight of the blooming flowers were beaten only by the hummingbirds that floated around them.
bats and civets were our competitors in picking the ripe fruits.
they won, naturally.
as a child, I always felt the home was a detached part of the world outside of it.
just once I felt the safe zone perimeter was broke, when I can hear the AK-47 firings at the infamous 1998 riots.
other than that, the days lived were boundless, doubtless.
not ever worrying about the future, nor pondering about the past.
barely remember how I go there in the first place, and never really care about it.
in there, growing up is just something a laugh away.
that place, that home, was my Neverland.
