The night is long,the dreams are many

when it is still and quiet on a night like this and you are fast asleep,then you have a chance to have many dreams.the cantonese idiom say yeh cheong mong door.so when you have lived long enough,you will have gotten the chance to realize many dreams. when i was small and the whole family was staying in one bedroom sharing one toilet cum bathroom,i always dreamed of living in a proper home with sofa,curtains and pictures hanging on a wall.now ive realised the dream of buying my own home with a comfortably decorated 3 bedrooms ,2 bathrooms,a garden balcony and even a rocking chair outside with a trickling fountain.im contented. when i was growing up,i dreamed of working as an air hostess and travelling around the world.now ive realised the dream of travelling to many places from Europe,China ,the US and even my dream destination Bhutan.so ive no regrets in this as life has been good to me. so my moms dream was for her daughters to be financially independent and have a resilient character.i hope i have fulfilled her expectations.i hope my students will remember me as inspiring them to give their best shot in life and follow their dreams.im proud of my indian engineering student who was studying in Germany and was bold enough to publish a book of his poetry in English.i hope ive inspired him to love the power of performance poetry.i hope ive inspired my male student to recite love poems to chase after the girl he loved.i hope ive inspired my male student who graduated in economics and went to Australia to pursue his dream to be a speech therapist. i m now at the twilight years of my life but i dteam one day of seeing my scripts will become a printed book or a manga anime or a movie.so when the night is long,the dreams are many. i also am proud of my cultural identity and remember my roots.living in a shophouse in a city,we had an idyllic childhood sneaking a peek at comics of beano in MS Ali the indian muslim bookshops or buying pastry from English hotbreads or gping to Mak Yee restaurant for cantonese cuisine.today i went to eat at the food court in damansara jaya.i ordered a claypot chicken rice and a soyabean drink.the drink hawker at Kimi drink stall still remembered our family and asked how my mother was.i havent gone thete for over 20 years but she recognised me as she said i looked the same.i told her my mom has passed away and ive moved to stay in another part of town.she still remembeted my blind elder sister whom mom took her there to enjoy street food.i told her i will take my blind elder sister there to eat one day.she enjoys the mixed rice sold there.she sighed as she said how fast time flies,now her hair is all white while weve all grown older.i try to patronize the wet market and street food traders as they are hardworking and deserve a break in life.