I was not present for the actual day presentation of the eight photos depicting HOME so everything is here in this post. These are my eight photos that show what HOME means to me.

To me, the most important thing about home would be the people who live in it. And the most important people in my life would be my family. This is a photo of a photograph taken in 2003 and it was our first overseas family vacation together. As you can see, I am a triplet with an older brother and then my mum and dad.

These bunch of people are my second family when bad things happen between me and my family. These are my close friends from CJ and all of them are younger than me by one year except for one of the guys. When I retained in CJ, they did not look down on me or treated my age difference as a big issue. They were the ones who were there for me and made JC life a whole lot more fun and easier, like letting me copy their homework and helping me answer questions in class when the teacher called me and bringing food so I won’t be hungry.

This was my pet rabbit. His name is Smudge. He passed away two years ago but he brought a lot of joy to my family. I would always look forward to going home as I would be able to see him, and he would always comfort me when I am down or be my chill buddy and both of us would just lie on the floor doing nothing. My mum loves him a lot too and she would always talk to him and bathe him every week. If you look closely, at the top of the page you can see his teeth marks. He used to love to go around biting and chewing random stuff.

Another aspect of home would be the objects that make each home unique and different and personal. The most important object in my home would be my childhood pillow. His name is Ted and he is actually one year older than me. I would always bring him around, be it hall, home, overseas, chalet, hospital stays. With him around, I would sleep a lot easier and a lot better and when my mood sucks or I am very stressed out, I would hug him and that really helps a lot in comforting me.

This is my laptop. Why it is important to me is because it is my first every laptop (because my siblings and I used to share computers) and it is a macbook (I always wanted a macbook because I thought they were cool). Also, it shows my dad’s love for me because it is a really expensive laptop and he still got it for me. You may think that is what every parent would do but my situation is a little bit different. I’m a bitch child meaning I give my dad a lot of problems because we are not close since I was young and so I would ignore him often and not listen to him and blackface him a lot at home. And even after all the anger and headaches I caused him, he still got what I wanted and that really meant a lot to me.

This is a rabbit stuff toy and it doesn’t belong to me, but rather belongs to my mum. However, I felt that this was a very significant object in my home as my mum bought it after Smudge passed away to remember him. She would carry it around at home, be it sleeping or watching television or doing her work. I thought it was really cute and it does remind me of Smudge as well. Hence, I took this picture.

Another aspect that defines home for me would be the lifestyle or activities. This is just the oil we use to cook our meals. What I wanted to show through this photo was the importance of cooking in my family. Our parents wanted to make us more independent and hence started teaching us how to cook. And my dad decided that every Saturday would be Children’s Cooking Day where my siblings and I would be in charge of cooking lunch and dinner for the family on that Saturday. During that period of time, I hated Saturdays as the whole day would be spent on getting the groceries, cooking and cleaning up the kitchen.

This photo shows the notes written by my mum when we started cooking. On that paper was a list of meals that she would often cook and the ingredients and instructions on how to cook them. She did this so that whenever we do not have ideas on what to cook, we can just refer to that piece of paper. Also, since there are instructions on it, we do not have to worry about our mum not being in the house when we are cooking as we can just refer to that sheet of paper. It can still be found on the refrigerator door after four years (explains why the words are faded).