One winter, there was an incredible snow storm which left a layer of snow as high as my hips; granted, I was nine so hip-level snow was like knee high snow for an adult. Along a fence at school were snow drifts that were impressive to a class of nine year olds. Armed with only snow pants that were hardly water proof and winter gloves that were equally so, we set out to dig tunnels and a fort out of the snow.

We worked like ants, clearing out paths and gutting out hollows. Soon we had a venerable city underneath this drift of snow.

Now I, being the industrious one, took on the initiative to add a small side tunnel to connect to the adjacent one for feng shui. This part I only vaguely remember. A girl on the outside told me not to dig through the wall for some reason, and I ignored her cause girls are stupid. I began with my index finger scraping a little area in the middle of the tunnel until my finger got to the other side. "Good start," I thought and promptly took my finger out to admire my handy work.

Then the entire structure above me collapsed like a ton of bricks, or snow as it were. Somehow I had got my head out of the tunnel in the split second that gravity took hold of the avalanche of snow. I was looking up at the sky feeling the crush of what could have been the Stay Puft Marshmellow Man sitting on my chest. Was it ever hard to breath.

All the kids immediately stopped what they were doing and began excavating me out of the rubble.

No one knew how it happened except me.

There was a time in Internet history where money and free stuff flowed like milk and honey. The "dot com bubble" they call it. Free stuff here, money for doing next to nothing; you got money just for surfing the web. There was one company, AllAdvantage, which paid around $0.50/hour as long as you displayed some ads at the bottom of your page.

Quick search (this was before they called it "googling" and Yahoo! was king) on the Internet revealed programs that would simulate web surfing. Instant free money for doing nothing.

Maybe this is why the dot com bubble popped. Too much money being thrown around for ideas that simply weren't profitable.

Every Valentine's in junior high, the school would do "bear hugs". In essence, they were little cards, photocopied multiple times onto deep-pink coloured pieces of paper which for the cost of $1, you could send to a valentine.

In grade 7, I received one of these. The delivery kid came to the door and started announcing names. The very last name that was called was mine. I was shocked -- SHOCKED. My name was called? I was then handed a little card. On the front was a stuffed bear holding a heart with the words "Bear Hug" underneath and a "To:" with my name proceeding it. Inside it was some generic message along the lines of "Happy Valentine's Day", but the important part was the line that said, "From:".

"Someone who thinks you're sweet".

To this day, I still don't know who it was.

I learned how to tie my shoes from Seasame Street. I watched Ernie do it once and then ran downstairs to grab one of my size 8 children's sneakers before he did it again. I followed along and, bam! I did it, I could tie my shoes!

That was easy.

It was time to show my mom. I ran up another flight of stairs to her bedroom where she was sleeping. I put my shoe on the bed and then began showing her my mad skillz. Boy... was that a mistake. Ernie didn't tell me not to put shoes on a bed.

Dancing was never my thing. My first girlfriend told me I danced like a fool, that I looked stupid when I danced, like Julia Louis-Dreyfus on Seinfeld without the grace. Yikes. For the longest time, I'd hate going to clubs cause I'd feel self conscious about the grandfather-clock-like arm movements and the army marching feet rhythms that I mentally pictured.

It wasn't until I met this one girl who changed it all. She said that I danced well, she said that it was fun dancing with me... she made it enjoyable for me to be on my feet. That was the only confidence booster I needed.

Sometimes, when I have those moments of self consciousness on the dance floor, I think of her and that night we danced, and then I let it flow.

We had these coloured blocks in the classroom that us kids would always play with. My particular favourites were these tan-coloured skewed diamonds. Being the clever one, I used to put two alongside each other and with my pudgy child fist, smash the tip of the diamond precipice. As expected, this resulted in the other diamond being catapulted across the room. This girl once called me a "show-off" for doing that. I bet she was just jealous because I thought of it first.

I once decided to take the bigger street home from school instead of the side streets feeling brave that day. Halfway through my epic journey, a car pulled up alongside me and the woman driver rolled down her driver side window. She called up to me.

I had learned enough about strangers to know better than to stop and listen to her, so I just kept walking on. She yelled out to tell me that I had dropped my sweatshirt. I looked back cautiously keeping one eye on her driver side door. On the sidewalk 20 feet away was the sweatshirt I had tied around my waist (because it was a cool thing to do back then). I thanked the lady and scrambled to pick it up.

At about 1 AM we rolled into Reno, the "biggest little city in the world". We had just driven from Bishop, California, taking the long way through the crazy windy mountain roads of the Nevada Sierra instead of the easy way through Cali. We were warned that our car needed chains if we were to take the easy way. I saw more stars at the top of the mountains than I never knew existed.

In Reno, we sat in a lit multi-story parking lot of one of the bigger little casinos calling hotels to look for a place to stay. Everything was out of our cheap road trip price range, so we decided to do some touring of the local casino scene.

At around 3:30 AM we decided to crash, sleep that is, in the car. Having come from Las Vegas earlier in the day, criss crossing across the state borders multiple times, and visiting attractions here and there, we were exhausted. I was about to collapse since I was the one who drove.

We pulled through a neighbourhood and my co-traveller decided we should bunk down there. Outside was a different scene. Run down houses, cars with seniority over my age, neighbours up in the middle of the night heading out to god-knows-where.

She thought I was paranoid and I thought she was naïve. although we didn't get into an argument, it got pretty close. So I conceded and we reclined our seats all the way back and set up camp.

After a miserable duration of time in the chilly 10c (50F) cold, she decided to crawl into the back seat, not before knocking my glasses off the middle console and then stepping on them. They were bent, but salvageable.

She tossed and turned. I tossed and turned. After some time of listening to cars backfire and cruising through the neighbourhood. I spoke up, "forget it, I'm just going to keep driving to Tahoe." It was probably 5AM then. Did I actually fall asleep?

The mood was sombre, we weren't talking to each other, although in retrospect, she may have been sleeping and I was trying not to.

By the time we arrived in Tahoe, (going through Carson City first -- hey, the road trip must continue) dawn was breaking. There was snow all around us. Somehow though, it was warmer. We found another covered casino parking lot, and slept. Things became better after that.

All everyone really needs is a good night's rest.

When we were young, the older neighbourhood grade sixers had built a clubhouse made of old wood and cardboard alongside an intersection of fences. From afar and to the unobservant, it looked more like a makeshift for the homeless than a clubhouse. To them, it was the pinnacle of ownership.

One day, I was invited to the prestigious hangout by the older kids. The area is not one I would call secluded. On one side of the fenced-in area was a major road and on the other perpendicular side was an apartment complex. Conveniently in the fence leading to the latter was a hole small enough for those 12 and under to give the children easy access to the kids on the other side as well as the playground. Outside of the clubhouse, there were a number of kids sitting in a circle passing around stuff. It looked to be the latest purchases from Scholastics. One of the older kids offered me a book, but I hesitantly declined.

Back home, I told my dad of the little adventure and in return I received a lecture about gangs and drugs.

20 years later, there isn't a single clue left in the area that would hint at a hangout ever being present there. The baby trees that held up the Maytag roof of the clubhouse are now not so baby anymore, and the hole in the fence has long been closed up with vegetation creeping through the gaps, securing the portal.

One afternoon on my way home from school in grade 2, I was walking up Yellow Birchway when I heard shouting coming from #20. It was a ladies voice coming from the garage. Being the ever cautious 7 year old, I crept up the driveway to check out the commotion. The garage door was open ajar and I could see a woman peering through it.

She told me to call the fire department because the garage door was jammed and she was stuck inside. I quickly ran the next 27 numbers to my front door and out of breath, repeated exactly what the woman had told me to my mother.

My mom dialed the number, spoke on the phone for a bit and then hung up. She told me that the fire dept had received a call about the stuck garage earlier and were already on their way. I was a little disappointed that day, because I thought I was going to be a hero.

When my grandfather moved in to live with us, he stayed in his room a lot. Most of the time, I'd only see him at meals and it was rare that I conversed with him. I guess I just had nothing to say.

One time, he called me in to his room and took out this small rectangular object from his jacket pocket. It was a brass harmonica. He put it to his lips and began playing. Actually, he first took out his dentures and set them aside, and then he started playing. I thought it was the coolest thing, the harmonica playing, not the denture removal. He would then continue to hum out a tune I couldn't recognize, but one that sounded good nonetheless.

My paternal grandfather was born in Canton, China in 1918. They didn't have formal birth certificates then and many men exaggerated their age to work, so it's the best guess at a birth year. He lived most of his 88 years of life in Hong Kong, spending several months here and there with my family in Canada and on one occasion Leeds, England.

Christmas Day 1941, World War 2: Japan had invaded Hong Kong and established rule of the (then) country. At the time my grandfather was still single in his 20's. Food was scarce during the war due to hyperinflation and food rationing on Hong Kong Island where the Japanese had stationed themselves.

One day, my grandfather took a hired boat with some others to the mainland with the goal of smuggling powdered milk back for his family. On his return return to HK Island, the Japanese caught him and threw him into a concentration camp.

He never spoke much about what happened in the camp. He has only told us that his family owned a business and was able to pay money for his general well being in the camp -- however, it was a concentration camp after all, so one can only imagine how marginally better he was treated. Maybe it's better to say, that he wasn't ill treated, as in tortured. Those that were not as lucky financially were often tortured, water-boarding being the main form, and beaten.

In total, he spent a few months during the war in confinement before he was released. The mental trauma and scars of his time there, however, lasted until his passing in 2006.

Back in the mid 90's, I was in my first or second year of junior high. Me and my best friend were walking around in the ravine behind our school and we started discussing about his birthday. We talked about it and how fun it was going to be. He was going to do spin the bottle and we discussed about all the "cool" tasks that you would have to do along with the kiss when the bottle landed on you. We even decided that it would be great to play a game of twister. We were stoked.

The irony of it all was, I never got invited to the party. I was pretty disappointed, as any teenage boy would have been.

It wouldn't be until grade 11 that I would get my first "real" kiss. I put it in quotes because it was on the cheek. We were members of a paddling team and when our team got to the finish line, we were estatic - I don't remember what placed we finished. The girl in front of me, who I didn't know outside of the team and was a grade older, turned around to give me a hug and kissed me on the cheek. It was unexpected. I think that's what made my first race so memorable. The next year, after the same race, I returned the favour. It just felt like the right thing to do.