Rain water always collects on the road outside my home. The surrounding monsoon drains are not deep enough to drain away the gush of water flowing down from the top of the slope.
I am reminded of a childhood game my brothers and I used to play.
Whenever it rained, we would frantically scurry around for scraps of paper, typically newspaper. After some basic origami and a little ceremony, we would proudly launch our paper boats. My favourites were the houseboats, the ones with hoods. Sometimes I drew flowers on the boats, sometimes little people. Whenever there were people, I always insisted on giving them a hood. Most times my brother Peng Chuan would drop in an ant or two in these boats. Food, he would say. Then we would run all around the house tracking the boats bobbing in the rain gutter, powered by monsoon rain water.
It rarely crossed our minds then where our voyages would end up after leaving our parents’ home.
