"The one about my old hometown..."

I can't help but have an embedded sense of fondness towards Kota Kinabalu. Without being ostentatious, every visit back here reminds me a lot about my upbringing and long-lived history with a city which once only had one McD and one Pizza Hut outlet. A place where the idea of a day's out had rarely involved spending precarious time in shopping malls and other man-made establishments. Here, when you spend a day out, you spend it in the most literal sense - outside interaction with nature and it's simplicity.

But perhaps the most enviable aspect of Kota Kinabalu, was how you'd usually end your day. By lounging the straits of the beaches; with a bag of steamed peanuts or corn in one hand and jambu batu (with layers and layers of jeruk, of course!) on the other. Miles and miles of beaches separate you with the ambient South China Sea, in midst of children making sand castles and youngsters having a go at beach soccer. The atmosphere is a mix of local vocals as you share sand space with not only Malays, Chinese and Indians - but also Kadazans, Bajaus and Muruts, among others. In the confines of that ecosystem, the harmony of multi-racism is not only pungently intoxicating, but somewhat natural. Thanks to its abundance of mixed marriages, Sabah is one of very (very) few places where racial tolerance is at its best practiced.

And as you bask in the panoramic yellow and orange sunsets Tanjung Aru has on offer, you constantly assure yourself that there isn't a place better to live your livelihood than KK.

(No visit to KK would be complete without at least a fix of this local delicacy - Yoyo milky tea.)

KK is a harbormaster of many wonderful childhood memories I've experienced in my life. In retrospect, it had garnered significant effect in sculpting my very persona as a grown individual today. I have come to accept KK as my hometown over the years, and it just melts my heart to see how far this city's grown since those days of yesteryear's. Like a proud parent, you look forward to its progression but deep inside you are yourself hesitant to its change. In all honesty, I hope the city I once called home would not lose its identity among erections of those new malls and flyovers.

Whatever future that lies ahead, KK will always remind me of all those bittersweet times I've shared on its soil.

And it's amplified come every visit, every time, every occasion I step forth on its land again.

-JeP

P.S : Back from a-weeks worth of paperwork and bureaucratic red tapes; guess who now has the permission to marry? ;D