The Glorious 90s

Most of us college/university students, regardless of race, religion or nationality, share a common heritage, one which no other age group shares with us. The generation before us would be too old while the generation after us would be too young. What is it that binds us all together? It is the 90s-the decade where everything happened.

The 90’s was a decade which saw many changes: music, fashion trends, our currency, food, education, politics, movie styles and so much more. But is there anything particular that would remind you of the 90s? Is there anything from your childhood which makes you smile every time you think about it? Here are some of the highlights of 90’s:

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Music

We all know how great music was in the 90s. Back then melodies were not cliché; lyrics held meanings and bands have numbers in their names. Remember Nirvana and their hit, Smells Like Teen Spirit? That made everyone listened to rock. What about The Cranberries and Zombie which conveyed an anti-war message to the world? It was one of those songs where everyone seemed to know the lyrics and school children, like us then were the ones going around singing, “Zombie, Zombie, Zombieeee- eah eah eah eah oh!”. Funny enough, we only knew how to sing the chorus and never really went pass that.

Does Michael Learns to Rock ring a bell? They were gods among men! Who could forget the tune of Sleeping Child and That’s Why You Go Away. It was the time when music had meanings attached to them compared to pointless/meaningless songs we listen to on radio today. Back in the 90’s, it was Paint My Love. Today we have I Fell In Love With The DJ. It’s sad to see how music has come to this.

We can never forget the King, Michael Jackson. His Majesty of Pop back then was known for his moon walks ,high-pitched “Ow”s and his relationship with Elvis Presley’s daughter. Today, anything related to paedophilia or child molestation is attributed to the fallen superstar. Remember the oxymoronic, Black or White featuring Home Alone star, Macaulay Culkin in the music video? We all knew the song and of course but we could only sing the chorus. Never went further.

School

How many of us remember being as guinea pigs for the PTS (Peperiksaan Penilaian Tahap Satu) examination? Those of us who were privileged enough to be born in 1987 were the pioneers or in other words, lab rats for this experimental paper. It was basically a large scale IQ test conducted among Standard 3 pupils. However, most of our brains were not properly developed yet back then. Only a handful of us made it through. Good for them!

We also used to have music classes incorporated in our academics. Girls loved it because it was fun and boys despised it because it was boring. We were forced to purchase plastic recorders and it was to be our primary instrument. No fancy violins, classical guitars or pianos but plain plastic, beige-coloured YAMAHA recorders. We played songs like Ais Kacang, Choo Choo Choo Keretapi and of course, our beloved Negaraku. Classic!

Remember how every school had a dentist’s room? It was already scary enough to go see the dentist but back then, the dentist came to us… in a government van! At the same time, brushing our teeth after recess was made mandatory. It proved unpopular among us because it meant we had to sacrifice 10 minutes of our precious recess time. No kid likes to be told to rush his food! We were also given so called dental report cards where the dentist would mark on a diagram which tooth was pulled out or which had cavity in it. And at the end of the year, they would return the card back to us and the horrible truth of the state of our teeth would be revealed to us, much to our horror most of the time.

Entertainment

Oh yes, cartoons! No childhood is complete without cartoons. How many of us remember waking up early on Saturday mornings to watch cartoon all the way till noon? Kids nowadays are pampered with cable television and 24-hours of cartoons. And if that’s not enough, they have more than 1 channel devoted entirely to cartoons and cartoons only. Talking about spoilt kids! Cartoons that were worth waking up for were Thunder Cats, G.I Joe, Smurfs, Care Bears, He-Man, Transformers and etc. It is a waste that kids today just don’t get to watch these classic works of art anymore. In the 90’s, watching cartoons was our typical Saturday morning.

Remember the video games back in the 90’s? We did not have fancy state-of-the-art consoles to play with. No Playstation, X-Box or Wii. All that we had were ancient machines to today’s standards, called the Atari and Micro Genius. We were obsessed with Super Mario, Donkey Kong and Pac Man. Games such as these were on cartridges which required us to blow the dust off from the inside every time before jacking them into the slots. Speaking of gadgets, nothing beats the classic Tamagotchi and Digimon. It was the digital pet mania. We just loved it, didn’t we?

We never knew who was Hiro Nakamura or Michael Scofield during the 90’s. Our television heroes back then were Power Rangers, Transformers, Captain Planet and so many more. Take Power Rangers for example. During the 90’s, the series was at its purest form. Remember Zordon and the annoying robot slave of his, Alpha? Today we have a whole range of abomination such as Power Rangers: Time Force, Power Rangers: Dino Thunder and the most recent Power Rangers: Jungle Fury. All these are blasphemy to us all who grew up watching the original, uncorrupted version of the series. Please bring originality back!

To conclude, we may never travel back in time and re-live our childhood days again. However, we can always look back and be thankful for the 90’s. It was our childhood and will always be a part of us that will remain close to our hearts. So, it doesn’t matter really, if we are from opposite ends of the globe. What matters is that we all grew up in this golden age and had a smashing time. Long live the 90’s!