I lived in a quiet and calm neighborhood. Through someone else's eyes, my life would have looked dull and simple, but it is the simple things in life that have the biggest influence on the development of the mind. It is like how the magnificence of the rainbow is formed by the simple components of its colors.
             My family lived in a basement in the city of Burnaby when we first immigrated to Canada. The basement wasn't extensive, but it was simply enough. The color of the walls was very mundane, and it would be impossible not to spot blotches of gray fingerprints that were unconsciously pressed on. From the outside, a section of the house's painting was beginning to peel off, and the other portions were of dull browns, but you could tell that it had once been white. I found the basement particularly dim, but once you got used to it, you wouldn't notice. Although the conditions of the basement were not ideal, it did not bother us. This was because the basement would have been considered a large home in Hong Kong, where I emigrated from. I shared a room with my brother, but we were a bad combination because neither of us picked up after ourselves. I would occasionally get tripped over by the mess, but sometimes, when I got lucky, I wouldn't get hurt as badly. The narrow hallway of my home was where I liked to pin up my drawings. As normal as it had looked, every picture had a story behind it. The drawings reminded me of all the good times I had with my family.
             The basement I lived in was part of a house that was located at the very end of the neighborhood. On one side of the house, there stood the lifeless neighborhood, but on the other side, there laid an unusual and unoccupied pavement area just as dull. The area was immense, and it seemed impossible to get to the other side, where there stood an abandoned store. Looking at the vast vacant space made me feel like I owned half of the world. Occasionally, I c...