The Kid From The Big Apple

Sarah reluctantly moved to Malaysia to stay with a grandfather whom she had never met before as her mother had to visit China to resolve work-related problems. Initially, Sarah refused to adapt to her grandfather's traditional cultural practice, such as eating chicken feet for breakfast, and the local community and she thought that they were disgusting. Despite the best efforts of her grandfather to re-create a familiar environment for Sarah by recreating western dishes that Sarah is familiar with using local substitutes, Sarah only ate chips that she brought over from New York and refused to communicate with her grandfather. Defeated, Sarah's grandfather turned to Ah Bao, a neighbour who claims to speak English, to translate his instructions in Chinese and Cantonese to Sarah. Annoyed but later amused at his poor command of English, Sarah starts to take an interest in the surrounding neighbourhood. She also reveals that she can actually understand and speak Chinese, much to her grandfather's relief. Slowly, she starts interacting with the children around the neighbourhood, who included her in their activities, and starts adapting to the local environment. She also began to interact with her grandfather and a bond starts to form between them. Between the scenes of interactions between Sarah and her grandfather, there were also flashbacks that revealed the strained relationship between Sarah's mother and grandfather. It was revealed that Sarah's mother, unmarried and pregnant with Sarah, had a strong argument with her father (Sarah's grandfather) who was strongly against her moving to New York City to live with her boyfriend. She disregarded his advice and ran away from home, never contacting him for decades while perusing a career as a fashion designer whilst balancing her role of a single mother after Sarah's father abandoned her.