Nostalgia

okie so i can't stop blogging this easily. some things are just too blog-worthy.

went for dinner with the whole family today. been quite long since we've eaten out together all five of us. went to lavender food court and all of us ate turtle soup with yam rice et al. its been a long time since i ever had that stuff(you can see where this is going). not since we stopped eating at our regular turtle joint opposite katong mall because of some reports that turtle soup was high in mercury content(wait. was that shark's fin?!) anyway yeah, haven't eaten chao turtle for such a long time. and then we also had roasted chicken wings(the after midnite cheong at bak chor mee blk 85 type), some costly fishcake and finally some recommended pancake, courtesy of mom and dad.

talked about what i'll be doing in future, talked about fen and chuen's entering university, talked about the singapore economy, talked about chuen and fen's course and future. quite alot of stuff.

its been awhile.

so anyway we had a great dinner and chit-chat. then it was time to go home. then just on the way back, dad reminded me that his old house was just around the corner and how we used to go there for family gatherings. so i just asked if it was still around and one thing led to another and before you know it we turned a right and went into the dark banglah area in search of the site of my dad's old house.

now his old house used to be the gathering place for everyone in my dad's side of the family when my dad's mom was still alive(dad's dad passed on before i was born). i can roughly remember the times, playing with my cousins and everyone making merry over mahjong peanuts and beer(not for the kids though). absolutely old school bell-bottoms yonex shorts and all. back then it was the tallest new hdb flat(6 storey) in the jalan besar area. pretty swank if you'd ask me.

its since been torn down quite a good 10 years ago to make way for new and taller hdb flats liao. however when we reached there we still saw certain things that were familiar to me. like the old shophouse where i used to buy sweets from. i remember they cost 10c for 3 crummy sweets. the old couple who owns it actually still owns it though i doubt they remember me. apart from that the only other surviving construction i could remember was the alley way past the old playground. nothing much about it except that i've seen it enough to remember it. aside from that everything else was now flat soil. construction still underway.

i think about 10 years ago when they decided to tear this place down dad did bring me over one final time to take a look and he kinda videotaped the place just for memories sake. wonder if we still have those tapes.

aside from that we also drove past the new world amusement park. if anyone recollects anything about this place do let me know. i only know that i used to go there pretty often with my cousins and with my parents. details i dunno. for now, only the run down chained up entrance serves as living memory of its existence. mom says there're building something else in there.

from there we thought that it might be a good idea to visit the first house that my parents bought! it was pretty close by, at serangoon, called jalan riang. which was beside jalan ria. haha imagine trying to direct friends to your place - "you said ria or riang?!".

now this place hasn't changed much but that the people living there have renovated the place quite abit. old terrace neighbourhood. landed property. pretty lousy location if you'd asked me. i think i remember dad saying this place wasn't very 'clean'. still for the life of me i never could remember where on earth this place was until today. and not much has changed. its still bloody ulu.

by then i thought my bro and sis were kinda bored so i kinda suggested that since we were all together we might as well visit some place that even fen could remember. so we decided to make a trip down to fairways. our third place of residence prior to us moving to mandarin gardens. those were pretty grim times but even then dad still tried to make things work out. i mean fairways was a good condo mind you. just that its situated in telok blangah, a far cry from the serenity of the east if you'd ask me. then again it was near to dad's workplace and my primary school(where else but blangah rise pri sch).

we got to the gates and the guards thought we were residents(i think alumni residents get in free of checks too) so he let us in. we decided to go in and walk the grounds abit. dad could still remember we lived on the 8th floor. unit number #08-09. so auspicious. no wonder the times got better for us. the place hasn't changed much. everything looks alot smaller now that we're so old. bro's able to recollect more of what's been going on. fen was born while we were living here only to move a year later so she's still not seen anything familiar.

we even took the lift up to the very apartment we lived in! the walk from the lift to the old apartment was really familiar to me. and i did like that place. had a really good friend there though i never did bother to keep in contact with him. can't even remember his name.

*sigh*

finally we found that the whole market and shophouses behind fairways have changed so much we just had to drop by to take a look. gosh boy has it changed. the market is undergoing semi-renovation, but everything else looks so dead that the place looked like a ghost town. somehow people say the fengshui of the place has been turned bad by the reconstruction of the place.

the surprising part was that some of the shopowners actually recognised mom and dad! dad even had a pretty long chat with the old spectacle shop uncle and auntie he used to visit. but everyone says the place has become a ghost town since the renovations and reconstruction. true enough the feng shui of the place seemed to have altered quite alot. really just doesn't feel good around there.

in any case dad bought some durians to celebrate he occasion(he always does when he thinks its a good occasion)!

so the whole trip was a pretty nostalgic trip down memory lane. really good bonding session with the family, and got to relive some old memories. all in all we had a great family today. i'm so blessed with such a wonderful family.

*sigh*

and i'm almost past a quarter of a century old already. into the next phase i go...

so the new blog of mine should appease more people. and hopefully people are satisfied with what i've changed in my blog.

back to work tomorrow.