Having lived in my neighbourhood for the last twenty years, rather atypical for a singaporean, the one change that disturbs me - rather than merely annoys me - is the removal of the old Jurong East Bus Interchange. This is part of a pattern that has taken place all over Singapore: construction will begin on some gigantic new mall-cinema-bus- ( Read more... )

Walked past Rochor Centre on the way to meet a friend. Passed a row of shops selling Chinese prayer goods: altars stacked up like new housing estates still awaiting their inhabitants, bales of joss sticks waiting to go up in smoke, and a generous pension in paper assets.

Perhaps it was how their neighbourhood was numbered that made me think of LKY's ( Read more... )

On my way home, I saw them tearing down the Empress cinema standing at the bend of Clementi Avenue 3. This had been long coming - the place had been boarded up for what seems like years - and in a process not unfamiliar to me (the unseen currents of progress have very visible results) the demolition started at a corner and ate its way in ( Read more... )

Each departure comes in its own flavour. Sending friends off is perhaps the lightest: we give encouraging smiles as they cross to their destiny with efficient ease through the automated immigration counters (for Singaporeans only), and we check if Popeye's is open before heading back on the MRT to normal life ( Read more... )

There is a memory I have in the venerable Singaporean tradition of the National Service Reminiscence that, for the longest time (five or six years perhaps), I've attempted to consign to poetry, but might as well set down in prose now that the former has largely abandoned me. It was one of my last few guard duties - maybe the last one - before I was ( Read more... )

Here I dream almost every time I sleep, which I find slightly unusual: I don't recall dreaming so much at home (except in times of stress), and most of the dreams, though not necessarily disturbing are particularly vivid, coming across with a brightness and colour that i remember when awake, even after the plots lose out to daily life.

( Read more... )

On Friday, our seventh day in Bali, we were invited to an Odalan - a Balinese temple festival - by Pak Nyoman, Niky's old teacher. As customary, we dressed in the traditional Balinese style: the guys had an udeng worn on the head, a sarong with a saput over it held together by a sash, and a white shirt. Meanwhile, the girls wore a white kebaya over ( Read more... )

A couple of years back, when I was more actively involved in volunteer work befriending HIV+ patients, I remember talking to one particular man who I suppose was fairly advanced in the disease, he was quite emaciated, and in addition to his regular treatment, was also undergoing physiotheraphy to help him build back strength in his legs so he could ( Read more... )

I'm not very good at identifying trees, which is something I share, I suspect, with most city kids of my generation. Still, I know the tree outside the gate of my HUDC's estate, just before the junction, is a Mango: every so often the grass and pathway beneath it becomes littered with split mangoes that have fallen from its branches ( Read more... )

My uncle is a retired military man, and traces of his former profession show in his almost comical sense of order and organisation; he has, for instance, left labels on almost every jar in the kitchen: salt, sugar, coffeemate, etc. This precision extends to the altar: he took it from our grandparents house and set it up in his own home almost ( Read more... )