Our (shared) secret history: Reader email

On February 24, 2005 · 19 Comments · In Living

…I agree about the pace of change and what with this whole ST inter­ac­tive crap, it just accel­er­ates the feel­ing that we have lost some of our iden­tity and ‘anchor’ to the Sin­ga­pore that we grew up. Too much change with shiny, pla­s­ticky, con­trived ‘enter­tain­ment’ offer­ings are de riguer in Sin­ga­pore and just about every devel­oped coun­try nowadays.

I’m Antipodean-Singaporean :) I spent most of my life grow­ing up in Sin­ga­pore and now live in Syd­ney. I loved my child­hood, ‘that’ Sin­ga­pore that I knew. I remem­ber at pri­mary school, recess was a trea­sured time because being a sickly child, I was pro­hib­ited from hav­ing any­thing remotely fried, fatty, salty and sweet. In other words, any­thing that was tasty. Recess then, was my free­dom. I would go the whole hog with choco­late (20c), kachang puteh (20c), char kway teow, King’s ice cream, sweet cor­dial (10c). A kid could gorge him­self on $1 a day.

And as if that wasn’t enough, after school, we (my brother and I) would cross the pedes­trian bridge over Jalan Toa Payoh and wait for mum/grandad to pick us up. Inevitably, there would be the ice-cream man, you know, the guy on a motor­bike with a side­car full of Meadow Gold/Magnolia/Walls ice creams wait­ing for us. And of course I would stuff my face. If mum picked us up, we wouldn’t dare for fear of catch­ing hell for ruin­ing our appetite. But if it was Grandad, man oh man, noth­ing like a grandfather’s love to stuff our­selves full of ice cream :)

Grandad’s gone now and so’s the school. Only the build­ing is left (I’ll give you a hint, it’s pink and it’s got scales. Oh yeah and we used to whup anyone’s ass in the A/B/C div rugby comps in the 80s.…. :) But every time I’m in Sin­ga­pore, invari­ably I would pass the build­ing, the bridge and the mem­o­ries will come back. (Darn this speck in my eye! ;)

A part of me will always be there, as a kid of 10, hav­ing that Choc Fudge bar (TWO ice cream sticks in one. Whoa).

Thanks for the great blog and the points you raised.….I’m try­ing to dredge more from the depths of my mem­ory (not so young leh, ‘cos I can still remem­ber the first McDonald’s that ever opened in Singapore.…..maybe a story for another time)

Cheers,

Damian

The first McDon­alds opened on 27th Octo­ber 1979 at Liat Tow­ers (where Zara is now) and I used to keep the sty­ro­foam Big Mac boxes to use as lunch­boxes for school.


Sin­ga­pore Inter­na­tional Airport

iTunes’ party shuf­fle is play­ing a copy of: Ojos Negros — Stephane Grap­pelli — 85 And Still Swing­ing, of which I have the orig­i­nal CD and there­fore didn’t steal music.
 
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  • http://www.blogger.com/profile/4214081 Ah 9

    I miss the good old days of green coin phones, all the elbows out of the car win­dows, old plaza sin­ga­pura Yao­han, the tikum pack­ets, and heck alot of stuff. Though i may not have seen as much you did, but i real­ize i was old enough to have seen Sin­ga­pore made the big leap…so many things/places kena mod­ern­ize in afew years so fast…when the yes­ter­years seem so ‘for­ever’ back then. :|

  • http://www.blogger.com/profile/4214081 Ah 9

    I miss the good old days of green coin phones, all the elbows out of the car win­dows, old plaza sin­ga­pura Yao­han, the tikum pack­ets, and heck alot of stuff. Though i may not have seen as much you did, but i real­ize i was old enough to have seen Sin­ga­pore made the big leap…so many things/places kena mod­ern­ize in afew years so fast…when the yes­ter­years seem so ‘for­ever’ back then. :|

  • http://www.blogger.com/profile/4579228 Knightof­Pen­ta­cles

    Mr Miyagi, you cer­tainly know how to tug at the heart­strings. Unfor­tu­nately the heart attached to those strings has been since shat­tered many times over.

    With the notable excep­tion of a few human rela­tion­ships, there is very lit­tle left to hold my heart to this land anymore.

    Even in the worst of eco­nomic down­turns, even in the worst of exter­nal threats (real or alleged), even in the worst of polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tions.. we serfs want to look around and say “this is the house I grew up in and where I peed behind that tree” or “this is the patch of sand where I played gor­lee (mar­bles) and got whacked by the local ah seng” or “this is the hump where I crashed my first BMX bicy­cle and cut my leg badly and got rushed to the hospital”.

    For us serfs totally unin­ter­ested in lofty the­o­ries, this is who we are. Take that away from us (in the name of progress, or what­ever) and you take away part of who we are.

    Peo­ple do not give up their lives (lit­er­ally or fig­u­ra­tively) for 99-year HDB flats, 10-year COE cars or NSS/ERP shares. It is about look­ing around and think­ing this is where I belong and think­ing there­fore this is where I will bring up my kids in .

    The Sin­ga­pore I know and love is fast becom­ing an unper­son — to steal an idea from 1984.

    The SAF recruit­ment poster says: “From this land, we are made. For this land, we will fight.” It rings hol­low to my ears. The prob­lem is.. the land from which I was made does not exist any­more. Instead, we have the Fab­ri­ca­tion of a Nation, indeed!

    “Because every place I hold close to my heart in Sin­ga­pore is rapidly being torn down, rede­vel­oped and upgraded into glitzy sou­less tourist attrac­tions.” - from Emi­gra­tion Essay

  • http://www.blogger.com/profile/4579228 Knightof­Pen­ta­cles

    Mr Miyagi, you cer­tainly know how to tug at the heart­strings. Unfor­tu­nately the heart attached to those strings has been since shat­tered many times over.

    With the notable excep­tion of a few human rela­tion­ships, there is very lit­tle left to hold my heart to this land anymore.

    Even in the worst of eco­nomic down­turns, even in the worst of exter­nal threats (real or alleged), even in the worst of polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tions.. we serfs want to look around and say “this is the house I grew up in and where I peed behind that tree” or “this is the patch of sand where I played gor­lee (mar­bles) and got whacked by the local ah seng” or “this is the hump where I crashed my first BMX bicy­cle and cut my leg badly and got rushed to the hospital”.

    For us serfs totally unin­ter­ested in lofty the­o­ries, this is who we are. Take that away from us (in the name of progress, or what­ever) and you take away part of who we are.

    Peo­ple do not give up their lives (lit­er­ally or fig­u­ra­tively) for 99-year HDB flats, 10-year COE cars or NSS/ERP shares. It is about look­ing around and think­ing this is where I belong and think­ing there­fore this is where I will bring up my kids in .

    The Sin­ga­pore I know and love is fast becom­ing an unper­son — to steal an idea from 1984.

    The SAF recruit­ment poster says: “From this land, we are made. For this land, we will fight.” It rings hol­low to my ears. The prob­lem is.. the land from which I was made does not exist any­more. Instead, we have the Fab­ri­ca­tion of a Nation, indeed!

    “Because every place I hold close to my heart in Sin­ga­pore is rapidly being torn down, rede­vel­oped and upgraded into glitzy sou­less tourist attrac­tions.” - from Emi­gra­tion Essay

  • http://www.blogger.com/profile/2124653 cour marly

    My fam­ily (along with grandma vis­it­ing) actu­ally went to open­ing day of McD’s at Liat Tow­ers. Grandma loved the free pen­cils they were giv­ing away and she took me and my brother past the pen­cil guy mul­ti­ple (mul­ti­ple!) times to amass a gigan­tic bunch of pen­cils. There might still be some in the house.

  • http://www.blogger.com/profile/2124653 cour marly

    My fam­ily (along with grandma vis­it­ing) actu­ally went to open­ing day of McD’s at Liat Tow­ers. Grandma loved the free pen­cils they were giv­ing away and she took me and my brother past the pen­cil guy mul­ti­ple (mul­ti­ple!) times to amass a gigan­tic bunch of pen­cils. There might still be some in the house.

  • http://www.blogger.com/profile/191612 nat

    Every Sin­ga­porean politi­cian who thinks Sin­ga­pore­ans are apa­thetic should read blog posts like this one.

    The days being described here are a bit before my time (I’m 24), but I can relate to the sen­ti­ment. It’s hard to feel rooted here, beyond just the vague feel­ing that I grew up here (of course there’s the fact that my fam­ily are all here). Build­ings that have been around for decades can be torn down in days, and the area can so quickly look like those build­ings never existed. Yet build­ings that are sup­posed to be around only for months look so per­ma­nent. If you’ve ever had tem­po­rary mar­kets etc while the orig­i­nal premises were being ren­o­vated, you’d know what I mean.

  • http://www.blogger.com/profile/191612 nat

    Every Sin­ga­porean politi­cian who thinks Sin­ga­pore­ans are apa­thetic should read blog posts like this one.

    The days being described here are a bit before my time (I’m 24), but I can relate to the sen­ti­ment. It’s hard to feel rooted here, beyond just the vague feel­ing that I grew up here (of course there’s the fact that my fam­ily are all here). Build­ings that have been around for decades can be torn down in days, and the area can so quickly look like those build­ings never existed. Yet build­ings that are sup­posed to be around only for months look so per­ma­nent. If you’ve ever had tem­po­rary mar­kets etc while the orig­i­nal premises were being ren­o­vated, you’d know what I mean.

  • http://www.blogger.com/profile/651511 Daryl

    Inci­den­tally, the Liat Tow­ers McDonald’s was the busiest McDonald’s in the world in the year it opened, IIRC.

  • http://www.blogger.com/profile/651511 Daryl

    Inci­den­tally, the Liat Tow­ers McDonald’s was the busiest McDonald’s in the world in the year it opened, IIRC.

  • http://www.blogger.com/profile/1700143 Mr Miyagi

    Yeah, sold a record num­ber of burg­ers in a day or some­thing like.

  • http://www.blogger.com/profile/1700143 Mr Miyagi

    Yeah, sold a record num­ber of burg­ers in a day or some­thing like.

  • Shawn

    Most of my fond­est mem­o­ries are actu­ally those from my pri­mary school days.

    The 1-leg games dur­ing recess, hide-and-seek at the play­ground oppo­site my school…the ones with those metal bridges and fire­man pole.

    Play­ing ‘catch­ing’ at the multi-storey carpark.

    Buy­ing swee­t­eened coloured drinks from the uncle out­side our school and get­ting stomache.

    Going to school through uncon­ven­tional ways like under the drain, or down from a ‘hill’ slope.

    And more..but they are slowly fad­ing away…

  • Shawn

    Most of my fond­est mem­o­ries are actu­ally those from my pri­mary school days.

    The 1-leg games dur­ing recess, hide-and-seek at the play­ground oppo­site my school…the ones with those metal bridges and fire­man pole.

    Play­ing ‘catch­ing’ at the multi-storey carpark.

    Buy­ing swee­t­eened coloured drinks from the uncle out­side our school and get­ting stomache.

    Going to school through uncon­ven­tional ways like under the drain, or down from a ‘hill’ slope.

    And more..but they are slowly fad­ing away…

  • http://wurh.com ci’en

    I like this mr miyagi, this trig­gers off a lot of nos­tal­gia. remem­ber when going to Swensens at Thomp­son Yao­han was such a big deal as a kid? those were the days.

  • http://wurh.com ci’en

    I like this mr miyagi, this trig­gers off a lot of nos­tal­gia. remem­ber when going to Swensens at Thomp­son Yao­han was such a big deal as a kid? those were the days.

  • http://www.blogger.com/profile/1700143 Mr Miyagi

    Swensens Thom­son Plaza is still there! Went there with a friend last year, and couldn’t stop laugh­ing think­ing about how it was when we used to bring dates there because it was the posh­est place in the area.

  • http://www.blogger.com/profile/1700143 Mr Miyagi

    Swensens Thom­son Plaza is still there! Went there with a friend last year, and couldn’t stop laugh­ing think­ing about how it was when we used to bring dates there because it was the posh­est place in the area.

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