This particular trip will be a short and rushed trip since it was for work. However, there are a few must-dos items on my agenda list. Food, food and more food! Here we go:
For a start, who cares about the lame breakfast at the hotel? Nothing beats local delights! Barley water + Zui Guay!
Local folks love watching lame Taiwanese soap operas.
My TOP priority item, soup prawn mee!!!!!
Roti Prata!!!
Very local soda with a kick poo name!
Fish porridge
Oh yes, the best sports drink in the world with a light carbonation to really wash it down your throat, in a very nice way!
Here's its knock-off competitor. Actually it's produced by the largest beverage company in Singapore.
One of the most irreplaceable drink on the shelf.
Nasi-Lemak. Light coconut flavored rice with really simple dishes wrapped in banana leaf. Such a humble delicacy!
This cow tongue thingy is actually grilled fish paste called Ota.
Very nice meal of mixed Indian dishes on rice.
Potato Curry Puff!
BEEF HOFAN!!!!!!!!
Something that was everywhere but never a real fan of.
Vegetarian mixed dishes ( I didn't realize it was vegetarian until I had it in my mouth.)
Can't bring the real thing home, so here's the next best thing...
WOAH New flavors!!!
Going to Singapore is also very much a memory lane for me, especially the place where I spent most of my childhood at. The community that I live in had such a nice space and environment. Huge pools and the largest amenities one can imagine, and a space so big that is unimaginable in Singapore. It's a wonder how such a place can still exist in Singapore, and how I could have left. It's not just my memory of growing up, but also memories of my dog.
Anyways, no matter how tight of a schedule I had, how hot it was and how far away I was from this place, I had to revisit it. It was like my soul searching trip, and I had to do it the ONLY way that it should be done. By MRT! You see, MRT was our main transport in Singapore, so the trip towards the home station was a familiar journey that had to be relived. Arriving at the station, it just seemed that time went back in space. Yes things changed. In fact, pretty much everything changed, but it was the same platform, same escalators, same overpass, same air.
Without much delay, I headed toward my old place which was a 10min walk. This short 10min walk seemed to be much shorter than I remembered. May be my legs grew longer? Maybe I was THAT much more looking forward to it than before? I don't know. It just seemed that the world shrunk a bit. Everything had changed one way or another, until the moment I reached the road... THE ROAD that I had called home for 11 years. Jalan Lempeng! Walking down the pedestrian way and through the community gate, looking down at the black and white stone path and the grass, then moving my eyes up at the buildings, the plants, landscape.... I felt as though I had just came back from school, as though I had just been away for a short moment. I felt I never left and that I want to be here. Never been hit by nostalgia this hard in my life before, and it felt more real than anything I've experienced in recent years.
And I had to take the walk that I've always taken countless times, cutting across the parking lot and grass straight for my building. Yes the color changed a bit, but it's still all the same to me. Then pass the elevators and straight to the back where the mail box was where I used to check for mails. Then into the elevator where I'd hit 11. The door opened and I found myself staring right at my home, except it was my home anymore. The colors have changed. It used to be dark brown with metal gate before the wooden door, where my dog would impatiently wait for me to open it. Things have changed, but my feelings haven't.
Then back downstairs where the gigantic awesome pool was. I regretted that I didn't use it nearly as often as I should towards the later years of my stay here. Now I appreciate every bit of it.
Around the pool was the tennis courts, and behind that are two thick bushes full of memories too.... as in, filled with tennis balls that were stuck in it from the games beside it. I would bring my dog here and she would just dive into the bushes and find herself about 20 balls each trip. 20 FREE TENNIS BALLS FOR A GOLDEN RETRIEVER is probably like freaking Christmas, and it was Christmas every week for her.
Then back out through the back gate and on my way to the park where I used to walk her and play fetch. There used to be thunderstorm so loud and heavy that the sand pits would be flooded in no time. The storm would clear quickly and so will the frogs. They will arrive at the water logged sand pits before anyone else and before long you will find long strains of frog eggs across the water filled sand pits like highways running across cities.
There used to be fish/turtle orgy every time someone approaches the pool as the creatures expect your to throw bread at them. There's none now. All gone.
And just as I was thinking about the good times, heavy drops of rain started to fell, a really bad sign in Singapore. I then made my way towards town where the MRT station was, eager to check out what's going on over there as well. This was the place I did more of my living needs. The bank where I withdrew my allowances, the bakery where I got breakfast supplies, the supermarket where I picked up groceries, the bookstore that I frequent for everything from textbooks to Tamiya mini 4WD kits, the video game shops where I drool at, the hawker centers where I had the best sugar cane juice and sweet bean curd deserts, the shoe store that I bought the same old white shoes for school, the fabric store where I bought cheap cloths for my various school projects(including a hand sewn Orlando Magic Shaq jersey that I insisted in sewing it by myself) the McDonald's where I hung out with classmates after school, the busses I used to take, the cheap movie theater that I watched all of the 90s classics and the bicycle shop where I over filled my tire with its air compressor with a burst so loud I ran away hoping no one saw it.
Almost everything changed. The bookstore was gone, now an art supply store. The bank was long acquired by another. The bicycle shops aren't there anymore and I can imagine the then aging owners retiring for good. The video game stores are long being replaced by online downloads. The movie theater was quite run down anyways, and naturally had to be gone. There's now a huge apartment building towering over the main alley so the skyline is completely different. However, it is all these changes that those remain the same became extraordinarily special and outstanding.
The fabric store was still there. McDonald's never left, but just moved. The supermarket was pretty irreplaceable, and the picture frame shop remained completely intact, just like yesterday, just as old fashion with every color, every bit of details on how the items are places all remained the same. That really put a huge smile on my face. I want to say a big thank you to them for not changing, because that's actually much harder than otherwise in this case.
The same old picture frame shop, 100% the same.
This short two hours ended too quickly for me, and on a rather sad note. Just as I was walking back towards the MRT station, I was greeted by one of those guys asking passer bys to fill in questionnaires. As I walked by I politely said, "Sorry, I'm not local...." That kinda hurt a bit inside.
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