MyStory

When I was born, we stayed at a kampung in Balestier. My memories were very vague. I only remember that there was a soya sauce factory nearby. I can remember the smell of it, fermenting soya beans. Then when I started primary school, we moved to Macpherson estate. When I went to secondary school, we moved to another part of the Macpherson estate. When I graduated from secondary school, we moved to Ang Mo Kio.

In Macpherson, we moved into a one-room HDB flat. It had a small kitchen, and the living, dining, everything was in a single room. We had to fully utilise every space to sleep. Four or five of us would sleep on the bed, and some on the floor. It was a queen-sized bed. I slept on the bed, at the edge. But it wasn’t a fixed situation. My younger siblings would share the same bed, because they were small and we could squeeze more. My mother would sleep on the bed, and sometimes on the floor, but my father would always sleep on the floor.

The space was cramped but we did not really feel it. Because at that time, to move from an attap house to a HDB flat, it was a very big jump. I think Macpherson was one of very early housing estates that was built after Bukit Merah and it was great in the sense because after a long wait, we finally got a flat to move into. When we were staying in Balestier, we were renting a room from a landlord. Things were not so convenient and we had to share everything. There was no toilet flush and everything was done manually. Every day, the ‘36 door carriage’ (referring to night soil men) would come to clear the toilets. So moving to a HDB flat was a very emotional change, in the sense that we had an advanced standard of living.

My father as a labourer did not bring back much money. So everything was basically from hand to mouth. There was no such thing as savings, there was no such thing as extras, there was no such thing as holidays and it would be a miracle to go out for a dinner function or something like that. Going for outings would be relatively rare. Hardly. The only outings I can remember with my parents was visiting Har Par Villa, and that was once in a very, very long time.

In terms of finance, we lived a very simple living, very much out of the house and inside the house. Other than going to school, we would be loitering around the neighbourhood. Playing around with friends. There were times I remember we went to look for empty drinks bottles in rubbish and garbage areas and exchanged the bottles for money. For two bottles or three bottles, you could change for five cents at those provision shops. And that was when we could get our snacks. You know, last time with five cents, you could buy one packet of char kuey (Hokkien: carrot cake) already. That was how big the money at that time. So when we could find, we would have a good feast, as in you could have one packet of char kuey or whatsoever to share.

The chances of finding were very rare. Basically it was a pastime, fun for us. We had a lot of childhood games. We would go and look for those types of waste wood, search for rubber bands and we made our own guns. And we would pluck those berries and made bullets. We improvised and even built our own pinball game with nails, rubber bands and wood. You get a piece of plank then you just marked the area you wanted and then just hammered three nails. Then you tied up a rubber band to make a hook, then you used a marble to you shoot and then wherever it went, you got your points. In those early days, you didn’t have that much technology, everything was improvised. My playmates were my classmates and school mates because we were in the neighbourhood schools. My primary school was Paya Lebar Primary School. It is no longer around.

Sometimes we would venture out to areas like Tai Seng and there was a canal in Macpherson. We would go there to catch fish. There was plenty of fish. And during the summer season, when there were the school holidays and the wind was strong, there were a lot of kite games going on. We would either buy or make our own kites and do up the strings. We would buy gel, look for glass and coat the strings with glass powder. Then we would fly the kites as high as possible and try to snap other people’s kites away. We made our own kites most of the time, using bamboo sticks, or broomsticks. And we used those cake wrappers for the paper. Sometimes we would buy the paper from the bookshop.

Those days, basically we were left on our own as long as our studies were acceptable. I was always getting nagging from my mother to study. I remember she was complaining so much when I was doing my PSLE because every time when she complained about my studies, pushed me to study, I would just go and take the textbook, go to bed, covered my face and sleep. But they looked at results, and if we did badly, we got spanked. The way my mother punished us was unique. She would ask you to go to the market and look for clam shells, and then after that you would come back and kneel on the clam shells. So you searched for your own clam shells and then you knelt on them. So that was the type of punishment we get. Well we tried to look for smoother shells, but regardless, the shells were hard, even smooth or what, it was no fun. We had to kneel for easily half an hour.

Meals we didn’t really lose out on that much because my mother cooks quite well and my father also knows how to cook. Actually my father is a better cook than my mother! So a lot of times we had very well-cooked food at home.

During those times, textbooks didn’t change frequently, so basically we were allowed to pass from one to another. Even though our gaps were like two years or so, we would still keep the books and passed them on. We also passed our clothing on. Basically our neighbours were also leading similar lives. During our time, we didn’t question and we didn’t ask the why and how. When we were told to do it, we did it.

My fondest memories, to be very frank, were actually of the seventh month. Because there were so many celebrations in the housing estates. Throughout the whole month, almost every night, you would have celebrations and wayang (Chinese street opera), there were all these stalls around, all these games available. You had food, you had fun, you had wayang to watch. You had things that you could enjoy, watching people trying to bid for auction, for all those things. So the atmosphere was very lively. Actually we looked forward to the seventh month. Especially when you stayed at those housing estates at that time. Practically every block, the organiser would try to gather every household within a few flats to organise one. So if you were one of the participants, when the event was held, you got very excited, you came back from school, you quickly took your dinner and then you would want to run down to stay at that place to see all the fun and enjoy!

The other one would be Chinese New Year. When you could play firecrackers. I was still one of the lucky ones who had the chance to play crackers but that was the time when we saw a lot of fires going on. Because there were also a lot of trees and greenery around the edge of the housing estate, so some of the crackers were like rocket shooters so accidents did happen.

It was fun for us at that time. Because you know, at that time, there were many things to prepare like the New Year cookies and the festive mood was very grand. Nowadays we would buy the cookies from shops and no longer prepare ourselves. On the New Year’s Eve, from 11 o’ clock until one o’ clock, you could continuously hear the crackers’ sound coming from here and there. My mother would buy one whole pack then we share. And then the other thing was that, on the next day, on the first day on Chinese New Year, when you went visiting, you sat on the bus and you passed by those private properties, you would see the ground all covered with red, white paper.

Basically one thing we looked forward to was the reunion dinner. It was a good feast for us. Unfortunately ang pows (red packets) were something very different. from us. We would get the ang pow from our parents, maybe two or four dollars and every other ang pow we got during visiting, we had to return to our parents. .

Later we moved to a two-room flat in Macpherson. So we had more space. But sleeping arrangements were still the same. As long as there was space to lie down, you lie down and sleep. We slept on blankets.

Security-wise, the only thing I can still remember was the tension in 1964. I actually have some vague memories about that. We were told about the riots and the confusion going on.

Relations were good in those days. The neighbours were relatively close. During my younger days, in my primary school, I spent more days in my neighbour’s house than in my own house. I was very close with this family and they had no kids in the family. The children of that family were quite big, already working and I spent a lot of time there mingling around with them and they communicated with me very well and also become my tutors. When I was not familiar with work or whatever, I would bring there and they would help me out. That was how close the neighbours were, we could just basically go in their house. We had quite a few very good neighbours and were in contact for many, many years, only until recently then we lost contact.

When we moved to Ang Mo Kio, it was the first flat that we owned. It was a three-room flat. Then, it was a brand new housing estate. At that time I could still remember, there was no bus that went to my flat. We had to go to Mayflower, the bus would stop at Mayflower, and we had to walk though the landed houses down. There was no such thing as Ang Mo Kio Avenue 10 or Ang Mo Kio Avenue. There were kampungs, villages. Ang Mo Kio was still undeveloped. We stayed at Ang Mo Kio Avenue One. From my place to my school at Singapore Polytechnic, it would take at least one and a half hour.