Singapore, 1976-1977

I am sitting on the bed wedged into a corner where the walls meet. My toys are arranged in a semicircle of protection in front of me, a barrier over which I was not to cross. My brother was at kindy and Mum didn’t have anyone to help out, so my toys babysat me as Mum ran downstairs to the market. We were living in Neptune Court in Marine Parade, Singapore where Dad had relocated us for the duration of his specialist course. I think I would have been no more than 2 at the time. I’m told that when Mum came home, I was sleeping within my little semicircle, the absence of little furrows on the bedsheet evidencing my lack of movement beyond the flimsy toy barrier. Such a good child. Heh. Hate to think of what might have happened if there had been a fire in the building. Parents were a lot less paranoid back then.

I also remember being bad. I’ve hated milk since I was a baby. The famous chilli story goes like this:- Mum was so fed-up with me for not wanting to drink milk that one day she left me with my milk bottle, a chilli and an ultimatum. "Choose. One of these must be finished by the time I come back." She came back to find me eating the chilli in agony. Talk about stubborn.

Anyway, back to the Singapore memory. Mum used to make us a cup of powdered milk to drink before sleeping time. What a dumb time to have to drink milk. How to sleep??? Blechh. She’d put SO MUCH powder in, that barely minutes after stirring a "skin" of milk solid would form on the surface. Truly puke-fying. One night I dumped the whole cup down the toilet bowl. Unfortunately, I didn’t realise that the stuff was soooooo pekat that even after flushing, the toilet bowl water remained cloudy. Needless to say, kena belasah.

My brother and I shared a room. He would have been 5 at the time. If either of us had to go pee at night we’d have to wake the other up so that we can hold hands and creep our way out of the room to the toilet. I remember the orangey blue-ish glow that only the bright skyline of Singapore outside the window at night can create, bathing our hall as we make our way to the toilet in the kitchen. One night after a wee-hour toilet adventure, we didn’t go back to sleep. Instead, we tore pages from a magazine or colouring book and made paper planes. Plane after plane floated from our fingers as we let loose from the window of our room. Whee. So nice. The adult in me now wonders where the heck were the window barriers? We could have fallen out!!!

Another vivid memory is of us playing in the sandbox downstairs. It was next to the mini-market. Somehow we always knew when to stop and run back upstairs in time for Sesame Street. Apparently during one of these Sesame Street sessions my brother asked mum to come watch with us and learn, since she "never go to school" (as she liked to tell us when she couldn’t answer our questions).

I remember my only playmate being my brother. Since we had only just moved to Singapore we didn’t know any other children to play with. Sure, we had cousins - dad’s brother’s children - but, according to mum, they and their friends didn’t like to play with us because, well, I was pretty much a baby and my brother, having been raised in Malacca amongst Hakka-speaking relatives, couldn’t communicate in either English or Mandarin. And so we were shunned. It broke Mum’s heart and brought her to tears to see AP (as my brother shall henceforth be referred to here) trying to communicate and play with the other kids while they just ignored him.

An enduring image for me is of AP and me in our Genting Highlands pyjamas. Mine was orange and his was blue. Hrrmph. There were cartoon animals in a class-photo pose on the front of the baju. Boy, we must have loved those pyjamas because we’re both wearing them in an obviously taken-in-Singapore photo of us bashing away at the piano and a much later one taken in Malacca where the sleeves are ¾ way up my arms.

I remember my chicken lantern. It was the old style type, made from cellophane paper on a stick frame. In the shape of a chicken. Not a rooster. A Chicken and so pretty it was. I loved it. I think that’s why I love cellophane paper till today. My niece (due to my cousin bizarrely being the same age as my dad, she and I were almost the same age) tried to wear it on her head once and made it all wobbly. Then I got beaten with it one day and it tore to bits. So sad.

Final Singapore memory. Our apartment was on the East Coast of Singapore. It’s still there. Strangely enough, 15 years later I found myself at its doorstep when I picked the Junior College to attend for A-levels in 1992. I didn’t realise that it was right next to Neptune Court. Anyway. There was this nearby water park that Dad would take us to, Big Splash. Don’t quite remember the park itself – I spent all my time holding on to the rails at the shallow end. But the enduring memory is of having to cross this HUGE ravine (that was my impression of it at the time. Since Dad is definitely not capable of leaping over ravines in a single bound, I think it must have been just a big longkang) to get to the park. One time, my slipper fell off as we were single-bounding and I remember thinking how brave Dad was to climb into the HUGE ravine to rescue my slipper. I was of course too young to realise that one would need to be far braver to face explaining the loss of a slipper to Mum.

We had been in Singapore on-route to Australia. This is my eternal regret, that my parents’ plan to migrate to Australia in view of the post-May 13th situation was brought to a screeching halt all because of a dream Dad had. He dreamt of my grandfather sitting alone in the dark in the shophouse from which my grandfather had owned a medical hall business. Dad had started his clinic there and we lived upstairs before moving to Singapore. In the dream, my grandfather scolded Dad for abandoning him.

Sigh. Before we knew it, our bags were packed and our lorry was headed back home to Malacca.