I Remember

I remember when I was a small boy, I was frail, thin and undernourished. I was truly small sized compared with the rest of the boys of my age.

I stayed in a 3-room rental flat at Block 60 Ganges Avenue, 44-C, Singapore 0316. This flat was known as Singapore Improvement Trust (SIT) flat, built after the Japanese Occupation by the Government then. The old numbering system of naming the level of flat was Ground Floor is given just the number 44, second storey is given the alphabet 44-A, 44-C is therefore 4 storey high. The postal code has since changed from 4-number system to the current 6-number system in 1995. They dropped the first 2 digits of the 4-number system and add 4 additional numbers to the last 2 digits in the current system.

The flat I stayed in had poor daylight. The kitchen cabinet was dark and damp and the cockroaches multiplied in great number. The cockroaches grew quite a size and always flew in the flat. I hated the thorny legs of these cockroaches and they looked really ugly. They created a phobia for me and up to these days I still hate them.

When I was young, I remembered that my mother would wake me up at about 5 am and brought me to the polyclinic at Prince Phillip Road waiting in the queue. My mother wanted to be among the first to see the doctor on duty. This seemed to happen very often. I took so much medicine when I was young that I wonder whether this had an impact on my poor health in adult life.

Going to primary school, Delta West Integrated Primary School, had been an activity I could leave my flat. My mother would not allow me to play at the open field fronting the flat. It’s only to school and back to flat. We were poor and going to movies and places of interest was not possible. For that matter, my parents did not want to go to these places, being illiterate they would be uncomfortable. My window to the world is through the windows of the flat. I am brought up to be shy and a person who will not talk much. I would spend my time on study during times at home.

My father was born in China in year 1909. Like many young men of his time, he ventured out of China to seek work. He came to Malaysia first before finally settling in Singapore since 1940s. That was when Singapore fell to Japan. He once told us that he was slapped

by a Japanese soldier before but luckily for him, he survived to tell us about the Japanese Occupation.

Having no formal education, he could only do menial work. He started off as a rickshaw puller and later became a trishaw rider. He gave passenger rides and carried goods on his trishaw. Almost everyday, he will help transport goods such as vegetables, fish for sellers in the Old Market (now known as Lau Pa Sat Market). It was from this that he got supplies of vegetables, fish and meat to put food on the table at home. It was also from his work that he brought up five children and got us through formal education. My siblings and I belong to the second generation and we lead better lives than our parents. Education levelled the playing field for us to compete in our careers.