12:18 a.m. - 2001-04-1
ang mo kio (small town small minds--all mine!)
i live in this place called Ang Mo Kio,its a quiet town with small roads,a few primary schools ,some wet-markets and of course,the one place,residents flock to during the weekends when they don't feel like going far,that is the town centre,which is a pretty dusty place with sweaty people milling around the bus interchange.
the flat i live in is near a park and it's quite a greeny park and during the Mooncake festival,kids and adults would go there to walk around with their lanterns and then we would also burn stuff like candles or dry twigs.
running alongside the park and beside my flat is this noisy expressway and so sometimes i can't hear people on the phone and they would repeat themselves quite often and then go mad.it used to be a forest of casuarina trees,i mean the expressway;casuarina trees look a bit like willowy pine trees and it was quite a beautiful forest.that day the people came to chop down the trees,i was in my flat watching them with my grandma and this huge buzzing sound going and going and trees falling down with a leafy crash.
there's a playground near the park and last time when i was small (primary three),i would go there and play catching with the neighbourhood kids but now we're all grown up and the playground was demolished and a new one with unfamiliar springy things plastic was built.
there's a lot of hdb flats which is pretty dull because every place seems to look the same and then there's also a few groups of old men sitting in the void decks chatting,playing chess or gambling with the number plates of cars that pass by.
sometimes,i don't feel like going out of my house but i would still deliberately force myself because i'm afraid of slowly developing the opposite of claustrophobia,i mean sometimes wide spaces and crowds become kind of scary.
there are cats in my neighbourhood and they are pretty cute and friendly although some crouch down and give you the evil eye.
the wet market in my neighbourhood is full of homely aunties and uncles and then there's this barber shop which i go to and they cut my hair the way i don't want it to be and then there's one coffee-shop and one plastic food court which i don't go to because the neon lights are revolting.then,a few years back,it was the invasion of the MacDonalds empire and unsuspecting kids like me were made into slaves.
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