Time Warp

I love the matured estates in Singapore. To be specific, I love a little corner in Bedok--where I spent the second half of my formative years--that didn't change much through the years. Wandering around the hawker centre with my colleague this morning, a deluge of memories flooded my mind as I decided what to dapao back to the office.

Should I dapao the char kway tiao? The same one where I would buy at $1.20 per plate, with chilli please? A friend and I would buy a plate each after school, feeling oh so grown up that here we are, ordering and paying for a plate with our own pocket money, without adult supervision.

How about the mee rebus? There usually is a long, snaking queue in the mornings for its mee rebus, but there isn't any now. The Best Grandma In The World used to buy that back for our breakfast on weekends. I can still taste the nutty sauce, and if I were to eat it again, I would still keep the hard boiled egg yolk for my very last bite. Some things don't change.

Oh look, Lucky Chicken Rice is still open! And there's the same uncle who manned the stall 15 years ago, looking young and strong. My cousin would always order the roasted chicken rice for lunch. Inflation seems to have left this place untouched; you can buy a plate at $1.50, just like yesteryear. We must make a pilgrimmage there sometime soon. I texted my cousin "hey guess wat... lucky chicken rice is still arnd =) shd check back thr one day", to which he replied "whia cool! will check it out one day heh"

I eventually settled on carrot cake (which disappointed, sadly... probably not one of the stalls I frequented as a child ; ) and made my way to the carpark, going along a route that I used to walk every day to school. As if on cue, strains of Air Supply's ballads wafted through the street and suddenly I was in a time-warp, listening to Air Supply while obsessing about the crush I have on the cute guy from the smartest class in the level.

Admittedly, he was a little geeky, but what to do, I like geeks. Preferably geeks who play the guitar. ;)