24 January 2010(Sun): It was one of those Sundays when A. and I thought of taking a walk through the quiet Rideout Road to Margaret Drive.
The Rideout Road stretches from across the Botanic Gardens to Margaret Drive- the second oldest public housing estate of Singapore. Somewhere in between these two roads, a small patch of wood and a green field cut out the traffic flow, secluding the side of the Rideout. It is a place where one can spot the modern chateaux of Singapore, which house Singapore's billionaires. It is also on this exclusive land where one can spot the sprawling Indian Embassy on a hill. It makes a good walking trail - we hardly meet any fellow homosapien en route.
If one cuts through the bushes and houses at a certain corner of the Rideout closest to Margaret Drive, one enters the Margaret Drive estate, which is currently an isolated part of the Queenstown area. This used to be a bustling and vibrant housing estate up to the early 1990s. It had two cinemas - now converted to charismatic churches. These cinemas used to air films produced by the Shaw Company: Chinese ghost stories, Taiwanese romances mostly based on Qiong Yao (琼瑶)'s writings, and the occasional translated Japanese and Korean movies.
The food centre and the wet market were the 'musts' for residents.
At the wet market the freshest 'squirmy' seafood and meat were found; in the food centres, one of the legendary chicken rice stalls, the ice-kacang (kacang- a Malay/Indonesian word for 'nuts') - a Southeast Asian dessert of shaved ice toppped with colourful strips of jelly, corn kernels, beans, copra, with other tweaks and variations - and fried kway teow (rice noodles fried in soya sauce) established this place as a popular 'gourmet' spot. ( The ice-kacang is also a variety of chè - Vietnamese dessert).
Today the ice-kacang, the chicken rice and the fried kway teow stores are still here. Among the pioneers, there is a famous dough-stick (bánh quẩy 油条; 中華揚げパン) store offering butterfly doughs and hamchinpaeng(咸煎饼). A customer can choose from those with anko (red bean paste) - now lightly sweetened for more health conscious modern denizens- and those without. The stream of customers never ended till midnight in the past. Each piece then cost five-cents, I imagine.
This successful small business belongs to a Teochew family. A short, thin man with his refined Teochew features and fair skin ran the store with some family members. They were the first-generation migrants. This gentleman in the picture is probably his son, running the same unrenovated store of the yester years (see first picture in this entry).
A piece of the patisserie now costs about five times more-though still cheap compared to other kinds of snacks. They taste good, for even A., who abstains from fried food, never turns it away. He's probably more fascinated about this small slice of local history than the taste of the snack. Fortunately for him, the oil and chewiness are never 'off', compared to what one often finds in other parts of Southeast Asia.
I have fond memories of this district. My primary school was located on a hill top here - more than 500 metres from the food centre.
I have no idea when it ceased to function as a primary school. I recalled coming back to a 'spooky' desserted place after many years of being overseas. My happy days here and the faces and names of my teachers are still fresh in my memory: my primary three form teacher, Mrs Chiang, who liked my art pieces; Mrs Ling, the energetic pianist who taught the class all the lovely folk songs of Britain and Asia; Miss Leong, my English teacher in primary six; Mrs Chen, the classically dressed cheerful principal; and many other very kind teachers.
It is true that when you have fond memories of a place, you don't leave it behind; you will want to return to it.
This whole estate has been almost like a ghost town for many years after the demolishment of blocks of apartments. Due to its central yet peaceful location, I would think that the current state of stillness will not remain like what it is for long.
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