the day that time stood still

recently, i've been passing by silat estate a lot more frequently as it is a shortcut between my parents' place and the pothaus.

sila--wat? you may ask: its a quiet and quaint 4-storey kampong just opposite the old KTM station in tanjong pagar. i suspect just like its taller brothers just opposite kampong bahru road, it used to house the KTM railway workers.

i used to have a primary school friend who stayed here, and on occasion we would come to his house to play sega games. he was quite a rich kid (although i never found out why he stayed in such a relatively run-down estate), and i remember sitting on a swing chair in the flat's rather large balcony. in primary 6, this was the same place where we would spend afternoons listening to boyband songs, and later on go on to practice and win at our primary school's talentime competition (if you must know, we sang i can love you like that by all-4-one). eventually we lost contact after we went on to separate secondary schools.

so i've been walking by this shortcut for the past few month since renovations for the pothaus started. and i observed more and more rubbish being collected at the rubbish dump (the red-brick building in the photo). huge pieces of furniture, tvs, discarded clothing, what-have-you, were slowly but surely piling up. then i realised that the occupants of silat estate were being relocated - probably to the newer hdb flats that had TOPed recently at kim tian.

last saturday, i passed by silat estate again after a 2 week absence, and i could tell that most people had already vacated their premises. judging by the mountain of sofas stacked up by the refuse collection centre, i guess that the cleaners had also given up on maintaining the estate - just waiting for the dump trucks and construction vehicles to flatten and clean out the entire place.

then i saw it - one singular household that still had its clothing hung out to dry; just like any other day, as though it had not one care in the world.

of course, i am sure that in the next few weeks when i pass by again, the occupants would have moved out already, but i just can't help but feel that one part of my childhood is already gone.