blast from the past...

off today... one of those days... anyway i woke up at 12 and went to chinatown for lunch, and it was at the rennovated food court at some rennovated shopping centre that i recieved my "blast from the past" and reminder that i have to go and revise my chinese because it is getting washed down the drain at a rate that matches the speed at which i devoured my lunch today...

i walked into the food centre or renovated hawker centre or pseudo food court or whatever expecting more of the farce of a tourise attraction that the government has renovated chinatown into. the facelift that they gave the place has decayed and now the place is soul-less and facelift-less (pardon my atrocious attempt to get creative with hyphens). anyway i noticed a very very long queue which only suggested two things at first. the food is either damn good or the service is damn slow... but i took a closer look and realised that the service was rather fast so i concluded that it was the former. also, the queue was too ridiculously long for slow service. it had to be super-very slow service, like the kind wayne rooney is getting from his team-mates at the world cup. i lined up although i wasnt sure what they were selling. i tried to find out but the sign board was in chinese. not print chinese we read in our text books in school but traditional curly cursive chinese. i could tell that the first two words were probably the name so that was irrelevant. i figured that the second word stood for "dou"(bean) and they weren't selling soya bean milk so the word after that had to be "fu" which would give us "dou fu"(beancurd). then there was this elusive word before the two which slipped my mind, but by then i was close enough to the customers sitting at tables around the stall to see that they were selling "niang dou fu"(i dont have a translation for that).

the stall looked very retro, like 1980s retro. it didnt turn me off because i believe that it takes years to cultivate good stock and if age is anything to go by as an indicator, it means that the stall has a very rich stock. the bowl of "niang dou fu" costs $3, and it was a mixture of things like taupok, tofu with pork and fishballs, served with soup in an orange bowl and matching chopsticks+spoon. the uncle who served it carried the bowls with a very seasoned metal tray, probably from the 1980s too. he, along with the rest of his colleagues(also portly uncles) wore the same white shirt like a uniform and it was very 1980s too.

ok now im going to talk about the food.

the food is so good, im still thinking about it now... in fact it got me thinking the moment i sank my teeth into the tenderly cooked taupok, the aromatic sweet chilli sauce and soft but firm beancurd that melts in your mouth. then, it finally dawned upon me what i was going through, and why the stall had such a ridiculously long queue... there was this wholesome 1980s package going on... the orange utensils served in a metal tray, the uncles in thin old white shirts, the chinese signboard that left me flummoxed... that humble piece of taupok took me back to 1984 man... i suddenly noticed the nostalgic look in those older aunties and uncles who were eating out of the orange bowls too and i was enlightened. i wish the government was there to be enlightened together with me too because they obviously didnt realise what chinatown meant to those older folks and the only thing on their minds when they did that horrible facelift back then was all the american dollars and sterling pounds they were going to make from ang moh tourists...imagine how you would feel 50 years on when the government decides to rebuild orchard road or clark quay and leave only the macdonalds signboard behind. ok that was a little off but i hope you understand what i mean.

im sorry.. sleep beckons and i cannot type anymore...

i hope this entry got you thinking, and thanks for reading...

tcy

what a difference a day makes...

spent 400 in 3 days... my bank account took a beating and it looks exactly like last month, before pay day... oh well.. i guess its money well spent?

over 300 of that money went to my driving... i had a mad rush of lessons: 5 in 6 days and everything ended today with the tp practical test... thank God i passed... i wont dramatise everything by giving an account of the whole experience... but i have to say the suspense in the room when the instructor started marking my paper after the test was so intense i could almost die... ok that was exagerrating... contrary to how i felt earlier, everything went really well... my legs turned into jelly the moment i stepped into the car... i guess the tester could tell from the awkward way i breathed (i took a few deep breaths and released them irregularly which made it damn obvious that i was trembling)... in fact, i was so nervous i forgot to switch on the air con and close my windows until the tester had to do it for me and ask me to wind up the windows... surprisingly, the jelly like state in my legs sort of absorbed all the trembling that was coming deep within and affecting all over my body... as a result, everything went pretty smoothly as i answered every single request from the tester with an assured "yes sir" even though my mind was thinking "please let me go sir" and all those crazily tight angles in the test circuit and idiot taxi drivers in the open roads didnt really affect my driving... it was really a God-send... i have never encountered better traffic in the open roads of teck whye my whole life... anyway the tension finally popped when the tester stopped making ticks in all those terrible little demerit point boxes and compiled my points... he wrote the letter 8 on the demerit points box at the back page of the test paper and that was it... he cancelled the "failed" box and put a triumphant tick in the one with the word "passed". the first reaction in my mind was "thank you God" and "finally... i can start saving some money" (might be in the reverse order.. i dunno) i walked out of the room with the same swagger i had after i finished my A levels and went over to look for my instructor... he gave me a short speech on how i should drive responsibly, sort of like a good bye speech... i shook his hand, sincerely thanked him and that was it...

i am no longer a noob with an "L" plate... i have become a noob with a "P" plate...

there are many check points for adulthood... so many that it is confusing sometimes... enlistment, 21st birthday, driving license, marriage, graduation, in whatever order of chonology or importance... i have passed a couple of them already but i guess the mark of adulthood cannot be rubber stamped on someone because of one particular series of achievements, much less concluded in one days' worth of activities.. as i attempt to conclude another cliched ending in this blog, i must remark that adulthood shouldnt be used as a term to describe a specific point in our lives.. instead, it should treated as a phase for the never ending process of growing up and growing old, a constant reminder that one can never count himself absolutely "mature" or "wise" just because of the huge number in his/her age... it is a process that doesnt end because there is no finish line... we can only drop out of this never ending rat race of the physical world, and hopefully slow down and proceed to the walk of eternity with God...

thanks for reading ...

tcy