www.Go To The Mountain - Musings of a Potential Guru

Singapore is developing so fast that one by one my childhood memories and places are being wiped out. Old memories are good and future ones may not be so we had better treasure it. The names of the roads and places are still there but everything or most have been transformed.  I decided I wanted a bit of nostalgia so I came to Balestier/Kim Keat and Whampoa. Balestier is the main road and Kim Keat and Whampoa are parallel to each other. You get further down and you will reach Jalan Bahagia and Jalan Tenteram and across the highway of PIE Jalan Toa Payoh on the opposite side was where my paternal grandparents lived. My now defunct Kim Keat Primary School at Kim Keat Road was within walking distance to all neighbour children from all the above named places. My maternal grandparents lived in Jalan Kemaman (along Balestier Road)  and this is where I grew up during the formative years.  My first stop took me the Whampoa as I was thinking through my stomach as it was l...

We probably do not remember much, not until you were 5 years old or more. When you were in Kindergarten then Primary school. I still remembered the aroma of Milo the uncle made for us in kindergarten. Lots of memories from primary school but at that age we still have a very different mind. Secondary school was the age of youthful exuberance, of raging hormones and boundless energy while we discover our own identity. I know some of you are still searching for your identity. It was a time from late primary school till I just started work after NS that we lived in Toa Payoh where it was once a swamp land. It was some kind of satellite town in those days. It was our first new HDB flat and it was kind of exciting having visited friends and cousins who were already domiciled in one. Whenever I was around the old home town, I never failed to take a walk around and it was always nostalgic. Nostos is Greek for Return and algos is like yearning, so nostalgia is a "yearning to return...