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

Toa Payoh Toa Payoh was the most wonderful place for me. It was the place where I grew up and spent most of the days as a child, the days of youthful exuberance and as an young adult. There is no place like Toa Payoh as it was the first satellite town in Singapore and those of you who were living there at the same time would remember vividly and with fondness. How often in a lifetime would you experience living here in the 60s to 70s (1966 to 1970) when the first flats were built. Gradually everything was added as a satellite town. We have our own stadium, swimming pool, theatre, cinema, library, big fountain, schools, garden, hawker centres, hospital, places of worship, HDB office and even coffee houses. We have everything. Everywhere you went, every facility you used, they were all new. Everyone seemed to also moved in to the neighbourhood together at the same time. Everything looked and smelled new.  We mostly have homecooked food and only eat out occasionally when mum was busy....

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...