bidding for time: changi village

former student, cuili (class of 2001) asked me to pen a few reflections for her hons thesis at uni. she wrote a paper on changi village. we converged on many points. still, she asked me what i really felt about the place...am glad she took well to this... thanks again for helping me excavate what i needed to share.

27 march 2007

Dear cuili,

I am in the least academic of moods when I penned this so forgive me if I left an ambivalent trail of sorts that is least likely to lead you back to your thesis.

I offer you a poem, a vignette, another article on lorong buangkok (which I used for several field trips while teaching boey’s poetry) and this piece of writing. I hope they might come together to give you another imprint of change you and I have yet to see…

Blessings on the remaining days of your thesis. May your short journey bear fruit in your soul long after these hard days are over.

Best wishes and fond regards always,
kohkoh. mr (ed)



Remember only this one thing
The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them.
If stories come to you, care for them.
Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive.
This is why we put stories in each other’s memories.
This is how people care for themselves.

B Lopez. Crow and Weasel (1998)


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changi is but one of the many places which i return to each time i need a break or brief respite from city life. it draws me with its quaint architecture; a mix of low rise flats, a thriving hawker centre and a scattering of simple shophouses catering everything from a unexpected craving for midnight snacks (or bbq / fishing equipment!) to emergency bike rentals to cycle across permangil, just across the jetty. there are many similar places with the same nook or charm in singapore. changi is somewhat different from the rest- its sandy landmass stretches out to sea, while its shorelines are lined with coconut and frangipani. i see scores of families (mostly from the muslim community…did anybody ask why?) staying by its shores on the weekend. lovers always handholding and friends sit silent, pondering on the patient chore of the fishermen. place and family gatherings. the sea, salt and wind painting other stories beyond its horizon.

place, sense and changi. it is regrettable that even nostalgia has been subject to theoretical hijack from sociological theorising. it seems the very opposite to what c. wright mills (1959) proposed about the sociological imagination. for ordinary people like me (and having to take a conscious stand away from my own intellectual training in sociological thinking), a place can be read in ways that removes us from its essence or essential spirit. this is formed and retained by the voice of many peoples who claimed to have lived under its canopy. many times i wished the tourism or heritage board here could invest a little more in changi and make intelligent and sensitive policies to tap into its rich history; the lore of tall trees, hauntings of sook ching massacre, a rare parakeet population inhabiting the angsana heights and otherworldly dark mass of floating tales on decrepit lands…changi hospital. the transgender community gathers in the back carpark. meeting others, mostly straights, mostly married men. surprised? laughed at by many who term them ah-kwas. some are the same raw hound of hooters, who seek them. themselves unable to confront their own shackled lusts. themselves uneducated and unaware in conscience. a most terrifying prison known. this place holds stark secrets we dare not share. no government board would be keen to marshal the difficult respect for its rich dirt and grime when everyplace shines best in darkness, and humanize sterile blueprints and formal identities. the real stuff of life you extract out of everything.

changi like lorong buangkok, spells out the substrate of human yearnings. a potential site of pristine telling of stories. sadly some are quick to brush away its value in the name of social construction or economic worth which basically debilitates any need for dialogue and attentive unpeeling of place, time and story which changi holds. it is the same scenario happening to other deep sites on the mainland. a thoughtless and intellectual rape of place.

the poem Change Alley removes much of the jargon and clutter that litters the sociological mind. at times. a place speaks its stories best for itself. you could say i am the child or the old man in that poem (Boey’s Change Alley), personas of time and place which lend themselves easily to the many residents you have personally spoke to (not just interviewed along changi). and don’t forget the glee of the teh terak mamashop bollywood boss who serves you the smoothest beverage to jumpstart your morning, taking you beyond the blue yonder & sudden sky-roars of planes cruising overhead. he too, grows keen to share his stories.

on bad occasions, grand theories scrap away any authentic links we have with place, its enchantment known only in the secret recesses of memory that ties a resident permanently to its state. i too, have found ‘dreams of home’ in the times i visited changi. its relatively quiet streets and noonday torpor pervade my senses and trigger a needed release from the unending chatter of progressive city life around me. perhaps, everything is mere psychology, some might say. still the ‘country of the mind’ comes back not to singapore as a state landmass but a rich stretch of scents, stories and emotional sensibilities that pepper the changi coastline. this is one of the few places i will miss whenever i come away from singapore. when i return, i come back to the same place for whatever reason it may hold. i still learn to unpack my decisions this day.

to theorise is tempting. to allow silence to speak its voice when i lodge myself on an outcrop near the boardwalk or stand in line to buy my favourite packet of nasi lemak is a heavier struggle to bear. i cease to ‘think’ (as i was trained to think i should) and stroll on or stand in queue like an ordinary man, just being. conscious & present to the everyday where nothing significant happens at all, yet what is passing before me holds enough meaning to live by. content to know & live by its ‘prodigal’ past, knowing some still care to remember, and willing to share its older ‘maps’ everytime i bend low, and know the silence can be heard. then the grounds offer their oldtime song. so listen closely.