An Open Affair

Sometimes the design of the house you live in can give you some twists and surprises.

My home in Geylang was a third floor apartment in a terrace block along Sims Avenue. It had a living room, a smaller dining area and a longish kitchen that was opened on one side. This airy kitchen faced a neighbor who had the same but mirrored floor plan, hence you could look into their home and see what they are up to and vice-versa. Such an open kitchen is of course at the mercy of inclement weather, so many families back then would install bamboo blinds. These blinds would be let down in the evenings as night drew near.

The open kitchens were not far apart. You could actually have a conversation with your opposite neighbor, which my mom often did, her voice echoing in the space in-between. Usually the conversation was nothing too personal: how the children were doing, what they were up to, etc., and who just came to visit. Friendly neighbors often strung up a pulley basket between themselves to exchange stuff or return a favor like sharing sugar or salt.  We did the same with our opposite neighbor via some pulleys and a green nylon rope.

Such neighborliness was also extended to the shop neighbors downstairs. We would call down or they would shout up. This often happened when hawkers dropped by. The food items would be placed in a basket and then hauled up. For a kid, it's a priceless activity. I'd always imagine myself as a pirate or some adventurer pulling up treasure from the deepest oceans or the most cavernous canyons.
Another imagination was as Tarzan bringing up stuff to his tree house. Tarzan was a popular TV action character at the time. We would imitate his crocodile rolling antics with our parent's bolsters and stab them with our imaginary daggers.

But having an open kitchen can be hazardous. I have two younger siblings and mom would always remind me to watch them so they didn't fall over the ledge. Our aquarium fishes were not so lucky. We had a large tank on the parapet (supported by angle irons) into which we kept popular pet fishes like swordtails, guppies, algae suckers and angel fishes. We also had two lovely catfish-like fellas. One day, one of them got so stressed by the pigeons that visit that it actually leapt out of the tank and onto our shop neighbor's zinc rooftop below. This despite us having put up a chicken wire mesh over the tank to protect them.

We could do nothing for the poor fish except watch it die and shrivel up like kiam hur (salted fish) as it lay simmering on the shiny hot zinc roof. To this day, I often wonder why the pigeons never picked that poor fella up. Maybe they felt guilty or no one wanted to take the rap. Sad to say, as our fish collection grew more fish jumped. That patch of the roof became our version of Stephen King's pet semetary.

The backyards of the shops below sometimes had a roof. Some of them, like my Ken-Ken snacks neighbor, had a slide-able one. On good days, they would open it up. On wet days, they would of course have it shut. In this way, they had the use of their backyards 24/7.

I prefer that they remained open because I liked observing their activity from above. It could be because of the toilet at the rear. Many a times I could see the old uncle from the g cheong fun shop below exit the toilet and pull up his draw-strings pants. They were striped white and blue - the kind fashionable with the ah peks in those days. Coming out of the toilet, he often scratched his balls sending me and my sisters into giggles.

The other feature of the house was a spiral staircase that led into a backlane. But before it did, it came into a landing that was also a small room (cellar more like). Sometimes this cellar would be roofed - at times not. It was a common area so how it got transformed depended on what the neighbors agreed upon. Some used it as a storeroom. Ours was only partially covered and so exposed to the elements. The floor was often damp and that resulted in green algae. The algae climbed up the walls as well. It's no wonder that the whole place stank like a filthy fish tank.

Me and my siblings often worried about the spiders, cockroaches and what-nots that lived in the shadows of that dank place. We might run down the stairs but we would always slow down warily just before we reached the bottom landing. We wouldn't want to awaken those nasties behind the staircase and have them crawl out and assault us. Once we reached the last step, we would bolt for the door and out into the back lane. The cellar thus became a kind of boogeyman place.

Going back in was more terrifying, especially after the sun had gone down. The place then became extra dark and menacing. I think we had a few nightmares as a result. But I grew less and less afraid of such neglected places after I moved to Rangoon Road. We stayed in a similar kind of house but my dad had turned the bottom landing area/cellar into an engineering workshop. We also kept dogs there. But because we had neighbors who sold pipes and plumbing equipment, that place got more spiders than we did in Geylang. So, although the landing room was cleaner and brighter, it also harbored nasty surprises. And this time, we lived right above the shop! A few times, we had giant spiders (and I mean GIANT SPIDERS) climb into our house through the similarly open concept kitchen. For a while, my brother and I slept with handkerchiefs over our mouths (for fear that one would climb in while we slept, and nest! Talk about a night of fitful sleep!)

Having a spiral staircase also meant we had staircase cleaning duties. We would regularly wash and brush the stairs and balustrade with those brown bristle brushes made from coconut husk, and sweep the place dry with that short broom made entirely of thin leaf stalks (a sipu lidi, it is called). Made from that useful coconut tree. Adjoining neighbors would clean their section of the staircase.

Because the staircase was spiral, the steps were both narrow and wide. You had to take care where to step. Although we sang a happy tune cleaning it, we also worried about tumbling down and knocking our heads against those sharp, unforgiving concrete edges. Ah, life in that house was indeed fun, engaging and dangerous all at once. Not to mention surprisingly neighbor-friendly too!

Next story: A Mama Friend

A Firecracker Fight

If you were a regular visitor to the National Library at Stamford Road during the late 70s and early 80s, you might have noticed a rather strange fella hanging outside the place. His hair was wiry, unkempt, and his face was dirt-stained. In fact he was altogether quite unwashed. But he wore a business suit still and carried a small black briefcase - something you don't see people do nowadays. It's all about smartphones or manbags now.

When you see this man, he is often mumbling to himself in Cantonese. I often could not make out what he said, but he was my neighbour. He lived on the ground floor in a small staircase cubicle a few doors away. Every morning he would leave his "home office" taking care to latch and lock up the place first. No one was quite sure how he got that way. Some said he lost his business in a fire; others said his family left him. Going home from my neighbour's after dark was sometimes problematic; we often had to tiptoe around his body as he usually slept on a mat on the upper staircase landing. In the dim light, we took care not to disturb him. To us, he was a mad man. What if he woke up, grabbed a chopper and hacked us to pieces? Initially, we were on tenterhooks. But as time passed, we gradually learned that he was quite harmless.

An uncle of mine might be clean shaven, hair neat and well combed but he was also quite mad. So it came as no surprise that he later joined the intelligence services of the the local army (i.e. the SAF). Most certified nut jobs ended up there, according to NS lore.

My dear uncle had this piercing look that could be interpreted in two ways: 1) He was going to beat you into a pulp unless you confessed; 2) He was going to beat you up no matter what. Either way, it's best not to make eye contact with him for more than a microsecond. My other uncles told me he was brilliant in chess. I get it, I'd probably run away too before my king got taken by him!

The problem was, he's the only uncle who liked to play with us kids. The rest were older and into 60's stuff. It was quite unnerving at first playing with this uncle and we would hide or give some excuse. Some of us boys resorted to playing tea with our sisters. Yes, we got that desperate!

The turnaround came one Chinese New Year. We were playing fireworks in the back lane of our home when he came and joined us. He had brought along cans, sticks and a rather big bag. With these, he taught us how to blow stuff sky high. He also taught us how to improvise firecracker poppers with stone and paper and how to make an even bigger firecracker with the smaller ones. Of course, in that big bag out poured some of the most gobsmacking firecrackers ever seen - stuff that we kids all wanted to buy but had not the money. Stuff that whirled, rocketed and yes, even screamed!

The ones that whirled spun on the ground with tails of flint-fire. Those that rocketed either had a long stick that you could hold or plant into the ground. The other rocket kind you simply aimed and pulled on a string behind. Either one would scream like a banshee towards its intended target (to which you would point at). During firecracker time, all the boys and girls carried with them a joss stick each. You took care to light the firecracker properly and you also took care also not to poke each other's eye out with that glowing point. (This was especially important when clambering up and down those tight spiral staircases at the back of our houses.)

That year, our firecracking shenanigans ended up in a firefight between homes. Imagine the setup: Three back lanes of houses facing each other with two levels of staircases and landings (forming a 'T'). Include the homes right across the lorong and you have at least four battling sides! The whole firefight became something of a Shock & Awe campaign in Iraq. Streaks of light flew back and forth as we traded fire with one another with those handheld rockets. Of course, the combatants across the road were lower and at a disadvantage. They also had to fire from behind their narrow window grills. We on the other hand were on superior ground at the back landing of our apartment. We just had only to stoop below the staircase landing parapet to avoid being hit. However, since our parapet was balustraded in places leaving gaps, we had to use our mom's kwali (frying wok) as a make-shift shield.

That was a delirious time and even the adults joined in. Midway through the firefight, a crash of glass was heard. Someone's ba gua above the window had been smashed! A ba gua was something houses put up to ward off evil, and so it was a taboo thing to touch, let alone damage! More retaliatory rockets flew, as did colorful profanities in Hokkien. We kept low and quiet hoping one of the other sides would take the rap.

In the morning, people awoke to assess the damage. The back lanes were typically littered all over with red smithereens of firecrackers having exploded with the smell of gunpowder still acrid and pungent in the air. Incredibly, no one was hurt in our little CNY Shock & Awe campaign. Since it was Chinese New Year, all hostilities the night before were forgotten, even if a ba gua was broken!

I have never forgotten that fantastic night of how we huddled under a kwali with crazy rockets exploding all around us. Or how this uncle directed the firefight. For a moment, I glimpsed his mad, playful genius. In the following years, I became more interested in his comings and goings as he slowly became a kind of hero. The family today remains amused by his eccentric choice of girlfriends over the years. However, even as he got more social, he never once told us what he did in the Army. I can imagine him saying "If I tell you, I would have to kill you" - same as how James Bond would react. That glint in his eye hasn't totally gone away. Hmm, it is better not to chance it!

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