Old school

This month has been crazy busy so far, and I've taken to waking up very early some mornings to give myself more time to do things.  When I'm not working, I try to get out as much as possible.  Sometimes I go on long walks through old parts of my estate and this morning we drove down to Changi Village for a slow breakfast. 

Singapore is so beautiful and different in the morning light when everyone is still in bed.  The sunlight sits, still on hopeful air.  Somehow, at that hour, it steals over forgotten places.  

The softness of the morning is forgiving, and I feel like I am living thirty years ago in a simpler age when opening a family coffeeshop with bottlecap clocks on the wall was enough to sustain life in the rooms above it.  Cheap sweets came vacuum packed in still cheaper plastic envelopes.  The only toys I ever yearned for were the ones that came in the weird packets of Tora chocolate that they advertised on Malay TV.

On my walks, I pass a row of shophouses.  Now, all but one are residential.  Ching San coffeeshop on Parbury Avenue is one of my favourite old places.  It's so forlorn and forgotten now that at any one time, I only see three or four patrons spread out under striped umbrellas.  And yet, that is part of its charm - that I can eat toast and kaya unmolested any weekday morning and served by a shy, smiling man who makes a strange loping run at the toaster each time I order.  There is a large Caucasian professional who comes to make his business phone calls at a folding table while he gulps his way through three kopi pengs.    

Across the cracked tiles, towards the back of the shop, I can see through the doorway and into an old concrete courtyard made cool by the hanging roots of a Bodhi tree.  It reminds me of my grandmother's old home.

Each time I go, I say a silent prayer for just enough patrons to keep the joint afloat.  I am dying to go in with my camera to try to capture the old school atmosphere.  Right now, all I have are lazy instagrams.  Let's hope that's not all that survives.