Laguna hill

parents used to bring me up e hill near our Lagoon View block to fly a red-butterfly-with-black-stripes kite. should have been around 2-4 years old at that time & climbing e hill was a challenge. but I loved e wind up there even if it threatened to blow me off, & e view of e sea stretched on forever =) e ECP & first terminal of Changi Airport were just completed in 1981 (when I first landed in Singapore e civilian airport was still at Paya Lebar), & places in e east like Simei were still jungle/ex-plantations/construction sites, so traffic noise was non-existent.

& then they chopped e hill.

at 4 years of age I didn't know that a perfectly symmetrical conical hill covered with neatly trimmed grass & zero trees was an artificial hill meant to serve as a base for e expressway flyover. from e 10th floor apartment I watched hungry earthmovers eat away my hill, & e kite went into e cupboard to collect dust instead of wind in its wings. think I spent hours sitting on e balcony floor, peering between e railings & witnessing incidents such as e time when a pickup overturned on e slope of e construction site, & when a SIA plane veered dangerously low & close (enough for me to make out e individual windows) when its tyres burst during e landing approach. in 1984 e concrete tombstone of my hill was completed & named Laguna flyover.

happened to talk about e hill with my parents last night, & they finally learnt (~21 years later) why I used to spend so much time gazing out from e balcony, watching birds, clouds, lightning, planes, ships & e sea =)

[ filed under: thewonderingstraycat ]