Every morning I take a 15 minute walk along my street before getting the 24 bus to school. Noisy chirping birds and discman aside, I usually enjoy the sensation of being half asleep still, the feeling of anticipation (somehow I always feel... excited in the morning) and the coolness of the air.

Something that always grabs my attention during my 15 minute walks is the people that I see who are up and about at that unGodly hour. Apart from the expected gaggle of school children accompanied usually by parents more half-asleep than I, awaiting their respective school buses, I usually see older folk either on their way to the market, strolling along, some even jogging and some doing tai-chi/stretching/light aerobics with their neighbours.

Almost as if it was a sign of some sort, TV Mobile (on the bus) featured a short film produced by local Poly students entitled "Trishaw", instead of the usual Japanese anime. "Trishaw" related the tale of an old trishaw owner/rider who wanted to get his trishaw repaired. He discovers that the old repairman had passed away, and he starts to think about how his friends are all passing on from this existance. He then starts to feel more and more redundant as he loses his customers to more efficient and comfortable taxis. The last we see of him is him standing at a junction looking at buses, taxis and cars whizzing past before he turns and walks away from us, pushing his beloved trishaw along as its wheels squeak despondently.

I felt so sorry for the old man in the film although the last thing someone like him probably wants is pity. The film was obviously shot from a sympathetic point of view but it states the harsh reality that just about the only constant in life is change, and we either change and adapt or get left behind.

There was a scene in which the camera cunningly panned upwards from the streets of Chinatown with its vividly coloured shophouses (obviously a conserved area which has been given a new 'breath of life' via bright colours) to the soaring skyscrapers of Shenton Way in the background. Seems like a pretty quaint picture of the Singapore skyline but I say it is cunning because it seemed to make the skyscrapers glare down threateningly while the humble little shophouses cowered in fear.

When I think about how my students are in some ways quite different compared to my peers when I was in TJ, the generation gap between the older folk and us must seem as vast as a chasm. While I lament how kids these days will never appreciate the simple joy of a game of five-stones, the rarity of chocolate and other such treats when we were kids ourselves and other nostalgic things like rickety metal public buses with conductors who issued colourful tickets after you handed him your fare... It's hard to imagine how our parents must feel about us.

I can only listen in bewilderment whenever my mum tells me of how she grew up in a shophouse and shared a room with at least 6 siblings and loved eating ice balls that dripped with evaporated milk, syrup and were filled with red beans and the like. How a dollar used to be worth so much that she didn't even get a dollar a day as pocket money. How colour tvs were rare and there was no such thing as a cineplex. How Lido and Capitol were hip hangouts for the young people those days and cinema tickets were scrawled with bright red crayon by the auntie who sold them over the counter. How mynah birds were kept as pets and trained to do tricks.

How so many of these things which meant something to her and still mean something to her are now gone. What about when we have kids (or at least when our friends have kids)? They would probably not understand the joy of five-stones, catching, LCD-screen handheld games, Pacman, He-man, My Little Pony, the Muppets, collecting erasers/stickers, pencil cases with sliding drawers and secret comparments...

I can probably see myself barely keeping up as life changes, talking to a daughter or a friend halfway around the world with the latest 4G (??) phone. But surely someday it'll be my turn to be up and about early, wanting to live life to the fullest before all my remaining years slip away whilst some young person would wonder why I don't sleep in.

glittermissy @ 11:47 AM + + Permalink