I'm now living in Queenstown, which feels like life's come almost full circle (in the same way that Singapore's newest Circle Line on the MRT is almost but not quite a full circle), because I grew up at Normanton Park, which I can see from my windows now, and as a kid I spent a lot of time at the Queenstown library, the stationery shops, the hawker centre and the supermarket.
Those are mostly gone now, naturally --- I say naturally because this is Singapore, where 100-year-old trees are chopped down without much ado, and 100-year-old cemeteries filled with tombstones to illustrious personages are not safe if urban planners decide a new four-lane road is needed instead. So the hawker centre with the breezy two-storey layout is gone, as is the supermarket building and multi-storey car park adjoining it, as are all the family-run stationery stores. The library's survived, I'm not sure how; I should pop in one day for old times' sake.
Living in Queenstown also puts me closer to the Southern Ridges and Labrador Park. G-man drove me to the latter yesterday in search of lunch, which I think was my first time there in at least a decade, if not two. (Everything looked too quiet and we ended up eating at VivoCity, also because I needed to get a mobile broadband setup.)
Before you ask, yes, it'll be weird not being in the East after 12+ years, but I'd imposed too long already on the dear friend who put me up since September (and my cats a year before that). If I could afford to, I'd move back East in a heartbeat. We shall see.
