That Hollow Triangle
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Go to GoogleMaps and you'll find that there is a gaping hole of bare land where Marina Bay Sands should be, along with it's new highway and enormous accompanying park under construction. I found that out some time ago when I tried to find a spot beforehand that was good for capturing the iconic structure.
This, along with a few observations recently, made me feel a bit displaced from the recent changes that Singapore constantly undergoes.
I cycled with my bunkmates the previous weekend in the wee hours of the morning, and we had passed Bedok Reservoir on our way. Making my way down the familiar stretch that 66 and 228 ply was an interesting experience. The condominium that greeted me every morning for five days a week, three years ago was now looking much more lived in. The project to add on/off ramps to the highway cutting above the road had been completed and looked spanking new. The same could be said for the two-story sports complex that the nearby primary school had added to its premises. Them, together with the new church premises around the bend, made everything look very much urbanised and modern. Gone were the larger green patches and more dated structures.
Gone too, with my old laptop and ageing Queen bed, replaced with a mean desktop and welcoming super single respectively. Also, I can't for the life of me remember what used to occupy the space that Victoria Secondary now sits on, opposite Laguna Park. Same goes with the Marina Bay Floating Platform.
Everywhere around us, things are being modified, updated, renewed and lost in the process. Even the Navy, which recently acquired its cutting edge Frigates, has further plans to update its large fleet of Patrol Vessels, supposedly to enable helicopter landings, among other capabilities.
The changes may affect us less now as teenagers, but I wonder what it would be like after we've left our footprint in Singapore for say thirty years. Will we end up like our dads, who when driving around less frequented places, exclaim, gosh, this place is nothing like it used to be, I've no sense of direction right now.
It's times like this that I realise the importance of photographic and video archives, like the post I made a few weeks back on old experiences. Still, sometimes it's also better to just savor the moment to the fullest extent, so that the memory is far more etched into you than a photograph.
I'll bet that when the National Stadium finally goes down, no coverage of it will be spared in the papers, the local net and in our minds. Already I barely remember my P5 Preview experience.
Labels: nostalgia
posted by joseph at 6:45 AM