Buses to nowhere and other tales of youth
Friday, Mar. 05, 2004 10:17 a.m.
When I was in secondary school I was given five bucks a day as pocket money. That was just right for my daily expenses, enough for food with something left over for a pen or foolscap pad should I run out. I'd spend $1.00-$1.50 on food during recess, another $1.00 -$1.50 for lunch if there was band practice after school, or if I had Malay and French lessons at the MOE Language Centre. I'd have accumulated $5 or $10 by the end of the week so that I could have a meal at a fast-food restaurant (usually McDonald's) on Saturday, after band practice.
These days kids stuff their faces with fast food with alarming frequency; when I was their age my chums and I could only do it once a week. Weekdays if we got sick of school swill we'd make a trip to McD's, but we could only order small fries and maybe a hot fudge sundae and iced water (which at that time they served for free). To be shared among four, sometimes six girls. For variety we might have wonton noodles at this noodle house in Far East Plaza, $2.50 per plate and not always filling, but real nice. It's Saturdays that were special. Saturdays we could afford a complete McDonald/Burger King/Long John Silver meal, i.e. burger + fries + drink. Saturdays we could order Filet O Fish instead of the cheaper hamburger or cheeseburger. It all depended on how much we'd saved in the week.
Saturdays were also the days we went on dates, but that was when we hit fifteen and older. So, in addition to the junk meal, we would be set back by $3.50 for the movie ticket. Where did the boys come from? Oh, the all-boys school just two bus stops away from our school. Or boys we met in Malay or French class. Nobody I knew was adventurous enough to go for the dark, dangerous bad-boy types. We were all nerds at heart, really. Or maybe intellectual snobs, thanks to the elitist propaganda of our school, us being "daughters of a better age" and all. The slut metamorphosis came later. ;-)
Before there were boys, and on those days when we didn't really feel like going home after band practice, my two good friends and I used to do this: we'd take a bus, any bus as long as it did not take any one of us home, and ride on it till the end, that is, till it reached the bus terminal. The point was just to explore our tiny country Singapore, see what we hadn't seen of it. The whole adventure would take four or five hours, an easy and incredibly cheap way to kill the afternoon. Now when I think of it, I think we were such silly girls, and I probably shouldn't be writing about it, for shame. But it was kinda fun too.
Once we took a bus from town all to the way to Jalan Kayu, which at that time was a completely alien part of Singapore to us. We were so spooked when we got off the bus, because there was a military camp or air base there and people seemed to be moving ... really ... slowly. We thought we were in Twilight Zone or something, and couldn't wait to take the first bus out of that place. Much later I learned that Jalan Kayu is famous for roti prata, South Indian flatbread/pastry that's eaten with curry (but now they've come up with the dessert version, you can eat it with ice-cream or cream and sugar), and it was only two years ago that I actually had roti prata there. I understood then why people seemed to move more slowly there. It was just a laidback, largely undeveloped area, no malls in sight and few children seen running around and yelling. Lots of stray dogs, though.
It's cool to have so much time on your hands, and to be able to spend whole afternoons going nowhere just to see what's there.
Older entries
Ramadan - 08 October 2006
Where I Have Been - 03 October 2006
Baby Talk - 10 August 2006
6 Weeks of Separation - 16 July 2006
Unacceptable Rudeness - 21 June 2006