As a child, I used to run around our family’s shophouse in race course road. This was my grandfather’s house, I never got to meet my paternal grandparents as they passed on early, but the house was endlessly intriguing to me. The open air kitchen, with a clunky cast iron stairs that led to level 2. There several of uncles, aunts and cousins lived. Dad came from a big family of 11 kids and things were always loud, always complicated. Growing up, at this side of the family, my nephews and nieces were older than me and my cousins were often my parents age. In my dreams, i often revisited this home.
We didn’t live in the shophouse but we visited each time my dad was back from work abroad. He was a marine engineer and would disappear for easily 6 months a time traveling the seas on a cargo liner. This was the place he grew up in however, chaotic as it seems. I love watching Jenny the family dog, lizards on the walls each time I watched the TV, and i especially loved how the doors and long form windows, dozens of cacti and dessert roses by the sidewalk, watching the many people passing by.
Cousin Ling was an air stewardess and somehow my third aunt always found chocolate in the fridge from Ling’s flights or travels to give to me. These were my first lessons that a home without unity …comes to nought. As this would be the very aunt that the family had to end up in court with over the family home which was then sold. A huge pity. It was the start of my love for shophouses however, and the nostalgia never went away. I’ll take a shophouse over a condo any time of day.
It was redeveloped, with its beautiful facade torn down though it still stands today, I would occasionally drive by just to reminisce. Like many shophouses, it used to have a wonderful wood carved signage, the signage is now in germany with one of my cousins i believe.
pictured here is my Aunt Anita who is german!
Perhaps it’s being in the company of many elders, and then spending many many school holidays with my maternal grandma, and even having a great grandma stay with us that I somehow always loved things from their bygone era. From the sewing machine, to the wooden ruler and rattan furniture, as a child of the 80s, having lived in the analog age to the digital age. I couldn’t help but feel old things told a deeper story, and were crafted to last.
