Saturday 30 November 2013

the nostalgia bug is biting......

old style bungalow in S'goon Gdns
I was born in 1962, and my parents were living in an area called Serangoon Gardens at that time.  Dad had just bought a small bungalow on Berwick drive,  which was close to mums parents.  Read  this blog to know more about the area, and yes I took some pictures off his blog.  We moved away from the area in 1968 or so but came back  in 1970 when Dad bought another bungalow on Chartwell Drive.
corner of chartwell drive ...i think
corner of Farleigh Ave 2013
It is still the family home and mum, my brother and his family reside there.  Like all the houses in the area, our old home too has had the total facelift.  Mum demolished our one storey bungalow and built a two storey monstrosity on it.
corner of chartwell 2013




the old dry cleaners, sandwiched











the old cinema
The estate is divided into sections where the road names  end with one of the following, Drive, Avenue, Road and Grove.  There are also a couple of roads with Place at the end and a couple with Close.


Cooling Close was where my granddad bought his house in the 1950's and when grandad went to live in Australia in the late 1980's, he sold that house to his oldest son.  My mums brother still lives there.  My primary school is 10 steps away from that house and it joins a church (St Francis Xavier's Church)  which runs along the side of the houses on Cooling Close.  At the end of the Church is Chartwell Drive and the house I grew up in.  So walking to school every morning we went through the church to reach school in 5 minutes.   We grew up in a safe, close knit community.  We wandered around to the shops, the park and each others houses daily and mum never had to worry about us.  If we scrapped our knees in the park, we would head to  Granddad's place and he would take get out his mentholated spirit  and dab our knees, sometimes it was iodine solution.  It fucking stung!
where the old cinema used to be

Recently our Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) identified my old estate as an identity node.  which means they will preserve its quaint charm.......they fucking ruined it already so whats there left to preserve??
The shops havent gone double storied, they remain as walk ups even if they have destroyed the open door homely feeling.
Serangoon Gardens is one of the few places left in Singapore with a roundabout and not traffic lights at an intersection.  We called it the circle.  There was talk that they were going to remove the roundabout and put in the traffic lights but thank god someone somewhere vetoed that idea.
1963 picture of the roundabout..there was an old tree here too
and a massive drain on the right

2013 picture of that same roundabout and area
with covered drain
I am all for progress but I am also for preserving the old buildings before we destroy part of our heritage.  For Serangoon Gardens I think it has come too late.......We lost the old charm of the neighbourhood when old businesses were forced to shut down as rents were getting too high like mums old hairdressers (see here for my old post on that).



They chopped down most of all the old trees, massive Angsana trees, that gave shade in a concrete jungle and put in spindly palms.  They paved and made roads bigger as singaporeans drive everywhere even down the road to get a bite to eat.  They covered drains (yeah I know its a good thing) and the new generation of kids will never know what it would be like to crawl in drains along the roads, actually using an imagination to play hide and seek and war games.
the old tree was here, and an old taxi shed.......




I found a whole new world in an old second hand bookshop, at the end of the row of shops where the cinema stood, I bought stupid teen magazines with David Cassidy on the cover from the old shop called Garden Book Shop.  I moved to Farleigh Ave (with the ex)  for a few years as my boys went to one of the old neighbourhood schools ( no longer there now)




Captains cabin, Dads local pub, long gone.......



 So this estate has a very special place in my heart.  Nostalgia is a bitch, we hanker for the old days and old ways forgetting that not everything was as rosy as our memories think they were.  I seek the balance I guess, to preserve the old but still making way for the new.........

row of shops where captains cabin once stood

Friday 22 November 2013

Celebrating the heritage

semolina cookies
savoury bites
I grew up celebrating a Hindu festival called Divali It is the Festival of Lights plus a whole lot more for all Indians.  I grew up totally ignorant of the Hindu and Sikh meanings for the festival, I only knew that we got new clothes, mum and dad had parties and we made lots of sweet and savoury snacks.  We used to be dragged kicking and screaming into the kitchen days before, to help mum bake, fry and cook.
family with sparklers
cornflake cookies
Now we push mum into the kitchen to bake, fry and cook with us. We light candles at night and have a few (legal) fireworks.  Its family time more than anything else.
My niece with her henna

Lots of hanging colourful decorations
colourful clothes galore
the street in little india
buying sweet 
The garland makers
There is always a market in the area called Little India where people can go buy ornaments, candle holders and all sorts of bright colourful things to make the home brighter.  Fresh flowers, an amazing array of bright new clothes and henna.
getting Hennaed




Tuesday 19 November 2013

i am my own worst enemy

So date no 3 happened and again it was a good date.  We sat by the bay, had wine, chatted and took some night shots with my new camera.  However, Ice cream man is new to Singapore and he wants to see a bit of Asia while he is working here.  He wants to go away to one of the little islands off Malaysia's coast  for a weekend. and he asked me to go with him.

night view of the bay
so what do I do , I panic.  I jumped into manic overdrive and started thinking he wanted to push this to someplace I didn't want to go.....have sex with him.

Up to this point all the dates have been nice and friendly and we haven't kissed at all so him taking the direction of a weekend away made me think all he wanted was to go away to have sex.
He didn't.  We cleared it up over emails,  he understood that it was a big step to go away with someone, and while he did think I was sexy and adorable and did want to ravish me (his words) he was not ready for a commitment just yet as I was his first date off the website and his first date in 12 years.  So from panic mode I switched to "here we go again, another man wanting to keep options open"  but I realised he was right, we do need to date other people, and going away could be platonic. Couldn't it?

the big question I need to ask is why did I panic when I thought he wanted sex?  The thought of another man touching me kind of freaked me out, because I am not over A.  Do I continue to date or do I get over A first?  Which is proving hard to do as A and I are 'friends' and we are still in contact.  For me to move on I need to cut A out of my life completely which I cant do because a life without him is something I cant imagine.  Even if he just was my friend.  But being friends with A leaves me wanting more from him.....

On the other hand,  do I take what little A offers, sex and intimacy according to his rules, and find companions like Ice cream man to fulfil the other parts.  that way I get a bit of A and still have companions to travel and go out with.

The way I see it, I am not normal, and doubt I ever will  be normal where relationships are concerned.  I want the freedom to have my own life yet I want that special someone to be mine and do things with me which will include sex.  I don't want the normal domestic routine but I crave the normal companionship.  All I want is A to be that person but if I cant have him for the whole of the not so normal relationship will I be happy having him for one small part of it?  My head is a screwed up place!

Now you see why I am my own worst enemy...............

Sunday 17 November 2013

its been an interesting week...

This last week has been quite interesting

It started off with me being quite active on the dating website and it has given me a few good options and a few strange ones.  The scammers, or as I like to call them , the assholes with nothing better to do except try to delude middle aged women, are still ever present.  They bombard you with emails of how wonderful they are and how they will make your (or me in this case) life so much better by loving you to death in a stranglehold of love.
With my cynical and jaded outlook at life and love, I tend to stay away from men that declare their love for me after reading 10 lines on my profile.  Seriously!! Do women fall for that?  Seems that some do, and I learnt recently that men too fall for young exotic women on line.  Dont ask me why I never thought that men too get scammed.....you learn something new everyday.

But like I said, there have been the good ones too and I had one such date last Sunday afternoon.  We met for ice cream (I already knew I would like him when he suggested an ice cream date!) and spent 3 hours talking about everything.  It was a very nice and interesting date, I haven't had one of those since A's and Mr NZ's  first dates, which was like in 2007!  But  to be fair,  I was involved with one than the other since.

Having had my Cosmetic maintenance (thank you Vesta for coining the term)  done on Monday didn't stop me going out  even if I did have bits of scab on my face and neck.   I first met Mr NZ for a late breakfast on Tuesday for a nice chat and catch up session, with some flirting.  Yesterday I met Ice cream man for date no 2, lunch at a local restaurant and that too went well enough to stretch it to tea and cake.    I was hoping the scabs would have fallen off by now, but they still clung stubbornly to my face but I thought lets see if it frightens him off.  He did not run screaming.   Date no 3 with Ice cream man will be tonight.

And  as for my new job, I start in January so have 6 weeks to still enjoy my 'freedom' before I knuckle down and put nose to grindstone.

so its been a fairly interesting and exciting week.......... now all I need is to keep having positive thoughts and not feel as if I am cheating on A........

 

Thursday 14 November 2013

emotionally unavailable.....

I think I am getting wiser, I seem to be able to look back at my life and see clearly some things that have shaped me and the choices I have made.

I remember being aware that men liked looking at me, I developed breasts by the time I was 11 or so and became very quickly aware that not all men had good intentions and that some men would take advantage.
Having your Dads friend put his hands down your shirt to feel your "heartbeat",  quickly makes a young girl aware that all men are not like Granddad who's hugs made you feel safe.....I was 11 by the way.

My ex is about 7 years older than I am, and he was "courting" me from the time I was 13.  Hindsight again, if only I had told someone........
I stayed in a marriage fraught with emotional and physical abuse because I thought I had no choice.  I made the decision to marry this man, against my family's wishes and I thought I deserved the punishment.  No woman does.  I don't have nightmares anymore,  about the beatings, the torture, the curses and the mental anguish.  There were some years when there was no physical abuse, but he made up for that with the emotional abuse.  I was always afraid of doing the wrong thing, in the end I became apathetic, weak, with no opinion what so ever ( my opinions always got me a slap).

 Its taken me alot of years to move on and it has left several scars, some of which are that  I don't trust easily, I am wary of anything that is too good to be true (even to the point of ruining a relationship with my ever constant fear of the unknown) and that I thought that all men think with their dicks.

I am not a man hater, far from it.  I love men, but I seem to look for emotionally unavailable men because that is what I was.  With this getting older and wiser thing I wonder, as I now can identify what I was doing wrong, will I be able to seek men who want to treat me right and not feel like its an alien encounter? Will I be able to open my heart and seek out the men who are balanced enough to give me space and want to be with me?

I sure hope so as being emotionally unavailable is fucking tiring!


Sunday 10 November 2013

vanity thy name is woman

Would you go under the knife for vanity's sake?
I never thought I would.
Well technically I am not going under the knife or even injecting poison into my face to get that surprised and frozen expression but I am going to laser some things off my face and neck.

I have a few spots on my face/neck  and there's this one big spot under my eye and it looks like a tear and frankly I don't want those spots ( they have been diagnosed as Seborrheic Warts ) and its all part of ageing and those fucking spots and skin tags bother me.  They tell me that I am getting old, they tell me that I am vain no matter what I said decades ago about ageing gracefully!

So I went to see the skin doctor, who told me I could laser them off but they would return, to which I replied, well than I will be back to see you as long as I can afford it!  I couldnt use any insurance for the costs as it was a cosmetic procedure................which is when it hit me,
Jeez...... I was doing something cosmetic!  I was altering my appearance (well parts of the appearance) to make myself look better.  Part of me hates that I have been found out as a liar ( I wanted to age gracefully and embrace getting older......no dying of hair, no doing anything to keep ageing away....said by a 20 year old me!!)  and a vain liar at that.  but part of me (that voice in my head named Simone, my alter ego) says that its actually a clean up of the appearance rather than an alteration, which makes me feel better.

So Monday afternoon I will be lying in the doctors office having a few bits of me lasered off.  Will I post pictures (NO, too vain for that) but I will probably moan about the pain and if it leaves scars will just die and hide away forever!! ( drama queen Simone's voice)

Wednesday 6 November 2013

The interview

So I went for an interview yesterday.
I think I applied for at least 20 jobs minimum and only two replied with a rejection but thank you for applying email.  I looked at a few options in different industries doing admin work but somehow the only people who wanted to meet with me was another event company.

I went for the interview with mixed feelings, I knew I had to find a job, but did I want to go back to working in events.  It was just an interview I thought, go and see how things turn out I thought.
Once I was in there talking about what I have achieved professionally, I realized I did miss it, I did want to go back into the events industry, it was foolish to think I could ever leave it!

As for my dream of the motel or b&b, well that will have to wait till the twin is ready to work with me......

Oh did I mention I got the job.......

Friday 1 November 2013

let the games begin

After careful consideration (careful consideration being me at the computer after 2 glasses of Vodka and tonic) and countless hours of research on how to write a dating profile without coming across as desperate, I decided to ditch the idea of a dating coach and just try to incorporate all that I had learned off the magical highway of knowledge, and create a profile.

I decided to go back to one of the sites where I had first met A and Mr NZ, I did after all like those two men, and to my surprise, the website had cleaned up its act a bit and looked much better.

Most of these dating advice columns tell you to write a profile as if you were talking to a friend and not make a list of all your likes and dislikes.  So I went with that, and kept it simple and short.  My profile has been up for a week and like fresh meat, it attracts all the attention.  Some unwanted and mostly from scammers but hey at least there is some  action......right?

It's been fun to say the least, to read some of the ridiculous things they say, like one telling me his favorite movies are Miss congeniality and sleeping beauty and his favorite tv shows are Friends and sex in the city! Seriously!!
He either has really bad taste in movies, is gay and doesn't know it or just an idiot to think that I would actually believe that.

I intend to stick this one out for a few months and see what else the website throws at me, I might even go meet Mr congeniality if he really exists.  Time to flirt, flaunt and try to attract a man.......
so let the games begin.............