This family photo. It brings memories of a shared experience with my siblings, growing up in Morse Road off Keppel Road.
The family photograph was taken on one rare evening when all the lights in our Morse Road flat were switched off. Everyone in the family had an appointment to keep, same time and same venue.
We lived in a quarter's flat for the shipyard workers. Every morning, the siren would sound and all our neighbours' fathers and our own, went to work at the shipyard. Our flat was in the block perched highest up on the slope of Morse Road, so viewing of this community was easy. Every working day we could see fathers going off to work and returning from work in the evening with the same siren sound.
Our mothers too, went to the same market. Their children played together on the same grounds and attended the neighbourhood primary schools.
During those days, in the very early sixties, we bought cooked food from pedlars or hawkers parked at the side of the road at specific times of the day. Our favourites were wanton noodle and char kuay teow. My mother would get me to take an egg along and I imagined myself being a bird with big stretched wings flying to the hawker stall. The egg would be added to the char kuay teow without additional cost.
Often lorries would come to Morse Road at night. I remember a lorry with attached speakers selling medicated oil and herbal tea regularly. There was also one with a large white sheet put up to screen free movies and some residents brought their own stools to sit and watch.
During water rationing my mother would bring pails and bottles to get water from water vehicles. My mother had to carry the heavy water up a few flights of stairs. When i think back on this, it breaks my heart.
