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Black
Red Hill Part 1 of 2
31 MAY 07
I
spent most of my childhood at Redhill. My school was at Bukit Merah
Primary and my grandmother and my favourite aunt lived in that area
so I was pretty much there most of the time. I don’t know
if life is as stressful as it is today cause as an 8 year old, I
didn’t actually do much. I just go to school, come back home
and play with my childhood friend Ah Liong and tag along with my
elder cousin to buy bread.
But I would like to
share some stuff I saw and experienced living at Redhill.. some
of which you can’t even witness today. I will start off
with… kite-flying.. well, sorta.
I know this sound weird
and you think I’m joking but trust me I’m not, when
I say this.. There was this rave at RedHill that lasts quite awhile.
Since it was very windy most of the time, the residents of Redhill,
actually it was just youngsters, decided to fly kites. Nothing
odd with that right? But these “kites” are actually
plastic bags. Yup, plastic bags.. if it’s plastic and if
it’s bag, they'll attach it to a string and let if fly.
Now I notice that this was not just a small group of kids flying
plastic bags, it was like 30 kids or so.. and soon, whenever I
tagged along with my aunt at the provision shop, I would notice
plastic bags filled the sky. NTUC bags, rubbish bags, red thin
bags, big COURTS bags, eye bags, tea bags.. whatever bags lah,
it was dancing with the clouds.
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I
didn’t have the chance to participate cause I was too young
to play downstairs. But I did tried to fly a plastic bag indoors
though. You just gotta do a lot of running. We live on the 7th
floor and if I peered out of the windows, you can actually see
plastic bags on eye level. I think some of these boys became so
obsessive with these bags that one day, while we were watching
TV, a boy knocked on our door.
The boy stuttered that his plastic bag was stuck on the kitchen
window. Now my aunt have to lan-lan, retrieve the 5 cents plastic
bag. When told he can just buy a new one, he said that one was
special because it can somehow fly the highest and they he had
given it a name.. the plastic bag was called “Shirley.”
Hmmmm…I don’t want to know what this guy does with
Shirley behind closed doors. |
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Risking
her life to save "Shirley" |
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Besides
plastic bags, one of the incidents worth sharing is when I was
living at my Grandma’s place which is also at Bukit Merah.
This time, I live at 6th floor and that is where I met Ah Liong,
my childhood best friend. One day, I went to the 5th floor where
the lift was there and I notice 3 Chinese teenagers. Guess what
they were doing? This sort of activity, I bet you can never
see in 2007, only children of the 80s can be this hardcore…
So guess lah. No, they were not line dancing and no, they were
not busy mugging for their A levels… Why you guys not
good at guessing one? Oh well, the 3 teens was armed with a
spray mist thingy.. and I believe inside was some lighter fluid
of some sort.
They
took turns spraying the fluid onto their palms and then, they
flicked a lighter and set their palms ablaze! This one no joke
lah! Serious one! That’s why I was squatting looking at
them quietly, my jaw all unhinged. But of course once the fire
ignited they would wave their hand violently and when the pain
got unbearable, they patted their palms on their shirt. Extreme
ah. All 3 boys took turns and once each boy patted frantically,
everybody laughed. I just smiled cause I never seen anything
like it.
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Kids
nowadays are never this hardcore. |
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Only
when I grew up, My Mum told me that Redhill Market and the area
that’s surround it is known as a “Black” area.
Meaning, it was a popular underground spot for gangs. However
my Mum told me that it was also “protected”. The police
did came to mind but my Mum said the whole area was guarded by
this Chinese guy. He lived in one of the ground floor and in front
of his apartment he hung a big black flag. His place was visited
by a lot of Chinese people because he was giving this religious
service. He is also known as the “Penghulu” of Redhill
.. for those who don’t know Malay, that means “Ketua
Kampong”.
For those who doesn’t know lesser Malay, that means, “Village
Leader”. The Chinese uncle himself said to my Mum in Malay,”
Kalau ada orang buat kacau, lu panggil gua ah..” Which loosely
translates as “If anybody wanna create trouble, call me
for some major ass whopping.” Don’t play play ah,
move over Godfather, Redhill got its own mafia. |
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I
also want to join the mafia,
Evil Bunny |
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