the little things you give away

ven, and su,

the word pantaloon keeps ringing in my head.
i keep saying it, randomly!

and the tune for Joe Dassin's "Les Champs-Élysées" is STUCK in my head. it will come to mind, unexpectedly..when I notice my reflection in the glass doors at the train station/ when i'm picking out what to wear/ when i open my wallet. hhaha ok maybe the last one is a suitable trigger, cos i DO see the polaroid of La Tour Eiffel everytime my wallet's unzipped ;)




su, rmb once we were studying at the coffee bean in gardens and they were playing this compilation cd on the stereo on a loop, and this was one of the songs? I remember this song so distinctly. It was my first time hearing it. After having heard it god knows how many times the tune was embedded in my memory. That same day jas luv dropped by to say hi. And we were FREEEZING so we had to change tables to the one against the side window facing Maju Ave.

now that coffee bean is gone, cos they're renovating the place. everything's gone. the maagzine shop, the haato, the ntuc..the FRICKIn ntuc they took as well! I loved that place! I knew where everything was (ok almost). I used to love being able to go there with my dad immediately after he once in a while picked me up from school (pri, sec AND jc) for a spot of afternoon errand running. Almost always I'd run into someone I know or someone my dad knew or stuff like that. Or you'd run into other kids in school uniform accompanying their folks or there on their own for god knows what reason, but yeah, you always eventually met them at the chocolate section. I remember getting calls, asking what sort of chocolate I wanted, if it was viv or ash who happened to be accompanying my dad. If not, whoever it was would get me a Milky Bar. ALWAYS milky bar hahaha. That was my white chocolate phase.

I rememeber at a point of time, when we were alot younnger, my bros and I used to be into Kinder Surprise. 3 eggs. Just enough for the 3 of us. It was the thrill of the luck of the draw, the assembly process, and who got the coolest toy. It was exciting in itself deciding which of the boxes of 3 on display to pick out -__- Haha i think we read too much Charlie & The Chocolate Factory and wanted in our own small way to emulate finding the golden ticket- even if it just meant getting the coolest toy.

It is at THAT ntuc that I learnt as a kid how to pick out milk cartons according to the latest expiry date, and how to order cold cuts. It was there that I sometimes got the honour of picking out what sort of ice cream to have for the weekend- initially we'd to stick to plain vanilla/chocolate cos my dad's the only one who ate strawberry. But then we grew up and our tastes got far more adventurous. Though we all still agree that coffee-flavoured ice cream is not such a good idea. It's at that ntuc that I first learnt how to get a trolley by inserting the dollar coin in the slot. I even remember the progress..from not being able to lift the royal thai fragrant rice bag to being able to do it many years later once I was actually tall enough to reach the highest stacked bag hahaha.

Then there's the car park above the ntuc. With the ridiculous steep slope that lead up to it, that always ALWAYS made me feel nervous. I remember wondering if i'd have to gun it on the accelerator to make it up the slope waaaay before I was even old enough to qualify for driving. Going up it always gave me a fleeting knot in my stomach. I was also once in a while tasked with going to the uncle who sat at the table, while my dad parked, and paying him $1 plus for the parking fee.

I now forget what the entire complex was called, but that was a major part of my serangoon gardens. Now that it's gone, all I can sum it up with is a sad-faced smiley and dreadful feeling on the inside, that they're gonna make the new place all spiffy and RUIN it completely.