In Continuum.

Turtle Hill and the Red-Tiled House

My mother told me on the way back home today that today's moon is the biggest in the past nine years.Seems like the moon's orbit is closest to Earth today,and it does seemed a whole lot bigger than usual.With the scars upon the surface of it,from far it always looked like a one-cent coin to me.But today it sort of upgraded to a one-dollar coin,though retaining it's bronze-yellow hue,hanging alone and proud in the young evening's sky,as seen through the car window of my mother's car down the busy streets of Lornie Road.

Yesterday,our battalion had yet another Mooncake Festival celebration.To call it a 'celebration' is an understatement,because aside from the free mooncakes and curry chicken with bread(Dont ask me why that was included in the menu),we watched a The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift on the empty wall on the Support Company side(What's with the military and bad movies?).Anyway,i'm not sure if it was the quality of the movie,the junk-level of the projector,or the possibility that my eyes were playing tricks on me,but the images seemed rather blurry and altogether murky,unsatisfying.Then i realised that it wasnt just me,but the people around me who also noticed the same thing.It was the haze,something i almost forgot until i took a deep breath of that earthy and organic fragrance in the air,the hint of the coming rainy season lurking in the night.

It remained this way till tonight,and as i stared out of my room's window i noticed the lights that were clearly visible to me on ordinary nights,were hidden behind veils of haze,with the rest of the city clouded in a depressing mist.'Wow,' i thought.'PERFECT!' I think i am the only person in Singapore celebrating the coming of the haze.I think people do not recognise the significance of the blurring-out of reality before our eyes.On the balcony i looked out into the distance,and everything beyond the opposite block was,pretty much gone.It reminded me of something that i've had had in mind the whole week,and thought it made a great opening to this entry of mine.The city was like my memory,and the closer it gets to me the clearer it is.But as you move further,like being clouded in the haze,everything is blurry and unclear.Like the memory of my childhood,i cannot claim that i have a vivid memory of it,but i must say that what i do remember,i remember it with a smile across my face and with that,a tad bit of melancholy and regret.

I dont think i have ever told you about my childhood.I was born in Taiwan,in some hospital in Taipei.My family lived in an apartment which i have absolutely no memory of,and after a month of stay for me,we moved down to Taoyuan(About 40 minutes drive from Taipei),to a place called "Gui1 Shan1!",which literally translates to "Turtle Hill".My mother used to tell me that GuiShan was named that way because the hills looks like a turtle from the bird's eye-view.Another theory is because of the giant stone turtle somewhere in the mountaneous regions around my home,built in a park where kids would climb all over and fall off later on,screaming for their mothers and crying their hearts out.Yes,i was one of them.

It's hard to imagine myself to be from the countryside.Where i was from,it was a rather rural area of Taoyuan.It certained wasnt in the city center,but rather in the outskirts of the city itself.I lived in the hills,but there was a small community of tightly knitted neighbours,with senseless kids barking dogs.My family lives in the red-tiled house at the end of the road,with a religious family living right across the gate.They always had a red glow in their livingroom,coming from the lights on the altar,with offerings always ready for God,and incents burning throughout the day and the night.

My family was/is in the oil business,and my father owned a small office just down the road,and named it "Polo".The warehouse where they keep the oil reserves is,strangely,at the back of our house.So here's the picture: As you enter through the automated metal gates to my house,there will be a driveway before a three-storey red house,and at the back of it a metal-skinned warehouse stretching into the hills.We had a German Sheperd named DuDu,and it used to poop everywhere on the driveway.My aunt used to tell me that the only reason why DuDu's poops dont smell is because they have been under the scorching sun for too long.My uncle built a dog house for it,but it seldom stayed in it.It ran around the house like a mad horse,and i attempt to ride my dog once.To my dismay,i fell off my dog and tore my shorts once.

There was this once when the neighbours' kids came over to the gate of our place and started throwing rocks at DuDu.He took a bite at the arm of one of the kids and it's teeth apparently penetrated his arm.It's not like i was a blood-thirsty child longing for the taste of blood or anything,but THAT FELT GOOD!Because,i loved my dog,and i still love him,the way he used to chase his tail around and around on the grass patch,making mud paths amongst the tall grass.I remember watching him through the dusty windows of my house,and laughing at how stupid it looked.

The first floor of my house was the semi-office.There are the desks you would expect to find in an office,and off to the right of those is the dining room and kitchen.When you enter the house there will be a study room on the left,which was always drowned in darkness with the lights off,and the old painting of ancient Rome warriors,always waging a war against each other.My mother used to tell me that i used to say goodbye to an invisible person in that part of the house.When asked who i was waving to,i replied,"The lady in red!" ,with absolute innocence,and to my parents' utter horror.It was like a scene from The Amityville Horror!I dont have any memory of the Lady in Red,but i certainly remember the fear of going under the stairs.There was a storeroom under the stairs to the right of the front door,and that is where the family stored old toys and documents.It had a single ceiling bulb,though always too dim to light up the dark corners of the room,and there were always spiderwebs hanging from the ceiling and around the dark corners.That room creeped me out,despite the absence of the lady in red.

The second floor is where the bedrooms are.The stairs were always cold for some reason,and i still feel the chill under my feet till this day.There was a piano on the second floor,though nobody played it.A poster of my sister's appearance in a Toy Advertisement hangs proudly on top of the piano.Beside that was another pile of toys,and around the corner to the left was what my sister and i used to call the "Japan Room".It was merely a room that had a Japanese screen door,and matted floor and Japanese styled cushions.It also had one of those low tables,and i remember my sister and i used to fight like Samurai warriors in that room with those plastic sticks you use to align MahJong pieces,with me in my blue winter clothes and her in her pink ones.

The room had a television in it,and on the left of the entrance is the dark,dimly lid toilet,which was always wet from somebody's shower from the day before,and moulds growing in the corners of the baisin.I had a set of chemist equipment then,and i used to pour water into the plastic test tubes over and over while my mother bathed me.The room had a dresser at the right corner,with two bulbs mounted on the surface,though it never worked.

A little incident to mention here.My mother told me about this time when i was crying for milk downstairs,and she had to get the powder from the room on the second floor.As she opened the door,she saw a burglar in the dark going through the things,and she screamed so loud the man jumped out of the window and...well,it was a great fall and i think he broke his leg or something.After that incident,my father kept a butcher knife in the drawer,just in case he decides to return to the house to get some quick cash.

The third storey,i've never been to all that often.It leads to the roof,and like the storeroom under the stairs,there used to be piles and piles of boxes and documents accumulated at the door to the roof.I went up to the roof once,and was surprised at the little 'garden' upstairs,unintended and totally out of the will of nature.I remember going onto the roof with my uncle and looking into the hills,as the wind blew the seeds of the flowers across the busy expressway on the other side of the house and into the windows of my house.

The warehouse was a strange place as well.It always smelled like rust,and everywhere there were oil barrels.I played hide and seek around it once,and i remember there was a small office at the top of the warehouse,but of wood strangely.My mother used to hang her clothes there with the help of my aunt,and there was this once when we found a snake amongst the barrels,which the neighbours caught and killed.It turned into dinner afterwards,and i am not bullshitting you.

So there,that is the little summary of the childhood of the boy from the Turtle Hill.I remember checking out the house via Google Earth once,and it is still there standing,though taken over by a friend of my father's and transformed into a full-blown office.The old red-tiled building is hardly recognisable now,and despite all of those the house remains in my heart,where i came from and the root of all the wild imaginary things that conjured out of my head.

And all of a sudden,it is not so hazy anymore.I am looking out of the window now,and though my room smells like burning grass and ashes,i see the world more clearly now,and in the horizon the Turtle Hill and the Red-Tiled House.