In Continuum.

It was the end of the year and the end of a decade. The sea winds blew in from the south and graced our faces like heavy feathers. There was a group of people, us, by the side of a man-made slope, eating pizzas and drinking alcohol. It was the night before we said goodbye to one of our own, a friend of ours leaving for a place far, far away. In the past, the sea winds would probably promise a swift journey from here on out, but that was the last thing that any of us wanted to see. A friend of ours was leaving for overseas studies, and the lot of us gathered at Marina Barrage the night before to bid our goodbyes. Aside from the snacks and the drinks, we all took turns to hold a line in our hands from time to time. On one end of the line, a spool of string that coiled itself around a plastic handle. On the other, a fifteen dollar kite that soared into the air and rebelled against the mighty winds. Flying a kite isn't exactly the easiest thing to do, especially when your kite isn't very good to begin with. The flimsy center beam poked through the fabric and rendered the kite completely flightless after half an hour. We tried our best to get it into the air throughout the night, and for a while it stayed in the air for a long time. I don't remember the last time I ever flew a kite other than that one time when I was still a little boy. You know, when things were different, when it was all simpler.

The red and white line fluttered in the warm afternoon wind, and the perimeter of the field was bordered up with metal fences painted in pale green. A tall sign rose up from the other side of the fence, something about a new housing estate being planned in the small plot of land right next to the MRT station. That place used to be where the temporary canteen of my school was, and I remember how out-of-place it looked when the new building was still under construction. Everything was changing back then, replaced by things that I don't quite remember anymore. I stared at the little piece of land as I came out from the station, with the smell of burning grass teasing at my nostrils. It's the smell of the haze again, the fumes drifting over the seas from the south and engulfing our little island within it's embrace. It was as if the little piece of land in front of me was burning without flames, and that the smell was coming from the dying leaves. Yet, they remained steadily rooted in the soil, fenced up by metal fences, ready to be dug up by bulldozers in the foreseeable future, taken over by steel and concrete. The grassland shall die, burn down into ashes without flames. Everything around my home isn't the same anymore.

There used to be a big green field on the other side of the road where the newer condominiums are right now. Right in front of the main entrance to my estate, there used to be an untouched piece of land that nobody touched for a very long time. It separated itself from the main road by a monsoon drain, drawing its territory from us, as if to say that we do not have the right to touch the last remaining piece of free land. My parents were still new to this country at that time, and so were my sister and I. In an effort to entertain us one weekend afternoon, my parents brought us downstairs and across the road to fly kites. I remember my kite, though only barely so, and I remember it had big blotches of red on it. That was my first time flying a kite, and the winds were optimal for us to do so that afternoon. My parents gave me a few instructions, and I remember trying to run against the wind in hopes that the updraft would pick the kite up. At five years old, I suppose my legs couldn't carry me fast enough, and the kite refused to take off. Like most parents that bring their kids to fly kites, they usually end up being the one doing all the job anyway. I remember my kite flying higher and higher into the air, until it became a small red dot that threatened even the height of my condominium. It was a glorious day for me, but it was also the last time in a long time when we flew kites.

A couple of years down the road, my parents walked my sister and I down the same stretch of road in front of our house and along the edge of the field. Strangely enough, there were rows upon rows of cars parked along the road, with people climbing out from their vehicles with their own set of children from all over the place. A piece of land was carved out on the kite flying field in the corner, and the people were swarming towards a makeshift building that had fancy lights in the windows. It was a condominium showroom, and my parents were there to check out the prospects of having another house altogether. Or, maybe they were just curious as to what would happen to that little piece of land, who knows. I remember walking in between the model buildings, peering into the empty plastic units and running my fingers down the styrofoam road. Half of the grass field would be gone, I thought to myself. Less land for me to run around with my kite now. I hated that condominium, and I still do not have much love for it. It looks like a sad attempt to blend modern housing units with medieval castles. Everything felt crammed even as a child, and I remember being oddly infuriated on my way home. My parents asked what the matter was, but I couldn't put my anger into words. I wasn't even sure why I was so angry at this new concrete beast that was about to rise up from the ashes of the ground. All I knew was that I didn't want it there, I didn't want it to take over that piece of land that was rightfully mine to fly kites.

I've lived here for a long time now, ever since my condominium was still the tallest building in the neighborhood. You could see it in all directions, wherever you were coming in from. Then, of course, people calling this placed a "prime land", and thought that it'd be a good idea to squeeze as many people as possible into this already constricted place. They took up fields to build housing estates, more fields for condominiums, another to build the Australian International School, and a whole stretch of it for the MRT station. They even tore down an old terrace house near my home just to make way for a new condominium a few years ago. Everybody who lived there had to leave, they called it "en bloc" or some fancy name like that. I remember the day when the bulldozers came to tear down the terrace house. In the night, the workers would be asleep and the machines would be resting, and the broken walls of the houses would reveal old furniture and posters still pinned up against the walls. It was an eerie sight, but a sign that the old days are over and the new day has dawned. Everything was changing rapidly around me at that time, and we seem to be the only bunch of people who have remained the same for the most part. Sure, we tore down the ugly wooden fences and changed the tiles around the swimming pool. But, for the most part, we are still the oldest condominium around here, and you can still see it from a great many directions from all around.

Yet, I cannot fly a kite around here any longer, because it seems like these contractors are monsters who feast on soil and dirt. They see an empty plot of land, and they want to stick metal beams into them and pour cement into holes. Just when you think that they have finally ran out of space to do more of that, they'd somehow do it. I can't help but wonder which building is going to be the next to be torn down, to be turned into something spanking new around the neighborhood. Everything is a grotesque copy of the other, one building imitating the other, like soldiers in their ranks, shoulders to shoulders. That is the case all over Singapore, I suppose, and these lands are going to be taken up by steel beams and concrete walls sooner or later. It doesn't matter if the government wants to make up for it by building artificial fields down at the barrage - it's always going to be different, somehow. At any rate, I miss running through the fields with a kite in my hands, and how my parents would teach me how to tug and let go so that the kite would catch the winds and fly even higher. At least back then, if I wanted to fly a kite, I could just grab it from the storeroom and dash downstairs to do so. At least I had the option to do that back then, you know. Now that everything has been taken over by others, it just seems like my childhood isn't there anymore.

A couple of days ago, I thought it'd be fun to look for a couple of places that I have been to as a child in Taiwan. Since my country has recently managed to get the street view option on Google Maps, I thought it'd be fun to take a look around. I found the house that I used to live in nearly twenty years ago, a house that has been converted into a warehouse and office building by some idiotic contractor who never had a knack for the aesthetics. My house is still there, but they built warehouses on either side of the house to accommodate oil barrels. My parents sold the plot of land to them, although I suppose the contract never stated that they should preserve the place as we left it. The front lawn is gone now, and it has turned into an outdoor storage area for oil barrels and a parking lot for lorries. The windows have been darkened by dust and dirt from all the years of not washing them, and you can see dark tracks of vehicles going in and out from the front gate. I used to stand on the railings on the front gate, and my dog used to chase its tail in the front lawn. My mother sighed when she saw the picture, and she told me about how my aunt and her would set up chairs on the balcony of the second floor to watch movie screenings on the other side of the road. The sliding doors to the balcony seem to be locked up now, and the place seems vacant for some reason. The person that my parents sold the place to used to complain to them that the place is haunted by ghosts, and the employees would be terrified at night when they see them. Well, ghosts or not, it was still the home that I grew up in. Ghosts of my childhood memories, perhaps, pacing the corridors and the rooms.

I zoomed out from that place and went north from there. The camera zoomed into the cities, and my mother and I tried to look for the place where she grew up. We came across her primary school, though she said that it has changed beyond recognition for the most part. She said that there were only two classrooms back then, but it has now been rebuilt into a typical school with hundreds of students. We went down the street from there, coming across familiar parks and street corners here and there. Much has changed, though, and there were times when she couldn't even remember the street names of the place. My mother used to live in a rural area of Taipei, a place surrounded by farms and gangsters for the most part. Up until about twenty years ago, she still lived there before she got married to my father. It's a small alley with the residences all crammed up together in small, dark houses. That was where my grandmother lived, and we used to visit her every time we went back to Taiwan. I remember drawing hopscotch boxes on the piece of road in front of the house, and we played with the neighborhood children who always looked dirtier and poorer than my sister and I. We used to play hide and seek around the temple area, but the neighborhood kids always found us because they already knew of all the places to hide.

The thing about Google street view is that you can only see where the Google van has gone, and I suppose that particular alley was too narrow for the van to enter. My mother and I were kinda disappointed by the fact, but I shifted the camera as best as I could, so that we could check out the entrance to the alley. The big red building at the end of the alley is still there, with the golden words nailed into the walls and the motorcycles parked in front of the gates. My mother forgot about that building, but I distinctively remember seeing it whenever we left my grandmother's place at night. I'd be tired and worn out from a day of running around and playing, and I'd be lying down in the backseat and looking up and the buildings around me. There they'd be, the golden words, peering down into the car and straight at me. I recognized it straight away, but everything has changed as well. Hell, even the road name has changed, which was why we couldn't find it before. I suppose, in a way, it was better that we couldn't go into the alley with Google Maps. In that way, the old house would still be there, and maybe grandma would still be living in it too. If nobody knows how it looks like now, then it remains the same in our minds forever - right?

I suppose, for everyone, there is a place where we remember deep in our hearts, a place when we used to have fun. It was always near our homes, somewhere close by where we could go to and get home without much effort. But living in our time, living in Singapore especially, these places are increasingly difficult to find, especially when so many other buildings are slowly taking over. It's like an infection that spreads, a rash that goes from your thighs to your stomach and all the way up your chest. You can't help it, though, because everything changes all the time. You cannot expect old buildings to remain the same forever, or plots of land to remain empty especially when people are constantly moving into this already constricted island. I suppose a part of me just wish that there is still a place for me to fly my kite, or a playground where I can sink my feet into the sands. Do you remember those playgrounds with sand? They don't come by very often anymore, and I miss that. I miss being a child, especially with all the expectations and responsibilities resting on my shoulders. The burdens that we have to carry just because we've grown up, they are difficult to bear after you have come along for so far and so long. Every once in a while, you remember the place where you used to go to fly a kite, a place that isn't in front of your computer or television. You know, like a field. A big green field, and an open sky for your kites to soar. Yeah, something like that. That'd be nice.