Wednesday, March 10, 2010
as i sat in the mcdonalds outlet of siglap centre, i looked around and then found an alternative definition to a word that so many of us tend to overuse - Nostalgia. if you guys hadn't been there, well, too bad for you then. and no, i have no visual evidences of what made me declare that to put up here. but take a look and you'll probably see why. outside, it looks like any decent shopping centre, could even mistake it for a childcare or Montessori, or maybe even a budget maid agency. no fancy car parks, no elaborate entrances, just a simple "Welcome" mat that you find in any household nowadays. inside, the walls are not painted in some outlandish, luminous color that require you to put on your Oakleys immediately. the tiling is simple, it's something you are thankful for in fact, rather than those stupid, ridiculous, slippery white marble tiles that will kill upon the littlest of spills. instead of wide walking area that you find in most malls nowadays, all that you have is a narrow lane that will be quite of a disappointment if you plan to walk in three files.
it's nothing fancy, siglap centre. it has a nice homey kinda smell to it as well. you feel welcomed. you feel like you wanna take a cardboard box from the nearest 7-11 (which isn't far away) and sleep on it in the shopping centre. the stalls are also nothing modern. nope, they don't sell any pens that can record voices secretly, no branded goods in there. no sir, just a pharmacy, a supermarket (a small one for the love of all things good and holy), a few tuition centres and a mcdonalds to keep the fat boys happy but here's the thing, the mcdonalds is not those noisy, modern, zippy outlets. it's nice, quiet, a mcdonalds you actually want to clog your arteries in. heck, there's even a desert stall which looks just like any desert stall from the 1990s which sells chendol, ice kachang and other practical deserts as well as a florist, but thankfully the flowers are still blooming.
okay, you step into it, and you feel alive, even though the shopping centre isn't. but that's the beauty of it. it's not some bustling shopping mall in the orchard area, where people are busy to get somewhere. busy to buy something. just busy. pushing. shoving. people squeezing in lifts just to save time of walking one or two floors up. people rushing to cut the queue for the escalators. those small little things that make your shopping experiences just that little more, experience-y. i tell you, i love that place. okay, i've been there like only once after some countless years. and yes, it would be quite troublesome for me to travel 40 minutes from my house to get to that...that sanctuary. yes, sanctuary. that's the word. and it's a couple of minutes walk from east coast. okay, i'm exaggerating. it's like half an hours walk to east coast. but still, no reason why you shouldn't pay a visit to siglap centre. i'm lovin it.
and there's wireless!
P.S. i haven't really found the time to take off my schedule of doing nothing and update the links. but you know, if you want me to tag to your oh-so-beautiful(ly boring piece of shit) blog, go ahead, my facebook is there. spam away old chap.
x Nav ran as fast as he could
[[ never look back ]]
