House No 136

Throughout my primary schooldays, we lived in a single-storey end-terrace house near my school. This humble home of ours held a lot of fond memories for me.

House No 136 faced the main road and was built below road level, so that there was gentle slope going into our house. When it rained heavily, the front porch would be transformed into a shallow pond as rain water flowed rapidly down from the road towards our house. For the children of the house, such rainy days could be fun. At the first sign of the rain water coming in, we would quickly remove all slippers and shoes from the front porch. Bare-footed, we would slosh in the ankle-deep rising waters and use the lidi broom to sweep the water away as fast as we could to prevent the water from entering the house. The optimists would say this was good fengshui as water signified riches and we certainly had plenty of those flowing into the house! On the flipside, the rain water also frequently carried mud. And after the rain, the arduous task of clearing the mud would begin.

The house had three bedrooms and all three bedrooms faced west. This meant that all the rooms would be subject to the hot afternoon sun. As we did not have air-conditioners at that time, it was pretty warm at night as the walls would emit the heat that was retained during the day.

There was only one bathroom and one toilet for the whole house. In the small bathroom, there was a tiled half-wall built at one end and this was used as a common water receptacle for us to keep water for bathing. We would use a bucket to scoop the cool water out and splash the water over our bodies. The cold water was very invigorating in our tropical climate. We had no water heater, of course, and so we always bathed in the afternoon or evening.

As we bathed, the tap water would be running so that the water in the receptacle would always be replenished. We did not have a long bath tub for soaking but I remember when I was about 8 or 9 years old, I would sometimes surreptitiously climb into the water receptacle and immerse my whole body gleefully in the water. How nice and refreshing that was, especially on a warm day!

Our house had to accommodate at least 7 of us – my grandmother, my mother and us, the five siblings. Sometimes, the number of occupants would increase if my cousins were staying with us. Thus, we were pretty flexible in our sleeping arrangements. There were always the portable camp-beds which were cool and comfortable. To create more living space, the center portion of the house was partitioned to make another bedroom and the back of the house was extended to encompass the kitchen, dining area and backyard for washing clothes.

At the backyard, we apportioned some space to rear a few hens - I remember regularly collecting freshly-laid eggs which were still warm from the chicken coop. We loved to eat these nutritious eggs half-boiled for our breakfast every morning. That was the pleasant part about rearing hens. The less pleasant part was washing away the hens’ droppings everyday - though I was never tasked to do that as I was too young. During the day, we would let the hens roam around the backyard. Come evening time, when it was time to put the hens back into the coop, we would merrily chase them and ambush them – even the youngest among us became quite adept at catching them by their wings and holding them down so that they could not slip away.

My favourite spot in the house was the narrow plot of land at the side of the house. This was where I would go to get away and read my books quietly by myself. Here, we grew a papaya tree, sugar cane and tapioca to provide some shade – the land was too narrow for any other trees. My younger siblings and I would also play teacher-student here, because my mother got a “blackboard” built for us (actually just a piece of darkly-painted wooden plank) and we used chalk to write on the board for our pretend classroom sessions here. Guess who always got to play the part of the teacher?!

In front of the house was a huge saga tree and we would spend many hours collecting the cherry red saga seeds that fell from the tree. These were pretty to look at when we put them into transparent glass jars. We also used these seeds to fill up our “five stones”. Sometimes, when we were more adventurous, we would climb into the huge drain outside our house and catch tiny fishes. I must admit my younger sister enjoyed this particular activity more than me!

In the evening, we would arrange our flower pots to form a circle in the middle of our porch so that we could ride our tricycle round and round the pots of plants. When we were older, we would play badminton with each other, or with our neighbours, over the front gate or over the fence. At night, we would listen to Cantonese tales from the redifussion with our grandmother.

These were but some of the scattered pictures of the smiles we left behind in this house that we called our home for six years. Life was indeed very simple then.