Chanced to visit Bukit Merah Central on Sunday. Hadn't been there since my primary school days, when it was my hang-out after school. Mom was still working then, and I spent the day at grandma's. I remember taking the bus to the interchange most afternoons after school, and then spending time in the library, visiting the 7-11 to buy some contraband candy with whatever pocketmoney I had left, and walking the short distance to my grandmother's house near Lengkok Bahru.

The library has undergone yet another renovation - I still remember clearly being miffed at being unable to get new books to read during the last renovation, and was quite puzzled about there being so many renovations, until I realised that the last one was probably about 10 years ago or more. How the time starts to fly when you grow older.

There was a second hand book sale outside the NTUC. They were selling most of the titles I remember reading or seeing people around me reading back then - the Sunshine books, Nancy Drew, Animorphs, Sweet Valley High, Enid Blyton and the like. My aunt bought one of the Sunshine books for my little cousin, and for some reason the image of the mischievous tiger seemed to make something click in my head, a feeling of nostalgia suddenly sweeping through me. I always had a soft spot for that tiger.

The bakery in the corner may look sparkly and newer, but most of the old architecture was still so familiar (more familiar, certainly, than my grandma's flat, which has been upgraded recently, with an extension added, and shiny new railings. The perspective has changed too, I was just marvelling, the other day, at how small the kitchen looked). Standing there, in the middle of it all, made me think fleetingly, of happier, less complicated times.

There is something about childhood. You can't wait to grow up, until you have lost it, then you start looking back, and wishing to go back there, but you can't ever again. But I guess it is still possible to live each day with the fresh eyes and the exuberance of a child; to think, sometimes, with the grandiose ideas, not calibrated to reality.