Pkchukiss - Reality Wine

I live in one of the numerous HDB buildings that are higher than the previous standard 12-storey flat-tops that was the hot favourite among city planners in its hey days.

In those older buildings, we had this lift in the block that always never failed to give me a claustrophobia each time I get in it. Not only is the standing space small, the lift buttons looked as if they would pop out if you even poked it gingerly. And the light: two fluroscent lamps that flickered whenever the lift moved really added to the atmosphere; imagine getting into this lift with an absolute stranger in the dead of the night — enough to give any sane person shivers.

To make matters worse, that lift only stops at 2 other floors besides the ground one, and it likes to jerk at least 2 times before coming to a halt at the landing. I’ve seen it at its worst once, when it didn’t mate with the landing door properly, and you had to take one step down from the lift onto the landing platform. Given HDB’s stringent lift inspection policy, that lift really gave me the creeps.

Right before I shifted house, I had the opportunity to visit one of my friends who live in a similarly mature building, with an equally aged lift. However, the lift was markedly spacious, and had nice blue walls, with buttons that were solid, though it still did the obligatory dual-jerk before opening on the landing, and was as slow as the lift at my old place.

In 2000, somebody in the higher levels of the decision making body decided to totally wipe out my housing estate, and replace it with sky-scrapers that would “define the landscape of Kallang forever”. All the residents were invited to the exhibition for their plans for the piece of land, for reasons known to me. It seemed counter-intuitive to show an affected person how you would tear down their house of 40 years (that was how old the building was), but that was how it went at that time.

Weeks later, some HDB runner came by the main gate and popped a thick piece of envelope with an eviction notice. Everybody had to clear out by 2004, whereby the building would then be demolished. Contained alongside the eviction letter was a series of prospectus for housing projects in the surrounding areas.

I was excited about shifting to a new house, since the cockroach problem was getting worse by the week. We had always suspected the trash hopper in the house, but it turned out to be the old pipes running through the flat. I got hit with the realisation literally when a cockroach came smack into my mouth while I was in the toilet one day. But moving house also held a realisation of sadness within me: leaving a building that has saw me change from toddler to teenager caused a tide of my memories to come back.

But I am digressing.

The first time I visited the new house on the 16th storey, I was surprised to see 3 brand new lifts, complete with LED displays, and wide enough to accomodate almost double the number of people as the old lift could. The lighting was cheery, and the ventilation fan whirrled busily — a wonderful change that made me extremely happy. Did I mention that the lift was speedy too, at 1 storey per second?

However, there were flaws in the lift system: the infra-red sensor on the door fail-safe mechanism seemed to like to mismatch, so that the computer would always read an obstruction at the door, and refused to close. I always suspected that the kids living on the lower levels had something to do with the mis-alignment, since I had also witnessed their projectiles raining down from their flats onto the ground floor, but I had no proof, so I left it alone after pestering the Essential Maintenance Unit for the umpteenth time. Also, the buttons tend to get stuck if somebody got lazy and pressed the sides of the button, instead of hitting dead centre. The lift ends up on that particular floor for a long time, until some irritated resident comes along to unstuck the button.

It gets creepy too, in the dead of the night, when the lift doors keep opening and closing.

You would too, if you had creepy kids living in the same block

Filed under: General