For me, one of the most difficult things about being at home in Singapore is how little there is of what ties me to it that I can hold on to. The Singapore of today is one which bears little or no resemblance to the Singapore I grew up in, and one which I am very much attached to. I often find myself overcome with that sense of longing and sadness that accompanies a realization that I can never return to the Singapore I fell in love growing up in.
I find myself wandering through many of the altered spaces, in search of the little reminders that remain of those times forgotten, often leaving only with regret. Many of these spaces, now devoid of a way of life it once supported, are empty except for the clutter of ornaments inherited from the modern world.
There are but a few spaces which have been spared this clutter. It is in the echoes of the spaces left without their souls, that I sometimes hear the singing of a song the lyrics of which might once have familiar.
A familiar tune is still heard along the northern shores. Spared thus far from the interventions of the modern world is too fond of, it is where the memory of naturally formed beaches, now a rare find, has been preserved. It is where perhaps a memory of a way of life we have forgotten can also be found in the casting of nets and rowing of sampan-like hulls.
Alas, the familiar tune may soon be one we are to forget. The advance of a world in which it is hard to find sanity, has reached its doorstep. For how much longer will I be able to hear the familiar tune in my ears, I do not know, but it is a tune I am determined to try to hear for as long as I am able to.
Sembawang Beach or Kampong Wak Hassan and Tanjong Irau are two of the last natural stretches of sandy beaches left in Singapore.
Coming a full circle, the land fronting the beach is currently being developed by the Bukit Sembawang Group as a luxury development, Watercove Ville which will see some 80 strata houses built, and in all probability, the beach and beachfront will soon have to be made over.