last night on the bus, 2 stops from my house, i thought ‘what if i never got off’.

i knew where it’d end up, but where will it end, really?

i’ve never sat on buses from one end to the other before, much less in london where they travel pretty faraways either way. although i do remember being on a feeder bus when i was in primary school, and taking it from the wrong end, and almost going a whole cycle around before getting to my stop.

i miss the feeder buses, with their dirty scratched windows and red vinyl/plastic/mock-leather seats, the shiny handbars rising out the sides of the seats, the mock-wood veneer. the grooved floors of the bus, the coin collecting machine, the feel of the afternoon sun heating up the bus, making schoolshirts stick.

they don’t exist anymore, do they? even the other type of buses that run only during peak hours and are orange and beige. they’re all gone now. everything’s air-conditioned and nice. clean and sanitised.

it’s the dirt and the grime and the unique way in which only that place can produce that out-dated, out-moded, not nice and shiny and new anymore junk and garbage that makes somewhere somewhere.

isn’t it ironic that singapore imports vintage things from places like bangkok and japan, when honestly, there is the same shit there as well? but then again, singapore IS a very ironic place.

one day all the colonial and pre-colonial buildings will be bulldozed, no more moulded archways and shuttered windows. and when that day comes, the government will probably try to buy the 5 or 6 malaccan streets from malaysia, install it somewhere in the outer reaches of the island and turn it into a theme park. for tourists.