Pekeliling Flats

Pekeliling Flat was my home from 1972 to 1982. There were happy times and also scary moments growing up there. I loved the days when I was forbidden by my mom to play badminton with my brother and his friends at ground floor void area size of one and a half badminton court. I would get even with the boys for treating me as a burden to take care of. My favourite weapon, plastic bags. I filled them up with water to make some water bombs. Ran to different floor, usually a floor below or above at locations where my mom was able to check on me occasionally, to start "bombing" the boys on the ground floor. When the cement floor is wet and slippery, the boys would stop and ran upstairs to find out the culprit.

The flats opposite viewed from our balcony looks beautiful and mini dramas like when electricity was cut from our block. In the dark I thought of each flat as mini tv screen. The sky was darker than today as there were not as many buildings and very bright street lights. I would start to compose my own story as I stood on the classic small plastic stool, leaning against the solid concrete balcony.

The scary moments were trapped inside the often broken dark lift with strangers or no strangers. I remember clearly there was this mentally challenged young teenager who was always walking around our floor, scaring me off whenever I have to send the garbage bag to garbage disposal area at the end of the floor.

I remember I saw someone fell from higher floor and landed on void area at ground floor. The split second moment when that someone fell, passed our floor when i was just happened to look out of our door. I thought I was hallucinating. The next thing was I heard people screaming. I rushed out of our home to the staircase nearby. A male body covered in blood lying next to the small open drain. I was about 6 years old. I was not frightened by the blood. You see, my dad is a small seafood supplier. Every 5.30am he would bring back some large and medium pomfrets shipped from Sabah to cut and clean in our small kitchen. There were lots of blood oozing from the cut fish. So it doesn't matter to me if I see blood. My dad should have been into pork distribution business. That would have train me to feel no fear on bones sticking out of open bleeding flesh. Back to the dead man. I started to wonder why he didn't fell on the center or at least near the center of the void area. His suicide left no fear but curiousity on my young mind.

There were accidents as well. Living in such small space(I would not use the word compact as it is bigger than low cost flats in Hong Kong) accidents happened out of expectation. In those days fire crackers were not illegal. During Chinese New Year there were unfortunate people who got hit by flying "rocket" or red fire crackers went astray. One died with lots of blood on the floor. I dared not venture out of the house during this time of the year.



This is the narrow tunnel link to the other size of main road Jalan Pekeliling. I walked through this tunnel to go to my kindergarden.