tell me about it

The field beneath my window used to be a lush, verdant, vaguely muddy, sparse sort of grassy field where (topless) men often converged to play soccer with two creaky goals.

Sometimes children would attempt to fly their kites.

I once fell and skinned my knee running across this field.

I often looked out my window and watched people on this field. Occasionally the Bishan police department would come and play soccer. Sometimes it was a father indulging his two little boys with a plastic football. Some Sundays I would close my windows to shut out the sound of old ladies line-dancing. Sometimes it was a Hokkien auction at 10pm. Sometimes, the Great Singapore Workout.

But by and large it was a quiet, peaceful field, even if was neither very lush nor very verdant. It was a nice little buffer zone between my block and the one on the other side of the field. It allowed me full view of Bishan Park.

Now every morning I am awakened promptly at 8am by the sounds of piledrivers and tractors and bulldozers and diggers. Ordinarily this doesn’t worry me, but I am on my one-week March holidays. I crave the ability to sleep till noon. I AM NOT ABLE TO SLEEP TILL NOON.

And the construction raises loads of dust - though at the moment, in the wet season, the rain manages to tamp down most of it. But every morning I am rudely awakened (and even on Saturdays) by loud, raucous clanking sounds that won’t stop. For the love of God, THEY WILL NOT STOP. Not even when it rains.

I have had to harness my urge to stash eggs in a bowl of brine for a week and then hurl them from my 10-story window. I pray that I’ll be out of this house by the time condo-dwellers will be able to look out of their kitchen window into my bedroom. I bloody hate that. I liked my field.

Ugh.