Digging through the drawers the other day I found a copy of my birth certificate tucked inside an envelope inside a file inside another file.
The sight of it made me think of my birth home.
It has been at least twenty years since I've been back there.
The last time I went there I was with The Parent.
We haven't been back there since.
Not that I didn't want to.
But each time I asked, The Parents just looked at each other and said what for.
So this time I decided I'd come here on my own.
My childhood memories of this place are vague.
There's not much about the flat that I remember, unless through pictures, except that the kitchen at one end of the flat was bright and sunny, the living room was dim and cool, there were two bathrooms, and that the other bedroom on the same side as the living room was also dim and cool.
I'm told I used to play with my toys in the living room, moving them from the toy trolley to the floor and then repeating the process all over again.
There's not much about my life there that I can recall.
I was quite young.
I remember being carried out to the corridor to look at the view.
I remember being carried downstairs to the car park because The Parent wanted to show me that my Grandparents' car had really driven off after having paid us a visit.
And I remember the lift door that jammed onto The Parent's hand.
There's however very little about the surrounding neighborhood that I can remember.
Except maybe for the wet market across the road because there was a stall there that sold live chickens from cages, and the floor was so wet that I was always scared of slipping and falling down.
When I came here with The Parent twenty years ago, I didn't have the camera.
Neither did we go upstairs to the floor where we once lived.
This time I was determined to do both.
Together with a companion, we walked from the Ang Mo Kio MRT station towards the Avenue where I once used to stay, first crossing the busy Avenue 3, followed by a long path under the raised MRT track, across several benches, a small fitness corner, and two intersections.
At the second intersection I made a left then walked along the entire stretch of road until I reached the Avenue that I wanted to go.
It wasn't difficult to find the block that I was looking for.
A typical housing block that looked similar to other housing blocks in any other residential estate of the 3rd generation, the block stood in a group of five or six between an intersecting road, and the low-roofed buildings of the Industrial Park ahead.
Like many blocks built around that decade, the space between one block and the other was wide, filled with tiny grass slopes and little saplings of trees.
We went up a little slope, crossed the airy, spacious void deck, and took a lift up to the desired floor.
I knew which unit it was I once used to stay.
But I didn't know how close to the staircase it was.
And I didn't know how lovely the view was from high up there.
The Parents had taken no pictures of the view.
They also hadn't told me anything of what they had once seen.
With me being only five when we moved away, this was as good as me seeing it for the first time.
I'll tell you honestly.
It quite took my breath away.
I hadn't known how it would be.
The block faced south. Eastwards was the Central Expressway, separating the blocks of public housing flats on one side with the private suburbs of bungalows, low lying condominiums and terrace houses on the other.
In the distance eastwards were the unique neighborhoods of Lorong Chuan and Braddell, and in the distance westwards on the other side were other blocks of the same Ang Mo Kio neighborhood.
From where I stood, I could see right up to the flats of Serangoon estate, and had I been a bit more familiar with the landmarks I might have made out which was what was where, or which buildings those in the southeast were.
Had I stood longer, I might even have figured out which neighborhood that in the far-off horizon were.
But as it were, I was lingering outside a flat that now was the home of someone else, and I didn't think it nice to hang around too long outside on the corridor gesticulating at buildings far away.
I guess I'll figure it out on my own someday.
Because that's the only way I can get a glimpse of how it must have been for The Parents when they got the keys to this flat oh-so-long ago.
This had been their first matrimonial home.
And this had been their own high-rise view.