These two pictures are of Sentosa.
I found them in Miss Brown's personal collection.
They're edited copies of the originals- because i'm not here to write about her family members featured in both photographs.
I'm here to write about Sentosa.
And how some of us remember Sentosa to be.
It's always a charming thing to find precious memories like these in one's personal picture collection.
Not simply became they capture a special moment, a happy event, a joyous family excursion, but because they are a reflection just what in our lives has changed, and what we recollect them to be.
Miss Brown is in her 80s today.
And she hasnt' been to Sentosa in a very long while.
We don't know the last time she went there.
It might have been ten years ago.
It might have been longer still.
There're no recent pictures of her visitng the tourist island.
But, from these, we know she went there thereabouts of 40 years ago.
In all likelihood it is she who took the pictures.
Because Miss Brown was somsone who prefrred taking picturse of persons rather than the cenery.
In one of the pictures her son is photographed posing about the entrance sign of "Sentosa Wax Museum".
In the other, it is her husband who sits at the edge of the fountain with the cable car tower standing tall in the background.
These pictures look like they were taken in the 80s, yet it wasn't so long ago that the wax museum was one of the major tourist attractions on Sentosa island.
I know- because it was one of the places I always wanted to go to (whenever my family visited Sentosa) but The Parents didn't fancy going there.
One Parent felt it too high of an admission ticket to pay for.
The other didn't think local history and historical wax figures any interesting.
I probably went there for a grand total of two times in all the years that they were there.
One time was with the school.
The museum's gone now, replaced by the Madame Tussaud's franchise that they brought in a couple of years ago.
I haven't been to Madame Tussaud's.
I don't know where it is.
But it wouldn't surprise me if it were still in the same building on the summit of Mount Imbiah where the location of the (local) wax museum once used to be.
We Singaporeans find it no longer a surprise when we read in the news that (yet) another attraction on the island will be torn down to make way for a new one.
It's happened once too often.
We've gotten used to it.
Sure, there's always a little bit of lamentation. (I was a little disappointed when it came to Asian Village's turn)
And there's always that bit of regret for those attractions that we planned to visit, but didn't.
Or those attractions that we went there maybe once and then thought we'd go again but somehow didn't.
Like the Merlion statue (which some thought was an eyesore but which some thought was grand)
Like the Fantasy Island (which in the late 90s and 00s made for a great water park)
And the long-gone fountains of the beautifully landscaped Gardens that at one time stretched from the back of the ferry terminal all the way to Palawan beach on the coastal side.