A month or so ago I found myself alone at Changi Airport.
At other times it might have been a pleasant experience.
I, after all, do have a thing for Changi Airport, her shopping mall of a JEWEL, and all her terminals.
But today was a day that I wish I didn't need to be alone, and whilst that's how life is, still I wish I too could have gone along, or better yet, that Hedgehog didn't need to go.
Me being me however, I tried to make the best use of it, and so, after waving him off at the Immigration, headed straight to the staff canteen of Terminal 2 for a long-awaited lunch.
Now you might find it surprising that I wanted in particular to eat at this one staff canteen, but let's just say that we all have our memories, we all have images in our head that even years later we haven't let go, and sometimes we try to recreate.
Coming to the Terminal 2 staff canteen however was a real reminder that life doesn't wait, that things change, and whilst you might hope to have back the same thing as you once did, well, it's not like that anymore.
The canteen has changed.
No more is the place a white fluorescent canteen-looking kind of place, today the canteen has transformed itself to look more like a food court for just about everybody and anybody to have their meal in.
The selections of stalls too have become different.
Yes, you have the usual plethora of mixed economy rice, chicken rice, wanton noodles, nasi padang, briyani and a host of other foods, no question about that, but there're more these days in the nature of specific foods rather than generic ones, so whilst you will still get the favorites of fishball noodles and chai tow kuay, there'll also be malatang and other specialties.
I had come here for char kuay teow this afternoon.
A memory I had hoped to recreate.
But things don't always happen your way, and I don't know how it is but even though I had really wanted the white version, somehow the staff at counter convinced me that the black version would be nicer, and I said ok to that.
It was nice, make no mistake, but to be honest, I really ought to have stood my ground.
Like, if white char kuay teow was what I wanted, why didn't I just stick to my balls and insist on white kuay teow? Not as if they would charge me different anyway.
But I guess maybe some memories are not meant to be recreated, so here I was, at the table nearest the stall, armed with my bottle, my book that I'd found from one of the drawers, and my plate of noodles.
So huge was the plate I couldn't finish.
But it had been done.
All these years, all this time, with the memory of The Parents and I at this particular canteen, I'd come back here again.
Alone.
Without the both of them.