Ama Keng on Lim Chu Kang Road, a place I stopped off many years ago as a young soldier desperate for a cold drink after 4 days in the field I remember thinking even then what a far out ulu place this was. Years later I came back with some friends and we stopped off for a another drink and a potter around the hardware shop that was filled with equipment that no Singaporean would ever need use on our very much non agricultural land. The people have gone, the shops, the homes, the laughter, the problems, the neighbours everything gone except the shell that is ama keng.
You would almost expect to see the mushroom cloud behind the buildings eh. I found this image to be rather poignant .
Like silent artillery guns abandoned in the field of conflict once the battle has ceased and combatants on both sides retire to lick their wounds.
The market.
What is it about man that compels him to make his mark.
I found the empty houses devoid of any semblance of family life or individuality. At least that's what I thought at first, but each empty unit was different from the next. From the colour of the paint on the walls, to the type of flooring, you can just feel some of the flats still have that sense of house "proudness" their previous occupiers had.
Someday when the world is void of mankind and our skyscrapers stand testament to the folly that was human kind, nature and its many arms would have reconquered her world. Life always finds a way doesn't it.
Signs of life, Military life.
Empty houses, windows with no glass and doors with no locks and no reason for them. A shell of a once thriving little community. A shell of a once warm home. I wonder about the people who lived here, who grew up here and from here launched into life, school, work, marriage,parenthood and the whole gamut of human experience a person growing up in Ama Keng could expect.
A very basic design as far as public housing goes, a couple of low rise slab blocks wrapped around a market area, with some of the ground floor units being shop houses.
There will never be another place like this. I wonder if the people who lived here before come back just to look around and feel intouch with the past.
Sidebar-typos spelling areas are good for you. god bless.
All pictures have been reduced in size. None of them are for artistic purposes.
