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The charm – and drawbacks – of living in a time warp in Singapore
As spanking new estates spring up on an island criss-crossed by MRT lines, a little corner of Queenstown brings you back to the 1960s.
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In Commonwealth estate’s neighbourhood square, you can still find shops set up like they were 50 years ago.
PHOTO: LESLIE KOH
Leslie Koh
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To be honest, I don’t know why I feel so much nostalgia about living in Queenstown. I wasn’t born in this estate, nor did I grow up here. Though I visited the area regularly through the late 1970s and early 1980s, when my family went shopping at the Tah Chung Emporium in Commonwealth Avenue or dropped by the old hawker centre in Commonwealth Crescent for cheng tng, Queenstown was not a big part of my childhood.
And yet I feel a great sense of sentimentality living here. Whenever I am asked where I live, I proudly reply: “In one of the oldest HDB estates.”
