Reminiscing my Kampong house

During the Q&A at Geoconnect, Kah Mun suddenly asked us to share a building which is memorable to us. I was thinking hard which building? When Kah Mun talked about a building which is no longer around. I suddenly recalled my kampong house at Jalan Waspada which my family lived in till the 80s when we shifted to a HDB flat in Tampines. 

The house was built with zinc roof, wooden walls and concrete floor. There was no toilet in my house and we had to use the one near our house. It was like a small hut that was raised. We had to bring our own candles at night and leave it on the ledge as there is no lighting. The walls were creepy with spider webs and insects. We would hold our breath as we go into the toilet and I don't think I need to explain why. The "night soil men" would manually collect the waste from the bucket at night.

Our house had a shower area beside the kitchen. Water was shared and thus we stored our water in an urn. If my neighbour switched on the tap, we would not have water and vice versa. The used water would go down the drain which run across the shower area and kitchen.  

Gotten AI to generate the above images based on my sketch. 

We had two rooms which are like big raised platform which the mattress are laid on top. There was no TV in my house and the children all went to one of our neighbour's house as they have a TV set. 

This is the blog entry which I won 2nd prize in the memories category - a contest on mystory portal organised by NHB in 2007. 

https://lilymemories.blogspot.com/2009/09/my-kampong-days.html

At Geoconnect 2025, Yong was sharing that he used the historical maps from NUS library in his research for places.

https://libmaps.nus.edu.sg/

I posted on the use of historical maps last year. A great way to see the changes in landuse over time. 

https://geogshare.blogspot.com/2024/03/exploring-historical-maps-of-singapore.html?m=1

Did not manage to find the exact location of Jalan Waspada but it was somewhere near Tai Seng (fond memory of the street vendors, esp the one selling kway chap) as well as Kim Chuan Abattoir (could still remember the scream from slaughterhouse). I have attached the 1978 map extract from libmaps.

My house was located on a hill slope and I often dashed down the slope to get to the bus stop for school 5 plus in the morning. Must have been one of the locations which has more contour lines close to each other indicating the hilly nature of the area.

At the learning journey on Sustainable Sentosa, we get to see the earthworms breed to break down food waste into high quality fertilizers. There were many families raising chicken in cages near my house. We often flip the concrete slabs along the foot path and we could found a lot of fat earthworms which we used to feed the chickens. The earthworms would still wriggle when we cut it into 2. Mr Karl from Siloso Beach Resort shared that the head of the earthworm would live on if its 5 hearts are not damaged when cut. A teacher asked me how does the earthworm taste like? I told him I wouldn't know as all the earthworms are fed to the chicken.

There was also a well near my house. Once I brought the water to the school for my science lesson and my goodness there were so many microscopic organism.

Thanks to the power of social media. Kah Mun actually managed to get hold of a map with Jalan Waspada. He consulted his old (and treasured) road directory and found Jln Waspada! Circled in pink.From Kah Mun:

If New Industrial Rd hasn’t been aligned all these while and just merely extended, Jln Waspada should be the area circled in pink.

So if you ask me would that be a positive or negative sense of place? I would say both.