We lived in a cinema-house near old Tampines road, Singapore. This was in the early 70s. I wish I had a photo of it to show you, but I don’t think we even owned a camera then. The name of the cinema was Zenith Theater. Dad was the caretaker. It was a worker’s quarters, the size of a large living room. There was a large wooden platform on four legs which took up the whole room. That was our bed. At any one time, at least four members of the family slept on it. My brothers usually slept on the floor, in the hollow under the bed. In the morning the blankets and pillows were arranged in one corner of the platform, leaving enough room for us to do our homework on the platform. When visitors came, the platform doubled as a sofa and a bed. When we returned from school, the books and bags will be arranged under the bed, a convenient storage space. Mom had placed a small alter below the bed to the left hand far corner. If you walk about thirty paces across the room, you will come to the stairs leading out of the room into the open.

On clear days all the cooking was done outside the house on a gas stove. The gas tank and stove would have to be moved to storage after every cooking session, the utensils washed and left to dry in the sun. The only room which was not connected to this combined bedroom- kitchen- study-guest-room was the bathroom. The bathroom was a structure ten meters away from the apartment. We had only the one bathroom-toilet for the six of us. When someone was in the bathroom, I had to use the nearby garden to relive myself. There, under the shelter of the mango and banana trees were my rare moments of privacy.