Pansy decides to take the bus, to familiarise herself with the new layouts and roads of Singapore via its routes. She has returned to a country that is not even remotely like the one she had left. The air-conditioning vents are blasting cold air into the bus. Some people hastily put on their cardigans and hooded tops. Others wrap shawls around themselves. This extreme change of temperature, from the outside heat and humidity to this severe chill happens in cinemas, malls and office buildings. This unsettles the body’s system and ripens it for colds and fevers.
Pansy remembers a time when buses did not have air-conditioning and were trolley buses, with overhead cables joining a network of other cables in the air, with a bus conductor to clip and hand out tickets after one had handed over the cash. Except when it was raining, the windows were always open to the dust, fumes and myriad smells, scents and sounds of the city. George and herself had taken two buses each day to get to the hospital at Outram Road—he, a medical student and she, a student nurse in her starched, white cap and uniform, with one blue pip on her shoulders which became three before she graduated, then after graduation, a solid blue band.
Fortunately, George’s English professor had put George on a scholarship, which helped their finances. Pansy and George had each carried a two-tier enamel tingkat of food that Kim Guek had prepared before dawn for their lunch each day to save money. One tier of the tiffin carrier would contain boiled rice and vegetables or fish, another a curry or asam pedas which varied each day. If their schedules permitted, they would meet at lunchtime and sit on a straw mat on the lawn, under the wide shade of the angsana tree, in the hospital grounds, to eat together. The food would be cold by that time, but still delicious. Small inconveniences did not matter, because they were so happy. The bus ride to VivoCity brings back to Pansy that warm feeling of how they had been, so young and so in love, united in a fight for their right for a life together.
As the bus trundles along, different passengers embark and disembark. There is no conductor now so people tap their card on the machine at the front door. When she was young, Pansy would never ever see an ang moh on the bus. So she is mildly surprised to see the number that ride on buses now, office-workers in crisp white long-sleeved shirts carrying their computer cases, well-dressed women in their high heels obviously bound for work, women carrying infants or shepherding small children to the international schools and Montessori playschools along East Coast and Tanjong Katong Roads. Pansy is more surprised when a white, young man steps into the bus with a baby in a stroller and another child in school uniform. He is undoubtedly the trailing spouse whilst his wife works in a major corporation in the city. Times have indeed changed.
Pansy is sat next to a Chinese man who appears to be in his eighties, eyes filmed over with cataract. She smiles at him and says in Teochew, “Going somewhere nice?”
“Don’t know leh…”
For a moment Pansy worries that the man might have dementia.
“Doesn’t matter what,” the old man continues. “Wherever the bus go, go lor. Got hawker centre or shopping mall, I get out and walk-walk. Look-look, then have something to eat, then go back ah. Nothing to do at home what. Better than sitting at home all day and night, watching Korean drama. At least I can still walk…”
The futility of his situation is registered in his voice.
“I not so bad ah. Some people, younger than me ah, have leg pain lah, back pain, chest pain. Cannot walk without tongkat. You know ah, so many old people do what I do, to escape boredom. Lucky chenghu now have some activities for old people. But not everybody can go at same time. So how to pass time? So, take bus lah. Go round and round. Lucky so cheap for old people. Only 97 cents to go from north to south. You know or not? Terminal 3 is top favourite leh! So quiet. There you can walk-walk in air-con and see all the nice shops. Can pretend you going to catch aeroplane to ang moh country. Or pretend you going to greet someone who is coming home to you…”
Pansy senses his profound loneliness and sees the imminent danger of the same fate befalling her as a senior citizen without a spouse. Or in the new parlance, someone who is from the Pioneer Generation, born before 1950. She is an addition to the greying population, latterly, very much in the news. No country has given such a high profile to their old people as this. It’s as if they are an undetected sub-species that has suddenly emerged from the woodwork, a flotsam of people who have all the time on their hands. Some of them haven’t got the money or energy for more robust activities, are seemingly of little use to society now, but have now been rewarded for their past contributions with the Pioneer Generation Package which consists of a small annual Medisave top-up, free usage of facilities at the centres for seniors and subsidised medical treatment for the over-eighties.
“What about you? Going where ah?”
“Oh, I’m meeting my son and his family at VivoCity for dinner…”
“Aiyah! You so lucky! My children, grandchildren. They very, very busy. Work so hard, pay for
