The Early Year – The Wooden House

The house, I remembered, we lived in was a wooden house. It is situated where Convent Sentul Primary is today. I remember when I was five we were told to move to make way for the school. While we were preparing to move, we could hear excavator preparing the groundwork above us.

To get to the house, you enter from Jalan Sentul until you reach the end of the tar road. It then sloped down into a valley via a dirt road. Here you can see many other wooden houses. Our house is on the first left turn.

I am not sure if the house had an attap roof or zinc roof. If I were to make a guess, I guess it would be an attap roof because I cannot remember hearing “Rin Tin Tin” sound on the roof when it rained.

The house is quite a big house with concrete floor. There are 6 bedrooms and the largest was at the rear. 1^st uncle live there with his wife and 4 children.

Ours is the 1^st bedroom. Dad, Mum, my eldest brother, my 2 youngest sisters and I lived in it. While the remaining are for 3^rd uncle, aunties, grandpa and grandma. The rear also was the kitchen and a common area for washing with a well somewhere in the centre for drawing water for cooking, washing & drinking.

The lounge is the common area for visiting guests. Every evening, Dad would start up the Kerosene Lamps to light up the house. After dinner, Dad would have us sitting at the lounge table next to the kerosene lamp doing our time table, reading and writing. We have to memorize the time table until 12X. Dad always reminds us to practice our hand writing and telling us good clear hand writing is important. Dad had beautiful hand writings.

At night Dad had the responsibility to lock the house front doors. By nine, he would lock the front doors. He would, then, slip a cymbal between the door and top skirting. Anyone trying to force the door open would cause the cymbal to fall on the cement floor. It would come crashing down with such a loud bang that it will wake up everyone in the whole house including the dead. Anyone out late will have to call out and Dad will open the door.

The house was always cool in the day. It was because it was shelter by the high cliff wall of the hill on the left of the house (looking into the house) and also by the surrounding trees. In the evening the house could be very cold. All the windows were closed at night.

The night is so dark and when you gazed up the sky, you can see the stars sparkling like diamonds. The moon looked exceptionally bright.

(to be continued, going to see my favourite TV show)