Playsets of Yesteryears at Raffles Place

It is part of my morning routine to drop DD off at work. Sometimes Naomi comes along with me, “sometimes” being those days when she gets teary when we’re about to leave the house and clings on to me for dear life. Which, you know, is virtually everyday. 

That’s how she ended up coming with us for the drop-off last Friday, but on this day, I decided that we were going to have a little breakfast snack, just her and me. And what better opportunity than this to check out the roving Playsets of Yesteryears exhibition cum playground, right smack in the middle of Raffles Place?

I decided to get us some Old Chang Kee to munch on, which I thought was particularly appropriate for the setting. Old Chang Kee curry puffs were a favourite treat of mine, growing up, and they are still my favourite version of the popular snack. Of course, back in my day (gosh, I do sound old, don’t I?), they were much cheaper. I still remember the days when I would hand over 40¢ of my precious pocket money to buy myself a piping hot curry puff from the stall in a coffee shop at Serangoon Gardens. And then 40¢ became 50¢. And then it became 70¢ and I indignantly decided I would boycott them because of the incessant increases. Of course I couldn’t hold out for long.

Today it’s $1.40(!!) for a curry puff and I still feel the indignation rise in me over the latest price rise, but I (grudgingly) pay anyway, because I still crave the familiar taste.

On this morning, I got Naomi a stick of fishballs and myself a curry puff, and we found ourselves an empty swing on which we sat companionably, enjoying our food.

Yes, I did try to regale her with tales of my childhood, but as you can see, she was very focused on her fishballs and showed no interest whatsoever in my attempts to tell her about how I had a swing set just like this one in my home and how my sister and I used to imagine we were on a huge swinging Viking ship and swing it as high as we could.

(And would you believe that right after she finished the fishballs, she looked at me expectantly and said “Can I have my curry puff now?” This girl just loves her food!)

There was no more food but there was plenty of play! Up and down, and round and round we went. 

But the biggest highlight were the swings. We both loved them. “I’ll swing myself,” she told me after I gave her few pushes to start off, but she giggled too as I swung myself higher and higher, with abandon.

I left with my heart lighter too.

I’m planning to go down a few more times before the exhibition moves on in mid-May. After that, you can also catch it at East Coast Park (June to end-July), AMK-Bishan Park (mid-August to mid-October) and the SIngapore Botanic Gardens (November to December). I know I will be looking out for it!