catching prawns and pasir pasir

my walking kaki at bukit batok nature park, the 80-year old former physical education lecturer, was describing to me how they caught prawns, pasir pasir and kelong fish in the sea off pasir panjang. before 1964 he used to live in a bungalow - the house which they vacated when the japanese came - at yew siang road which is located at the 5 mile-stone pasir panjang road. the house is still standing today.

they usually went prawn catching at night and when the tide was just coming in. he would carry a carbide lamp and a net. the light from the lamp was to attract the prawn and to make it visible. they would wade in ankle deep water to search for the prawns. the two shining dots in the water were a giveaway for the prawn.

he would place the net behind the prawn, slightly above the surface of the water. then using his leg he would disturb the water in front of the two dots. the prawn would instinctively jump backwards, into the net which he held in his hand. he would collect the prawn and stuff it into the cane basket that he carried. later, he would have fresh prawns to eat when he got home.

with reclaimed land, the extension of the port and some heavy industries located along the stretch that was once the sea, the prawns would have disappeared to somewhere else.

to catch the pasir pasir, he would use a bamboo rod with a line and sinker. first, he needed to hunt for the bait. this could be found in the exposed sand along the beach of pasir panjang. he would use the water that his mother had used for washing the rice grains. this water was sprinkled over the sand. then he would placed his palm on the sand. when he felt the worm biting, he would swiftly grasp its head with his thumb and forefinger and pull the wriggly worm out of the sand.

the pasir pasir fish were commonly found along sandy stretches of the sea. long along when we camped at changi beach, we employed the same technique to catch the worms and used the same type of bamboo rod to catch the pasir fish.

18 freehold villas

the last of the many buildings that i came across along gilstead road.

somebody blogged about it here. the land occupied by this white building and an adjacent one has been slated for the building of 18 freehold villas - 2 cluster bungalows, 10 cluster semi-detached houses and 6 cluster townhouses.

although the gate was unlocked, i did not venture into its compound, so i could not really gauge the land area.

this school has a rather long name

the name is not only long, it even has a conjunction in its name.

the sign should read: greenridge and west view pri schools because they are two separate schools.

canoeing days off pasir ris

pasir ris park has grown over the years; the trees have matured and the park has expanded in size. all of us who were at the walk today (11 oct) agreed that it has turned out to be a more pleasant place with a rustic feel about it. for some of us, the last visit to the park was made some thirty-five years ago, when our canoeing expedition took us from pulau ubin to pasir ris beach.

these days, to organise such an overnight activity and outing will entail a lot of logistic support and administrative procedures, so much so that it hardly happens. those days, all it needed was a standard consent form which was used for an excursion, a hike or a visit to a park. of course, we took all the safety precautions like having a safety boat to escort the party and ensuring that everyone put on the bulky life-jackets.

we first canoed around pulau ubin before heading for pasir ris where we would beach the canoes and spend the night camped on the grassy patch, just outside the people's association compound. today, as we walked past that stretch, it brought back memories of the cold that we had to endure while camped near the beach. to ward off the cold, we would wrap our feet in plastic bags.

we did not made things easy for the student canoeists. they had to carry the food that they would be cooking at the campsite with them in the canoes. the canned food, rice and other stuff had to be properly packed and kept in securely wrapped polythene bags. these were stored in the tight space at the bow of each canoe.

of the nine of us at the walk today, five of us - three formers students and two teachers - could recall those canoeing days.

as usual, at 8.00 a.m. we were all at the pre-arranged car-park d along jalan pasir ris. we walked towards area d where the people's association bungalows are located before making an about- turn and moving towards the boardwalk between sungei api api and sungei tampines. from there we made our way to the food court at downtown east for our 're-charge'.

working at a real kelong

this is a model of a kelong along the changi board walk

my friend, who is also a retiree, used to help out at a kelong in tuas and, at times, at another kelong off katong when he was still a 16-year old student. he would stand in for a married friend who wanted to have the saturday off so that he could spend time with his young bride.

on saturday evenings, he would take a bus to tuas and from there a boat would take him to the kelong. initially, he had looked forward to this weekend job but after working for a few months, he found little excitement in it. it was really back-breaking work and during the monsoon period, at the end of the year, he had to endure the biting rain and the cold.

it was a working kelong where visitors were not welcomed. there would usually be four workers to raise the nets, sort the fish, cook the fish and re-set the nets. the nets were so heavy that it needed at least two adult persons to work the axles to bring up the nets.

after that they had to sort out the fish according to types and sizes. some catch, like the octopuses, were discarded and thrown back into the sea. some, like ikan bilis, had to be cooked in salt water immediately so that they would be ready to be sold at the market in the morning.

they would boil a huge pot of water and then thrown in the rock salt. when the water started to boil, they would throw in the freshly caught ikan bilis, blanch them and scoop them up. the ikan bilis were put into shallow cane trays. one time, when the catch was really good, he counted 54 trays of ikan bilis caught in the early hours of that sunday.

they would start raising the nets between 11.30 p.m. and midnight and after that every two hours or so until dawn. in between, they would try and catch some sleep. however, in november and december, sleep did not come easy because the cold wind seemed to come from below the kelong.

early in the morning, a boat would come to the kelong to take the day's catch to the market.

for his overnight work, he would receive $3.00.

these days, the new kelongs are more like fish farms. the fish are reared in the net and you may get to watch them feeding the hungry fish or you can try your hand at line fishing or rod fishing from the kelong. quite a number of singaporeans go to the one off penggerang. in this modern time, all they need to raise the nets is to flick a switch, not like the old days when it was really required a lot of muscle power.