It's that time of the year again when you do your personal stocktaking. You dig into the deepest corners of your cupboards and drawers, rummaginng through old stuff that comprises old keepsakes as well as dusty albums, notebooks and what not. Not that you wanted very much to go through this tiring ritual, but you needed to clear away or rearrange your personal items to create badly-needed space for new additions.
Many of the things you find, they probably have little or no practical value. But you are loath to discard them. Some things, you can't just justify their utility (or lack thereof) based on hard-headed rationality. It isn't just about precious memories of the past, of people and of incidents, that make you cling to them. Often, you are reluctant to part with them because to do so would be akin to a seeming act of self-betrayal, as if you have decided to sever important links that reside in those items which, over the years, have been relegated to obscure corners in your room.
In a bid to free up space on my cluttered work desk, i once again opened up all my drawers and cupboards, surverying how i shall go about to create additional space. Each time i do this, i am surprised that there actually are still things which i can afford to throw away, even if this seemed to be forced by circumstances. It's either because i take a longer time to convince myself that such and such actually has no use anymore, or that i have unknowingly discriminated against my possession, deciding that certain things are more important than the rest. The truth is probably something simpler: i have accumulated too much rubbish which hasn't been disposed of, and now's the time to act.
In the midst of my clearing the cupboard, i found certain things that got me re-acquainted with my early years all over again. Things which are probably worthy of grandfather stories many years down the road; things which may find unlikely historical value thrust upon them with the passing of time. First i took out a small box out of a yet bigger shoe box used to keep various little items. The small box contains phonecards which i used to collect at a time when it was still fashionable and obligatory to use public phones. There are so many of them, i wonder who i had called up when they were in use. Of course, many of them were taken from my mum after she had used them. Judging from the value of the cards, one wonders if the amount spent on purchasing them is not comparable to the mobile phone bills that are chalked up presently.
But i digress. Collecting phonecards is a simple hobby that i had picked up at an age when one is given to collecting all kinds of things, in part because there were limited entertainment and activities. Certainly it's not the forgettable memories of using smelly public phones that had me collecting them. New and different designs of phone cards were released frequently and different priced cards had different designs. Typically, the higher valued ones like $10 or $20 have prettier designs. These were the ones that i could only check out at the shops but otherwise had no money to buy. I also had no wish to purchase them. By buying the $2 and $3 ones, which would be used up in a shorter time, i would be able to own more cards. This, to a young boy who thinks only in terms of numbers - the bigger the better - is of course more important than owning exotic designed cards. I remember the different designs often fascinate me, not unlike how a child gets excited over worthless stickers (which become destroyed the sooner they come into his possession). Aesthetically, the phone cards are very appealing. Sometimes they have pictures of animals or vintage vehicles, other times they are simply portraits of different aspects of Singaporean life.
At some point of time, however, mobile phones become cheap enough for widespread possession and use. It wasn't a sudden realisation that i had ceased collecting phonecards (because they were no more), nor did the realisation ever really sink into my consciousness. It's the kind of thing which will just fade away quietly, until one day you rediscover them and reminisce about their history.
Not just my collection of phonecards, but i have also old watches, key chains, an unfunctioning pager, etc. etc. These are the things which i probably will never throw away unless a fire breaks out in my home one day and burns everything (Choi!).
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