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THIS is a void deck you hear long before you see.
It welcomes you with a din that lies somewhere between the boisterous chirp of swarming crickets and the rousing finale of an orchestra in concert.
Step closer and you realise it is a choir formed by hundreds of birds in cages lined up, rows and rows on end, pitting song against song.
This, say bird lovers, is one of the most famous bird singing corners in Singapore. The void deck of Block 440 in Ang Mo Kio Avenue 10 is perpetually filled with a crowd of almost exclusively middle-aged men parading their mata puteh.
The coffee shop at the next block does a brisk business delivering steaming cups of coffee and tea to regulars.
The bird lovers come from all over the island. Tiong Bahru resident Paul Tan, 47, is here this weekday morning 'training' his three mata puteh.
The trick, says the storekeeper, is to introduce just enough competition to get the bird to sing.
'You put the bird (among other birds) so that it has some pressure, then half an hour later, you take it out,' he explains.
Serangoon resident Pandit Sriram Muthu Rattnam, 48, has been making this trip to Ang Mo Kio every weekend for the past 10 years.
'All the good birds come here,' declares the businessman with a broad smile.
How do you tell what is a good bird?
'See all the good cages?' he asks, before pointing to a particularly intricate wooden number with an ivory finish. 'That cage costs $2,500, and the bird inside is $1,500.'
Like a jockey sizing up his competition, he reveals that his own mata puteh costs the handsome sum of $1,200.
'I've got a good bird, and I want to train it.'
This article was first published in The Straits Times.
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