So I don't usually get down at the bus stop that grants me this sight, but two bus stops before, just at the very moment when I was about to alight, I'd discovered that my phone had somehow fallen out of my jacket pocket, and so I stayed on the bus until I finally found it on the floor underneath my seat.
How it happened, I don't know.
One minute it was in my pocket, the next minute (thanks to the weight of the phone), I felt my pocket lighter than it should have been.
I'm glad I managed to discover it in time.
A much greater hassle it would have been otherwise.
I'd have to report the loss to the police, report the loss to the bus company, and by the time all that was done, the phone would probably have been gone for good.
So I'm thankful for the miracle that on this day I had my wits about me, I wasn't in some sort of dreamy daze, and I wasn't rushing to whatever it was I was supposed to do.
Thing about me is, more often than not, I'm either so hamster-like or so muddle-headed that I simply move from one thing to another without realizing that something's missing or that something's gone.
Guess that's the same for many of us too, especially us who live in an urbanspace like Singapore.
But sometimes, it does us well to stop and remember how we are, how we used to be, how our landscape and urbanscape has changed, and where we are now.
Sometimes it is good to live in the moment.
Because we are a place where infrastructure changes regularly.
We are in a place where roads get rebuilt, where estates pop up from empty spaces of land, where buildings get demolished and which get replaced by new ones.
And we don't know just when it will be.
Was it less than 10 years ago that the UIC Building stood in this very spot where these glass skyscrapers are now? Did it not feel so long ago when there were all these new office buildings coming up on Shenton Way and Anson road and Robinson Road, and that to be able to work in an office was a very progressive thing for the family and for the country? Was it not so long ago that the building was new, and then it wasn't so new anymore, and now it's so not new that it needs to be torn down and a new one built in its place?
But that's just how this area is.
The UIC Building where a loved one used to work in is gone. The Telok Ayer School is gone. And now there's just a huge hole where the CPF Building used to stand.
It's unbelievable.
The CPF Building, mind you.
A new building will soon rise in its place, the same way new skyscrapers have risen from the plot of UIC and the Telok Ayer School.
It's unbelievable.
The CPF Building, mind you.
A new building will soon rise in its place, the same way new skyscrapers have risen from the plot of UIC and the Telok Ayer School.
In the meantime, there's still Shenton House. There's still Bestway Building and International Plaza and Temasek Tower, so I suppose it's not totally bad and we'd be better off being glad for those, shouldn't we?