I had a bit of a spare time after accompanying Miss Brown to her appointment and seeing her up the medical transport.
So I decided to take a walk around.
First things first, it wasn't on impulse.
I've been curious about heritage hospitals (or hospitals with heritage) for a while now.
But time don't permit me to go around as long as I wish to, and so to date I haven't observed many.
Except for the old Alexandra Hospital at Queensway which I visited several years before.
Tan Tock Seng Hospital is more than a heritage hospital.
It might be the oldest one in Singapore's history.
If it isn't the oldest in terms of timing, then it might be the oldest one for the publics and the general population.
I dont' remember the facts- you'll have to go to NLB's Infopedia for that- but it began as a hospital for the paupers in the civilian population all the way back in the 19th century when businessman Tan Tock Seng was active and still around.
The hospital didn't begin at Moulmein.
It began at a location further down the road.
But it has been on this hill for a very long time.
I've always been fascinated by its location.
There aren't many places where a single institution is bordered by three different roads heading to three different directions.
Tan Tock Seng Hospital is one of them.
Maybe that's why (together with other older/heritage hospitals) it has been an icon of healthcare for the longest time.
We are a small population, and few of us can say that we have had nothing- absolutely nothing- to do with this hospital.
If we (PTL) haven't had a need to be here, we likely will know someone who has.
They might be a family member.
They might be a relative.
It might be a friend.
Someone who has had to be admitted here.
Or someone who works in the medical profession here.
Perhaps it might be a singular incident that brought you here and which you still remember.
Today I hadnt come up to Moulmein (just) for the sake of Miss Brown's appointment.
I'd come here also with the (quiet) hope that I might search for the structures that lie within my memory.
Many, many years ago one Christmas Eve I came here with a group of friends.
We were attired in black and white, we held candles in our hands, and amongst our group, two of us had guitars slung around the necks. The chartered bus we took to get here dropped us off beneath a very long, very high shelter.
It is this shelter that I remember.
Out of everything I saw that evening- even the white fluorescence of the ground-floor open ward, the shelter is something I distinctly remember.
It's funny, I cannot be certain which building it is that we went in that night singing "Silent Night" with lit candles in our hands.
It might be one of the buildings behind the gates.
But the shelter is still there.
That ground floor ward isn't the only one in my memory.
There's another one.
Which I, too, unfortunately, have an even lesser inkling of.
It was difficult for me to trace in which building the old wards had been.
All I know is that it wasn't a single-storey building.
My grandmother's four-bedder ward had been in a newer building on an upper floor.
I should know- I spent the entire week of my March school holidays in the ward- helping The Parent take care of my grandmother.
But because I was inside most of the time I don't remember how it looks from the outside.
My memories are more of the inside.
Of her ward.
Of her room.
Of the visitor's lounge outside her room.
And of the corridor outside her room which led all the way to a much sunnier, brighter room ahead.
I don't know which building it was.
It might have been the building I saw behind the gates.
It might have been the building whose interior I managed to take picture of through the toilet window of the clinic in Annex 2.
Nothing I saw this evening jolted my memory.
But I suppose one mustn't be too particular about it.
After all, it isn't every day that I have the frame of mind (and light) to take a route around part perimeter of the hospital grounds.
Today I had.
From the TTSH Medical Center I took a turn into the car park that leads to the A&E, from a slope near the Medical Center to a side staircase that went down to a beautiful heritage bungalow now housing Clinic K.
I'd wanted to take a nicer, prettier picture of this bungalow.
But there were staff, there were (possibly) patients, and I didn't think it wise to stand in the middle of the garden to take a picture.
So I did the best I could, walked through the garden, went onto the main road, and took these instead.
I think they're just as beautiful.
In life sometimes you don't manage to get what it was you were looking for.
At first it can seem disappointing, but time and life do spin in their own little ways.
Just so long as we let go, slow down, stop, and look around, we'll not only see things with a different silhouette.
We'll also see them in a timeless light.
And a beautiful, almost magical perspective.
