This is not a route I do often.
In fact this is a route which I hardly, if ever, do at all.
You can say that there hasn't been much of an opportunity to visit Toa Payoh, and were it not for an impromptu drop-in to a nursing home somewhere along Toa Payoh Lorong 6, I probably wouldn't be here in this (presently) mature housing estate either.
Not that I don't appreciate this heartlander of a housing estate.
Just that I haven't had much of a reason to swing by here ever since I stopped coming here regularly on random weekday mornings to collect corporate mail and hand over monthly paperwork.
Of course, things change- I might start coming here more- who knows- but for today I was over at Lorong 6, and afterward, here at the bus interchange in Toa Payoh Central taking a bus home.
Now, I don't remember what bus it was- it might have been 26, it might have been 28, but the bus turned out from the interchange and went onto the road opposite what previously (or still is) the Toa Payoh Town Park.
From there the bus continued past Toa Payoh Swimming Complex, then Toa Payoh SAFRA, then made a turn.
What Lorong this is, I don't know, but there's one of those Storage Unit buildings there, and then there're the HDB flats from the 80s, or even earlier.
After this the bus went on, passing by a couple of housing blocks both 'old' and 'new'.
I don't know if the taller, newer block is of the public or the private domain, but infrastructure certainly has changed, and where once structures went up to max a height of 10-15 storeys thereabouts, now, nearly half a century later, they can go up to a height of 40.
Amazing, that's three times a difference in wind, and view.
Of course that makes those flats we have, or once used to have, a bit of heritage, and over here at Toa Payoh- one of the first housing estates in the country- heritage there is aplenty.
A person disinterested might not find this block on the opposite of the road any fascinating, for instance, but it's shape, and the direction she faces, is in fact quite a charm.
I don't think I'd ever seen this block glow as beautifully as this late afternoon today.
No doubt it wasn't that frequent a time that I'd seen her- y'all know I don't come here often- but may I say that even from earliest memories- when the bus 153 stopped at the bus stop near here or when the family minivan made a turn into Lorong 7- this block held not such a soft, yet glorious glow in the morning sunshine.
Maybe in this world there really are some places that transform when seen in the glow of the setting sun.
After this turn, the bus made its way towards a route that rounds out from Toa Payoh towards Bishan, Braddell Road and the east side.
I don't know how to describe this route, but let's just say it passes by the SPH building on the far side and then enters this wide four-lane road that, with Comfort Delgro also on the opposite side, can either lead you onto the CTE towards Ang Mo Kio, Seletar and Woodlands, or towards Braddell Road and Bartley thereafter.
How the exits to the CTE are, I have a rough guess, but today I somehow didn't manage to take pictures of the relative junctions, and by the time I got the pictures, the bus was halfway on Braddell Road.
The history of Braddell Road would be interesting if one really looks into it, and I say this because the houses, especially the smaller ones, seem to have a design that quietly speak colonial heritage despite being well concealed behind the foliage of their own garden trees.
I kind of wish I were able to see what this estate really were, and what those homes on the hills behind their backyards were.
But you don't get that sort of view when you're on a bus that's trundling down the road towards the junction of Upper Serangoon Road and Braddell towards Bartley beyond.
And so it were that right after a very long overhead bridge dotted with blooming bougainvillea flowers, the bus entered the stretch that once had Bidadari cemetery on its right side.
It's all new housing blocks now- public housing flats, condominiums, the like- I'm not sure if there be any hint of the cemetery remaining still- and there're construction cranes here, there, everywhere, but some icons- like the gate of Maris Stella School with its distinctive arch- continues to remain.