This is one bus route that continues to be very new to me.
I don't know where it was we were going on this particular afternoon but if I'm not wrong, I think we were heading to Serangoon Central from Steppyhouse and so took Bus 22 from the bus stop opposite the road.
I've gone past the estate of Ubi pretty much often, but have never had a chance to wander about inside there.
So a pleasant eye-opener it was to look out the window and see the view of (what I think is) Ubi Avenue 2 pass me by.
I'm not very, very sure if this is Ubi Avenue 2, to be honest, but I don't remember the bus turning into any other road, and so this has to be it.
What's interesting about this area is that the flats and factories are nearly side by side, very close together, almost enmeshed together like the most natural thing as if, like Taman Jurong once upon a time, they were supposed to be.
There are a lot- A LOT- of factories this side of the road.
Don't ask me who they belong to, or what they are- I've no idea- but if I'm not wrong, they're part of the industries we call as hardware supply, engineering, technical, mechanical, transport, and small medium enterprise.
This is a place where on the shop floor you'll find heavy machinery of steel and other metals clanking away against each other.
This is a place where workers, clad in work overalls and heavy chunky work boots, take their skills to use with a set of well-used tools.
There is a sense of camaraderie amongst the people here.
Whether it be you see them at the coffee shops or at the back of the shops with their cigarettes during a smoke break, it's a community with mutual understanding between themselves, and everyone in the zone.
Be not surprised to find well-worn work bicycles parked randomly here and there.
Be not surprised too if everyone here has a backpack large enough to carry lots of stuff on their own.
This is a place to expect good, hearty, tummy-satisfying food, however, and more often than not, the shiok factor of the food sold in the coffee shops here will be unparalleled.
Meals here are a sort of reward, I should imagine, something that everyone looks forward to when the hour comes, and it's easy to anticipate takeaway boxes packed to the full.
Seeing all these pictures I really have no idea what it is behind all these doors and windows.
Some might be offices.
Some might be shop floors.
Whichever it might be, the view's brightened somewhat with the presence of all these trees.
After Ubi Avenue 2 the bus approached the junction of Paya Lebar Road, and zipped right across, entering the estate we call MacPherson, or some might say, Circuit Road.
It's a whole range of roads that one goes through here, beginning from Circuit Road, then Pipit Road, then back to Circuit Road on the other side, after which it turns left into (a very short section of) Merpati Road, then finally Mattar Road.
For a long time now I hadn't known that there were that many roads in this small little estate here.
Neither had I known that there were different flats of different designs from different eras clustered around this medium-sized housing estate with only the river, and the Circuit Road Hawker Center as her anchor.
It's a bit of a pity that some of the country's oldest housing blocks in this estate have since been demolished.
But that's how it is.
And anyway the world's changed, no longer the same.
These ten-storeyed flats so high above the ground on Merpati Road might have had at one time feel like a testimony of success and of hope, but in their last leg they were unfortunately much further down the status ladder than what they once used to be.
Fortunately the flats of Circuit Road and Pipit Road are still going strong there.
As do the flats of Balam Road.