Okay, so earlier I'd written about the gorgeous, amazing, breathtaking view from Japanese-fusion restaurant OUMI on the 51st floor of CapitaSpring Tower in Raffles Place.
What I didn't write, however, was that there is another view just as magnificent, just as breathtaking, on the same floor, outside the restaurant.
The great thing about this view is that you don't have to eat at the restaurant(s) before you can appreciate it.
You just need to register with CapitaSpring on their site, and at your appointed time, you'll be brought to the lift that will bring you up there.
It's a little hard for me right now to put into words just what I felt when presented with this view.
There's presently a lot running through my mind.
Could it be the fact that the island that I thought I knew looks somewhat different when seen from this altitude?
Could it be the fact that all the buildings that I thought would only be towering over me were now below me?
I mean, for a rare time in my life, I was looking down at People's Park Center from a skyscraper in Raffles Place, not from a street in the enclave of Chinatown looking up at it.
Not just that, not too far away from her eye-catching yellow and green colors of her building, a short distance away below my eye level there too were the well-known public housing flats of Duxton, which for the longest time had also boasted gorgeous views.
Standing here- for a quick moment- I found myself wondering just how high above sea level I was.
And what if this spot had been a mountain of sorts?
(In the strangest of fantasies) would that have been possible?
Who knows?
Had there been a mountain- something like what Hong Kong has- this is what I would have seen.
I would have been looking down at the new State Court Building.
I would also have been looking down at all the other high-rise condominiums behind it on Havelock Road and River Valley Road.
And all the skyscrapers over and around Chinatown, where, tinier still from this height, the heritage shop houses with their distinctive red sloping roofs.
It was so breathtaking an experience to see all these familiar buildings from an altitude this high.
No better place to do an amateurish, hobby-style study on urban planning and cityscape architecture, I would say.
Perhaps what stood out for me the most weren't just the familiar skyscrapers all around me, but the fact that I could, simply with a raise of my eyes, look beyond the city towards the horizon where, like on the other side of the building, here too did the sea meet the sky.
I don't think I've had such a view for a very, very long time.
But in that sense, seeing it back then, writing about it now, I don't know what to think.
Perhaps I shouldn't be thinking.
Perhaps I should just drop all this nonsense in the head and remember how I felt when I looked at the lay of the land, admiring the southwest coast in a way that I had never seen before.
It would've been lovely had I been able to see parts of Labrador Park (and the way she connected to Fort Siloso)
It would've been great to see parts of Pasir Panjang or even parts of the West Coast Highway that lean towards the sea.
But, well, I couldn't.
Not that it mattered.
I was more than happy with the breathtaking, amazing scenery that unveiled herself in front of me.
I don't think I'll soon forget how the island of Sentosa looked like from this height- where instead of the Island of Fun and Island of Tranquility that her present name means, she reminded me more of the Pulau Blakang Mati for which she once was called and which her shape still is.
Likewise I don't think I'll soon forget how the roads of Havelock and River Valley seemed to lead on its somewhat curvaceous route towards the slopes of Bukit Timah in the Central Catchment, far away from here where I stood in the Central Business District.
