As part of our end year New Year celebrations for 2025, a friend and I decided we'd have a Mookata.
It had been some time since we'd had a Mookata dinner, so yes, you can imagine my delight.
The only thing I didn't want was to go very far away from where I would be that afternoon- at Toa Payoh- so we did a Google search, and found one right in Toa Payoh itself, close to where the SPH Building is, actually, at a coffee shop located right behind.
I'll write about the Mookata at another time.
But I'll write about the walk we took to get there now.
Here be the pictures of the 20-minute walk we took that late afternoon to get to the coffee shop that Google Maps tells me is in Blk 206 Toa Payoh North.
As you can tell, it was a bright, lovely, blue-sky of an afternoon.
The walk began from Toa Payoh Lorong 6 close to the SPC station, and the traffic light that crosses into the Lorong 7 hawker center.
What's really funny, I now realize, is that I have no pictures of the actual walk.
I only have pictures of the start of the walk, and pictures of the end of it.
Don't ask me why.
Maybe because we were both eyeballing Google Maps up close, so the route turned out to be a walk that I didn't get to take a nice picture of.
But the first couple of pictures here are of the road on Lorong 6, where my walk was sheltered by the presence of them huge canopied Angsana trees, where the shadows of same said Angsana trees cast beautiful shadowy patterns on the cement-paved ground, and where, on both sides of the road, these trees harmonized a soft, artistic yet symmetrical presence amidst all the concrete.
Admittedly the low, two-storeyed structure of Block 19 interests me.
I had not known it could look this gentle beneath the towering presence of the trees.
It is a pity that I did not take pictures of the road after that.
The scenery would have been somewhat unique, for further on, there is a temple to the left side of the road, and to the right, that section of Toa Payoh Lorong 6 that leads towards Braddell, Thomson, Lornie, Lorong Chuan and Upper Serangoon Road.
But I only have the pictures of the blocks on Toa Payoh North.
Painted a bright, cheerful blue, these are blocks that, to me, could be said to stand at the edge of Toa Payoh Town. They form part the border of Toa Payoh, literally, and that's interesting, because on one side there's the flyover that leads one out of Toa Payoh, and then on the other, there's the newspaper building, the factories, and further on, the blocks of Braddell Heights leading to Lornie Road and Thomson Road.
This afternoon we didn't wander that far on either side.
We were hot, we were hungry, we were busy looking for the coffee shop- and we found it- right after walking past a basketball court.
As it was, the coffee shop was right next to a car park that directly overlooked the factories, and, well, was also within very close walking distance from a bus stop that in the last couple of months, had had the privilege to be.