A very small collection of pictures this has turned out to be.
For what reason, I don't quite know.
Either it were I didn't want to take pictures of the very same route that I had taken just the week before, or that Chonkycam was running out of battery and I wanted to conserve.
Maybe it is the former.
I had, after all, taken the very same bus (31, maybe) just the week before, taken the pictures, and thought today I might not do the same.
But every bus ride grants me different views, and so it were that this afternoon I decided that I'd try see if I could take new, not so new, pictures of this little road.
So, Jalan Batu is one of those housing estates that seems to be always on the fringe. It's strange, really, because even though she holds a significant location between Mountbatten Road and Old Airport Road, even though she has been there a long time with her own hawker center and day care center, she somehow holds a different influence from that of, say, Dakota housing estate, or Old Airport Road housing estate further up front.
I don't know whether she is known to Singaporeans in general.
I think not.
Well, maybe that will change one day, but for today this is all we have.
Two of the most interesting landmarks of this 'hood (as your bus passes by the main road) are the petrol stations. Often we think of petrol stations to be landmarks only on major thoroughfares, but these be here, and not just one, but two.
Perhaps this small little road had been a major thoroughfare at one season in time.
The one thing that this road does make me wonder about is how it used to be. Was it a kampong style of place? Was it a factory style of place? Were there wooden houses or stilt houses or what was it? Was this even a residential area?
Right now there's a hawker center but it was built around the time when the blocks started coming up.
So there're no signs of what this place was before the estate came about.
You know, chances are it might not have been a residential area.
Especially when you consider that the present-day Goodman Arts Center (it probably used to be something) is just opposite the road- with the river running alongside it- and that the (now heritage) estate of Dakota is across the river on the other bank.
Plus, also the fact that behind the entrance turn of this road where the road sign and community center is, there are in fact two motor workshops of not the small kind.
I haven't looked into the stories of Jalan Batu and what this area of the water used to be.
Maybe one day, when there's a possibility.
But now, I guess, it is about seeing these colorful painted blocks, the overhead bridge, the two petrol stations, the shrubs and the sky.