Most of my pictures of the walk this afternoon are of Clemenceau Avenue.
Why it is I didn't take any of the route before this walk, well, I suppose I were too busy chatting with my friend to actually take note of the surroundings, and the view.
Thinking back, it is a bit of a pity to have missed out on the scenes from the stroll that began at SOTA. I might have taken a picture of Hotel Rendezvous. I might have taken a picture of SMU- the Singapore Management University. I might also have taken a picture of the Orchard Road Presbytarian Church or the YMCA Building next to it.
There is much to see along this stretch before you hit into Clemenceau Road.
There is the Istana Park.
There is also the Tan Yeok Nee House.
And Singapore Shopping Center, with the hotel of Citadines now in the vicinity right behind it.
Perhaps I had been too busy talking about the meal which I'd just had earlier.
But Chonkycam came out only after I'd started walking right by Fort Canning Hill, and realized I was missing out on these slopes, and these trees.
Don't laugh.
These pictures are important to me.
Last couple of months haven't made me able to go around taking pictures of places with trees.
Not as much as I like, anyway.
Hardly has it been that I've been able to go to, say, East Coast Park, or Lower Peirce Reservoir, for an urban hike and some pictures. Hardly too has it been for me to be able to go to Pearl's Hill, much less the further places like Changi Village or Pulau Ubin.
I didn't want to miss out on these here.
This side of Fort Canning Hill looks the same as I've always remembered.
One actually feels kind of small standing at the foot of the hill gazing up.
From here, it doesn't look as high, but get up there to the summit near where the reservoir is, and the view- let me tell you- is completely, utterly breathtaking.
Not only will you get a view of the Singapore River, you also get a view of Chinatown, Outram, Bukit Merah, and a bit of open sea on the southern front after the CBD and the port harbor.
Looking up at the bulge of the slope now I wonder if the bunker side is here, or if it is on the other side, but this slope looks steep enough to house a WWII concrete bunker beneath- supposedly 9 floors down.
It is the gradual slope after the bulge that gets to me.
That doesn't appear everywhere.
Somewhere around this spot too I took pictures of Clemenceau Avenue, and the landmarks on the opposite side.
It would've been nice if I had taken pictures of the church- the Church of the Sacred Heart- but all I managed to get was a bit of a blurred glimpse of the Ngee Ann Kongsi Teochew Building- at the back of them trees lined along the middle of the road.
Ironically, the nice picture I took from this very spot turned out to be the still Under Construction property that locals born and bred often refer to as Daimaru, or Liang Court. If I'm not wrong, it's now called Canninghill Rise.
How far the construction of this property has come, I don't know, but it looks like it's close.
In this picture too- the first one- at the back- was the glistening white grid exterior of the State Courts as it seemingly looked around from the back.
Perhaps what made this walk pleasant- despite the heat and the light- were the shadows.
I loved how they stretched over the pedestrian path, and the ground.
It were the shadows that attracted me to the owners themselves- the big trees- on the sprawling beautiful slopes of Fort Canning Park. They created a song in themselves, these trees, and their shadows, making me feel like I were not along a road in 2026, but another time before.
Had they been there all this while, I wonder?
Or had the necessity of horticulture taken over?
There'd be much more to write if I knew what the names of these trees were, but I don't.
Perhaps one day I should visit this Jubilee Park.
Anyway, I haven't gone to Fort Canning in the longest time.
This afternoon we were heading towards the river and Clarke Quay, so too, I only managed to stroll past.
We didn't go up, we didn't go in.
The only thing we did was to stop long enough to admire the huge space of field and her meadow-like energy.
It isn't just the space that intrigues me.
It is that there are not that many large open spaces in Singapore which do not feel like abandoned land, or unused empty space awaiting new owners.
This one felt like it had been deliberately kept there.
Like it had been there a long time, maybe during colonial times, maybe during Japanese Occupation times, maybe during pre-independence times.
We won't know.
We won't know why this space is now this way.
Or whether this space awaits something else.
The answers, I presume, we'll know in time to come.
This afternoon however, we just went on. first turning left onto River Valley Road, then crossing it, then going into Clarke Quay via Tan Tye Place where some of the newest haunts on the block included the supermarket of NTUC.
It's gotten quite popular, this supermarket.
More than the rest of the clubs and pubs, it seems.
Maybe it speaks to a market that doesn't need the ambience of the pub to boost interaction. Maybe it speaks to a market that knows what goes into their drinks, what they are happy with, what it is they are willing to pay for, and what it is the actual amount they actually open their wallet for.
No one ever thought a supermarket in a clubbing area would have the boost it enjoys now, but it has, and a growing influence it has, too.
We didn't stop to take a look at the cocktail menus of the places now just opening in the late afternoon.
Instead we simply went on, first crossing the Read Street Bridge, then walked along the bank of Clarke Quay where Paradox Singapore Merchant Court is, heading towards Clarke Quay Central.
