Not gonna lie, it isn't every day that I get the right frame of mind to take pictures of the place around me.
It's not because I don't see her beauty.
It's also not because I don't see her charm.
It's just that there's always a lot on my mind and I don't look around and about me on the day to day.
But sometimes- like on this particular afternoon a couple of months ago- I do.
It was one of those afternoons where I'd decided I was going to take a walk around, so, I did.
My first picture however wasn't of the terrace, or the patio outside, but of the view opposite from the balcony.
It doesn't look very significant, the sight of the condominiums opposite, but consider that this view is one that can only be seen from a position on this very spot six floors up, that changes everything.
I'm not quite sure the name of them two towers of white painted residences, but I think they are the Marine Blue condominium, with the western facing wall of The Flow seen diagonally in front of it.
What makes this picture unusual is the angle.
Both properties actually don't stand next to each other, and there wouldn't be such a picture at ground level six floors down.
Can't say the same for the wall outside the balcony though, not when the whole exterior of Roxy I and Roxy II has the same style of tiles shaded with rich colors of seashell holographic especially when seen in the light of an afternoon sun.
There's something about evening here at Roxy I and Roxy II that makes things look particularly beautiful.
I'm not kidding.
You don't get the same atmosphere in the morning or in the afternoon.
Maybe the very early morning= I don't know- I haven't had to wake up that early.
But the evenings hit different.
It is the rays of the late afternoon sun, I should say, that switch up the whole environment.
I love how they slant so gloriously over the brown tiles of the terrace floor outside.
I love how they cast a special golden glow on the surfaces they land on.
Suddenly the bicycles under the staircase don't look the same. Suddenly the stuff outside on the wall with the big cupboard and the trolley and the ladders don't look the same.
Everything gets enhanced, thrown into different perspective, into different light.
The whole place transforms, becoming calm, pensive, reflective, thoughtful.
I like to think that the evening light grants her a voice of her own that only surfaces during at that time, and not anytime else.
Someone once told me it were the saturation of the tiles, the richness of the colors.
It might also have been the structure, the layout, the way the place had been arranged.
Honestly I don't have the right words to describe it.
Even after all these months, I cannot determine if the atmosphere is captured by the rich red of the tiles, the way the tall palms with their skinny trunks wave ever so gently in the breezes from the north and south, the sturdy tables and benches, or the slight of green that the bushes and shrubs by the wall hover.
I just know that there is a quiet strength of beauty about this terrace and patio that is hard to describe.
Sometimes I think of it as a canvas where, with fairy lights and wooden benches the place would look cheerful bursting with energy and life.
Sometimes I think of it as a space where children might ride a tricycle or adults might play a game of badminton, risking the shuttlecock dropping all the way down.
That, however, doesn't happen, doesn't usually happen.
She has a quiet dignity, a quiet discipline that makes it difficult to be disturbed, impossible to be intruded.
That doesn't mean she's not happy, or that she doesn't have character.
No, character is determined by the energy of the people who dwell there.
It is determined by the personalities of the people who make the place their own.
Which is why I say that in the last few months she has become more of a canvas than last, especially with her newly fixed ceilings, and her newly painted walls.