This collection of Photoshopped pictures from 2022 is the last that I have from that year.
Tell the truth, it isn't easy to look at all these pictures and not think of everything has transpired between the end of 2022 to now. How a good part of my life has become so tragic, so uncomfortable, so challenged.
When it first began in the first month of 2023, I thought it would be a temporary lifestyle change.
Come 2026, and I can now tell you that not only has the lifestyle not changed, my entire being has changed.
Mentally, emotionally, even physically, everything has altered- indefinitely.
Whether the being will revert one day to what it used to be, we shall have to see. As of now, it hasn't, I don't know if it can, and I don't know if it ever will.
But let's not make this recap post from end 2022 one of misery, shall we?
I took a lot of pictures this particular afternoon.
But here are some of the best.
Why, exactly, I don't know.
Maybe I just wanted to capture the Christmas atmosphere of Orchard Road and the Marina-Suntec area at that time.
What surprises me most about these pictures is the light.
I had not known how good of a light it was on that particular late evening.
I had not realized.
Orchard Road is not often the sunniest of places especially if you are at the section of Lido, Palais Renaissance and Orchard Towers beyond Scotts towards the Tanglin Road side.
That's how it was this afternoon.
Maybe it was the end year season but the huge canopied trees of Orchard Road outside Orchard Towers, International Building and (the still-renovating) Shaw Lido seemed to provide more prominent a shade than at other times of the year.
It got progressively sunnier as the bus went down past the junction of Scotts Road, Paterson Road and Orchard Road on the Tang Plaza side.
My view of Pullman out the bus window this afternoon illuminated by the Christmas decoration on the top of the street light.
I'm glad I took the picture of the billboard showing the advertisement for iPhone 14.
It is iPhone 17 now.
The bus pulled away from the Pullman junction, went past Bideford Road where The Heeren still stands, then the Somerset area, before nearing the Concorde Hotel bus stop, and the junction turning into the CTE tunnel.
The huge tree outside the Istana beckoned next.
I took picture of that tree.
It isn't every day that there's traffic heavy enough for me to be able to take a perfectly framed picture of that tree.
The approach towards Cathay Building came up right after- I think they were still renovating at that time- then after Rendezvous Building, it was the Lazada Building on Bencoolen Street and Bras Basah Road.
I don't know if the tenants of the building have changed since then.
I doubt so.
The Carlton Hotel bordering Victoria Street close to Bras Basah Complex came up after.
Then it was Raffles Hotel, Suntec City Convention Center, and the turn of Suntec Tower 5 where traffic would have to circle the roundabout before exiting out the other side.
Here is where I say that the light became somewhat increasingly brighter and brighter.
If it were already bright near the Cathay Building and Lazada, it absolutely glowed here.
Perhaps that is what makes the last few pictures of this collection so remarkable.
From the turn underneath Sheares Bridge, around the area that still today has a bit of foliage and up onto the bridge itself, the evening sunlight absolutely glowed.
The sky was blue, the waters were blue, the light from the sun a glorious, glowing gold.