waterway Point



towards sengkang

We decided we'd make a trip here just to see the new mall, cos' that's what locals do on weekends and public holidays.

Waterway Point is a very, very new mall situated at one extreme end of the island. Parts of it remain uncompleted still, it being not more than a month old at the time we went. But I'd heard there were interesting shops, including Daiso, a cinema, H&M, Starbucks and Coffee Bean and I wanted to just go and see- even if I wasn't sure whether I'd get anything or not. 

And so there we were, wandering around, looking for a place for dinner, and then came out onto an outdoor terrace where there's some sort of grass for children to roll around.

How funny is it that for so long I must have passed this structure tens of times on a bicycle and not even known that they were constructing something there.

How funny is it that I didn't even know where this new structure was or where it stood until this sight greeted me, and only then I realized that I must have biked past this at least a couple of times. 

Because this is the easiest, and most convenient route one takes from Pasir Ris to Sengkang. It's the route that you usually will find yourself in when you're heading in from the east side via the northeast and then off to elsewhere.

We've been there in the early part of the evenings and in the later part of the nights too. We've been here on warm evenings and also on rainy ones. We've been here after having started from East Coast Park to Changi Village to Loyang Avenue to Pasir Ris to Pasir Ris Farmway One, Two and Three to Lorong Halus before turning into this dark strip of road that leads to the Punggol Waterway Park.

Where the very spot where I'm standing right now is somewhere right in between of the park, and where to my left, leads to a McDonalds at a sports center which is a convenient pit stop for hungry and tired bikers who don't want to think about the d*** diet and just eat an apple pie.

It's not just one way.

We've also take this route whilst on the opposite side of the bank- I still get confused, and often I've gotten lost weaving myself in and out. But there's a road that leads you right up to Punggol Point where the jetty still stands and then it leads you up towards Seletar and then Yishun dam and Yishun and Lentor and Ang Mo Kio and Hougang and Eunos, or after Yishun, up further towards Mandai and Woodlands Road and Dunearn Road before heading down back east via Kampong Java towards Rochor and Nicoll Highway again.

munching in the Lunar new Year...

eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat.

A common sight this time of the year at Giant Hypermart, at NTUC Fairprice, at Cold Storage, Fairprice Finest and at Sheng Siong...

 

It's the time of the year where rows and rows and rows of snacks and cookies liven up the stores, overwhelming us with a bright, distinct, celebration of reds, pinks and fuchsias all in preparation for Lunar New Year.

 

I was at NTUC a week before the first day, and there was an event taking place there (something to do with Milo) and Love 97.2FM DJs were somewhere in the huge supermarket. I don't know where precisely which section they were- too preoccupied I was with the sight of all these goodie jars greeting me by the entrance, placed right next to the boxes of chocolates and the steamboat and mookata pots.

 

It's fun that celebrations begin early for just about everyone.

It's fun that there's so much variety. Pretty labels stuck on the sides of jars let you decide how much butter you want in your pineapple tarts and pineapple pillows, and are probably a deciding factor as to how festive you want your goodie corner at home to look.

There's alot of comparisons when it comes to Lunar New Year.

There's just as much decisions one has to make. You've got to decide whether you'll buy from this supermarket or the other, or how many from this supermarket, how many from the other. You've got to decide what sort of goodies you want. You've got to decide how much you wish to spend (practically). You've got to decide whether to buy one jar first *just to try* first then buy more later.

There're just so many things to consider- and all this time you're standing along the shelves.

 

With the pea cookies, pineapple tarts, pineapple balls, love letters, sugee cookies, potato cookies, peanut cookies, peanut cookies shaped like curry puffs, peanut cakes shaped like pieces in a board game, cashew cookies, cranberry cookies, kuih bangkit, kueh balu, pineapple pillows all gazing down at you, willing you to bring them home.

 

Not to mention the bags and bags of individually wrapped sweets, packets of jell candies dusted with sugar, sugared and preserved fruits packed in hexagonal shaped trays, pistachio nuts, groundnuts, peanuts, peas, almonds, and the macadamia nuts.

 

All ready and happy and eager to make this once-a-year celebration an immensely joyful, happy, pleasing, blessed, fruitful, peaceful, lively one.

 

PS: We got the pineapple balls, the buttery, buttery ones. :) And fish skin a few days after.

flaring in new year's Day

a year, oh, what a year.

 

discovery unforeseen.

situations unprepared for.

shocks uncalled for.

details i don't want to speak of. not anymore.

too many there are.

i didn't know what i wanted to do this year.

i only know i wanted to see the year quietly pass.

 

and i know i wanted to see them.

~the flares~

no seat? wait, there's one.

wet seats from the earlier rain? no problem.

plastic bags from the supermarket where we'd gotten drinks onto the chairs.

problem solved.

 



the camera, it was the camera!

 

and there they were, silently, magically, one after another,

starting from the east. a blast, a flare, a blast, a flare.

fourteen there were. i counted.

rising above into the darkness of night.

quietly they drift... from starboard to bow, their orange flares illuminating like precious jewels in the night sky.

as if bidding one a fond farewell and a silent hi and hello into the other...

starbucks And sushi

Afternoon visiting hours are over.

And so you come down to the lobby for a bite of lunch.

This is one place where everyone- staff or patient or visitor- gathers at some point in time. This is where you come for snacks and drinks and meals. A few times already I've sat here waiting, and that's for this one situation alone. A few months ago, I came down more often, particularly when it became too warm to wait upstairs in the lounge where the seats were hard and the heat was burning through my brain and it was stuffy and it was just so uncomfortable that I couldn't even pay much attention to whatever was showing on TV, whether it was a game show, a variety show, a TV drama in English, Mandarin or Tamil.  

I'm here at Starbucks again.

It's crowded here this time. Less crowded that it was the last time, but there're still plenty of people. Staff come here for meetings. Relatives come here to have a drink and discuss each other whilst discussing the medical condition of the patient upstairs. Students bring their books here to study, biding their time between visiting hours. Others open laptops and tablets to get some work done.

I've had a drink at this Starbucks the last time I was here.

Not this time though. I'm waiting for lunch, and we've already decided what we're going to have.

Bowls of Don. :)

I could have trays of salmon sushi, or bowls of Udon. The in-house Umisushi offers me both. I could also have the bento sets, but in the last couple of times I've gone for the bowls of Don instead. I've tried the beef with its runny poached egg on top but today I'm going for Oyako Don. 

It's hard to describe it in words, but this gives me a strangely comforting feeling after having come down from the wards. Maybe because the meal is served really hot. Maybe because there's a roundedness to the whole meal. Here, the rice is warm and fluffy and filling. There's scrambled egg on top which is done just nice and below that are the strips of well-fried chicken dribbled with mayonnaise. And I get a bit of soup on the side with a touch of seaweed.

the Hospital at changi

Twice have I been here.

Twice have I seen the same lobby and gotten lost in it. It's shaped a little like a hexagon and so you find yourself wondering whether it is this direction or the other and where is the d*** pharmacy.

It's funny how all the floors look the same. I don't even remember what number it was the last time I was here. It could have been the other side of the lobby. It could have been downstairs.

There's a lounge area here though, with really, really comfortable cushioned seats and air-conditioning and you can kick off your shoes and curl up against the chairs. The other lounge didn't have that. What it had was a row of chairs and two revolving fans that blasted out hot air, and a TV and where visitors had to swelter it out.

It's been a week or so now. So far it has been all tests and more tests, and what it's like is basically someone coming over to say that this test was done and that test was done. This time the assigned bed is near the window, and from the window this is the view.. 







from one big hole in the ground it starts

It's a huge hole they're digging down there, I say. That must be some building coming up.

I look around at the others in the room. Across me is a male filling in a couple of forms. Besides me is someone with a basket of chicken essence that someone brought up. Next to him is a lean-looking, neatly-attired mister sitting quite upright on his chair. I hear oldies music. Someone here has brought a radio.

He'll be here for that op. It's one that has brought about some sort of discussion about instrumentation and raised the differences between GA and LA and whether one should do one or the other, and why, and raised questions whether it can be done in the first place or not and what will happen if it can't and that's how it has been over the last couple of days.

a long time, oh a LONG time

Guess what, oh guess what.

Four, no, five months it has been since the last post. Not very effective, isn't it? It's as if nothing has been happening in my life but it's not true at all.

Stuff happens that you say you will write about it, but then something else crops up and then you forget and then you remember and then you forget again.

Something has obsessed me. It has taken over my life to such great detail and it's all for the sake of perfection, for the sake of attempting to face something that I never bothered to face before and till now, one and a half years later, I still don't know why I cannot accept it for what it is.

I'm just taking it as if it's a quirk of mine. A quirk that is individualistic and that all of us have, in one way or another, and which we can either choose to embrace, or escape from.

I choose to embrace.

And I'll make a comeback. :)

just Cruisin'

It is you that I'm thinking about every time this song plays on my playlist.

Is it your sunshine?
Is it your space?
Is it your hills?
Is it the square that greeted me each morning when I looked out the window, wondering how the day would pass?
Is it the metro?
Or the homeless with their supermarket trolleys? 
Is it Rite Aid? 
Is it the fact that somehow, despite the many broken dreams and pressures and politics and speed of Hollywood, there's still an element of hope that bleeds out from your blocks and buildings and lanes and beaches and boulevards and sidewalks?

Is it Amtrak?
Is it the orange groves flying past the train window and the accompanying bus ride?
Is it the bed and breakfast along Santa Monica and the apple trees up in the Bay Area?

Why do I think of the conference center in San Diego where embarrassingly I ran to a corner and cried because everything was just too overwhelming for a noob thrown into the sea, and I was just flapping my fins trying to look like I could swim really well?
Why do I think of the convention centers at Moscone and how one literally ping-ponged from one center to the other whilst having lunch and dinner meetings along the way?
Why do I think of Andy Serkis and his performance as Gollum in LOTR and Andy Serkis now?
And why do I think of the convention center in Las Vegas where the heat didn't get to everyone and we talked about consumer gadgets that make our lives happier and better and easier?

It's been a long, long, long day indeed.

I think of how video game technology has evolved.
I think of how motion capture and facial capture has evolved.
I think of how greens have come so long a way.
I think of layering and texturing technology.

I think of the Pacific Ocean spreading out into the horizon, her blue tint gorgeous and beautiful in the sun.
I think of seagulls flying from one end of the pier to another.
I think of a hot cakes breakfast on a Sunday morning with the TV on and an evangelical speaker bringing doom and gloom and how there's another evangelical speaker now on prime-time TV bringing a message of salvation, unmerited righteousness, undeserved blessings and finished work.
I think of martial art choreography and how it has grown and how I'll still be able to have soup dumplings and pork ribs in sweet sauce and char siew paus because there was never an intention to 'go home and get out', and it was really, really all about the beauty, strength and art of martial arts.

Like the Pacific Coast Highway with her turns and curves, there has always been a view. Sometimes the view has been frightening enough. Sometimes the view hasn't been pleasant. But there has always been a view and the ride that has taken me thus far will take me further still.

And I'll tell you all about it when I see you again.