going on a road to singapore walk after a long time. as usual discovered many things.…
Browsing Tag
singapore
one of our early road to singapore walks, in march 2015. wrote this soon after the walk. punggol apparently means “hurling sticks at the branches of fruit trees to bring them down to the ground” in malay. it also may refer to a wholesale market for fruits and vegetables. i had never heard of this area in the northeast of singapore till one day someone spoke of the wonderful seafood you get out there. a couple of years later, i…
this was one of our earliest road to singapore walks, the second or third, back in 2015. i wrote this at the time. mandai has such a pretty sound and it usually means the zoo to me. but we were not going to go there, we decided, we’d just start out at some point on mandai road and walk around upper seletar reservoir, singapore’s oldest freshwater lake (i don’t like the word catchment) and then follow the road, see where…
once, the sea used to come right up to katong, and wealthy merchants and traders had their mansions along the coast. there are several big houses here still, but the sea has been pushed back, by almost a mile i think. i first came to katong – a suburb in the east – with a colleague, to buy cheap perfumes at katong shopping centre. everything changes in singapore, all the time, but happily, the shopping centre with its deep blue…
the house was beautiful. through the trees and the railings, beyond the shrubs and plants in the garden, i could see intricate white plaster work on grey. pillars, walls, portico… i couldn’t get a look at the entire house, but whatever was visible had such an air of a gracious time. it was so very pretty. i’d never seen something like it, the white work was fine and intricate, elegant on the grey background. looked like someone took great care…
i don’t know what exactly is art, but if it’s something that makes you stop, stare, feel a strange attraction and look at a thing differently, then this was definitely art. it made me want to go close, touch the thing. on lavender street that day, the sun blazing, traffic going by at its usual weekday pace, i couldn’t look away from that burst of colours and intriguing shapes. what was it? what was it doing here? shouldn’t it be…
“bzzzzzzzzzz!” it was the carpenter bee. black and rotund and a little hazy as it whirred about and dashed against the blooms of the bright yellow trumpet flower. “oh, up early today i see!” exclaimed the lavender mauvely, it was the nearest to the blues it could get. “let it be… let it be…! let it beeeee…” replied the carpenter bee, it had a thing for punning. no one ever said a bee couldn’t, after all. lavender rolled its spikes,…
why is hyderabad road called hyderabad road? i couldn’t crack the puzzle. once upon a time, long long ago, that insanely rich man called the nizam of hyderabad may have owned property here… or he may not have. there is some mention of this in a newspaper – the hindu, published in india – from many years ago (net digs can bring up all sorts of things). anyway, i am not at all sure as to why the name of…
“i think,” said the frog, frowning wisely, “you start feeling freedom once you have lost something…” it paused and gazed up at the sun moodily, then added a final word with an air of authority, “forever.” the lavender swayed as it laughed, a throaty provocative sort of laugh, “a loss, really? of what? or of whom? and why should loss make you feel free?” who’d have thought the slender spike of pale mauve flowers with those soft, intricately detailed, delicate…