I remember I was trying to do weekly updates at one point last year end, but it’s quite a difficult process. Instead, I think I will reflect on a portion of my journey that I decided to cherish as a moment in my head.
There is a short journey I take from my house towards the bus stop. It’s quite a special one, because it involves walking through a series of places that I would not normally approach. It’s a shortcut, but it doesn’t save me a lot of time, thus, it’s a short journey instead.
I take this route only if it hasn’t been raining for at least two days in a row. The route needs me to walk through a field, and rain usually softens the ground. I would end up slipping into the mud, or getting my shoes or my clothes dirty.
I start the route, at the top of the hill, where my house is at. I walk down, past a school on my right. The school has white walls, and the sun usually reflects into my eyes as I walk past. In Singapore, if the days haven’t been raining, it means the days have been scorching hot. So this route is usually a bright route, but not necessarily too hot. In any case, the downhill walk past the school ends at a corner, that turns into a shaded path on the right. Walking left would lead me downhill into another direction, to another bus stop, but that’s not the short journey stop that I’m remembering for us today.
I turn right, going downhill past the fenced corner of the school compound. Tall foliage provides shade from the right, and on my left busy cars drive uphill past me. It always surprises me how slow and yet fast a car goes, as they drive uphill. Some really speed along, and some seem to be putting a lot of effort in, but they’re just huffing and puffing their way up. But I’m walking downhill, and leaves lean over, shading me as I go.
Coming to the end of the shade, therein lies the path. The trees make way to reveal a shallow dirt path in the middle of a field. I glance quickly at the state of the field, to check some tell tale signs of wet dirt, if I should start my steps through it. I decide that it is dry enough, and I start my careful footwork through the shallow path.
It’s a shallow path because the dirt isn’t very exposed, and there is some grass growing over it. Someone had placed some broken up pieces of concrete into the areas were the mud might have been deeper, and it lends for easier walking as well. I step carefully on these pieces of concrete, trusting that the mix of mud caking below would prove a sturdy step. After about ten or twelve steps, the concrete ends, and the dirt path continues in a slight zig, maybe zag, and then it reaches a little cement bridge, wide enough for a car to drive through. On some days, there are cars parked in this field, which is behind a Chinese Temple.
Walking across the bridge, I walk onto a single asphalt road. I cross the small road within six steps, and reach a pavement path. The road actually leads to a small open air car park at the end of it, on the right. It looks like an abandoned carpark, and it actually is. But someone had called the cops on me when I had skate boarded there once, which made me wonder who would call the cops on a carpark in the middle of nowhere.
In any case, I walk onto pavement, and it leads me down a flight of crudely made stairs, that turn left and then right. These stairs are a bright grey concrete, and the height of each stair is unevenly high. Many times, it feels as if a wrong step would scrap my shin, if I were walking up the stairs. The stairs lead to another open air parking lot, and most of the time there is at least one car in this parking lot. That means no skating for sure.
I walk through the parking lot, crossing diagonally. I step around the cars, walking through the parked ones, waving at the moving ones to indicate where I was walking towards (the bus stop). There is no clearly defined exit for the parking area, so I walk through another patch of dirt to exit, and make my way to the bus stop, a few steps away.
It’s a mini adventure, just to get to a bus stop. I’ve never had to take a bus this way before, and I think I would miss the adventure of it when I move out. Perhaps next week I would write about the other bus stop, if I took a left instead. That journey is a lot shorter, but still there’s some good ideas to it too.
Have a good adventure!