Childhood Paths

The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there. So began L.B. Hartley's epochic novel on childhood, published at mid-century in 1953. I could have been writing a similar book, except for two rather glaring differences - I'm flattering myself a great deal, and I can no longer speak of my early years as being in the same century.

It is a lot simpler, however, to visit the places where our pasts unfolded, than it is to revisit the past altogether. Mary and I did just that today, since in any case we wanted to take a walk.

Below: memory lane, first door from the left was Ah Ma's before she moved away and the unit at the end of the corridor was ours.

I spent the first of my prancing years in the Jalan Minyak (Oil Street in Malay) vicinity, literally on a little hill known as York Hill. Ah Ma (my maternal grandmother) always referred to the place in Hokkien as Ho Hong Teng (Teng here is short for hilltop). According to my parents, there was once a factory by the same name situated at that very spot. The street got its name from a soy sauce factory that operated in the area before the flats were built.

A gently-sloping road, the only way in and out for vehicles, led southwards towards Pearl Hill, Outram and Chinatown beyond. The north slope, facing Robertson Quay and Jalan Muhammad Sultan, was steeper and today remains clad in luxuriant vegetation. Pythons were not an uncommon sight then for my paternal family in their ground floor flat.

Below: the view north from the Jalan Kukoh estate, and the first time I've taken a lift to the top floor in all my years there; sometimes on weekends my parents would ask if I'd like to visit Daimaru, which was what I knew Liang Court by. Yaohan was Plaza Singapura (where we hung out as a family quite often too), and Sogo was Raffles City.

Below: more familiar views from Block 6 where I grew up. Landmark Tower (leftmost) has always been a pun, Pearl Bank Apartments (centre) always resembled a distant castle on a distant horizon and the pink and white building in front of Pearl Bank wasn't always a spruced-up hotel - it used to be my Dad's primary school (though he was actually schooled in the older compound on the other side of the hill).

Both Dad's (Block 4) and Mum's (Block 6) families moved in when the estate was completed in 1964. There they went to school (at the nearby Outram Secondary School), met, dated and got married. My parents rented a two-room flat in Block 6, on the same level as my maternal grandparents' flat. It meant, until 1990 when we moved away, I had very convenient Chinese New Years.

Below: Mary posing in front of my the flat where Dad grew up; the main gate of Outram Secondary School used to be up the road and to the left - a long uphill slog for those aiming to beat the bell.

I remember my kindergarten days at the Kreta Ayer People's Action Part Community Foundation (PCF) vividly. Mornings in school would be followed by afternoons at Ah Ma's. Lunch would be either buttered slices of Gardenia or plain Jacob's crackers, both liberally dunked in Milo before consumption. This would be served at half past three to coincide with the reruns on Channel 8 (then Singapore Broadcasting Corporation) of its 1980s drama series. The most memorable was 雾锁南洋 (The Awakening, starring a dashing Huang Wenyong and a lithe Xiang Yun). At five, the almost daily battle for the television began when Ah Gong (my maternal grandfather) returned from work (he sold fruits at Chinatown) - he wanted his Cantonese drama and I my cartoons. My victories depended on the vigour of Ah Ma's intervention.

On some evenings Ah Gong would bring me downstairs, where I would sometimes play with the other children in the neighbourhood on the little slope between Blocks 6 and 5. On other evenings I would stagger with my bucket of Duplo over to my neighbour's flat (this couple whose three sons were between nearly ten years older than me and who treated me like their own), where I would build spaceships in Rastafarian colours (I only had red, yellow, green and blue bricks). The time to get back home was announced at six with the proclamation over Chinese radio of the winning lottery numbers. If my parents were held up at work, I would create bunkers in my grandparents' bedroom with pillows and blankets and Ah Ma would tell me about the time the sirens signalled the arrival of Japanese bombers.

Things, predictably, are no longer the same. Half the slope between Blocks 6 and 5 has been removed to accommodate an electrical substation. We chatted briefly with Jessica, who lives now with her children and grandchildren in the flat once occupied by my family. "I know who you are, I moved here in 1991!" was her startling response when I introduced myself. She then went on to an even more startling revelation. "This place was a bit dirty, but we pray to Jesus and all is well now." It was a good thing we didn't know, or feel, a thing about it. I also learnt from Jessica that my neighbour next door had already moved away for two or three years already. She would have been that last link to my Jalan Minyak years.

Below: Mum was once robbed on this flight of stairs between Blocks 2 and 4, before I was born. The shelter is new, as are the evenly-spaced steps, which used to be cracked and narrow. Coming and going always felt like walking through an enchanted forest to get to Ah Ma's, sans fruit basket and bold fashion statement. The tall, dark trees - one of which once housed a little red Taoist shrine - and their drooping vines have since been removed. As has the innocent sense of adventure proffered by nocturnal passage.

Below: a squirrel enjoying his buah long long. Ah Gong used to take me on these occasional foraging trips where we'll pick up all the ripe fruits that have fallen to ground. Sometimes, he wields a stick (formidably, I must add) and would throw these at the fruits still hanging from the branches and which were on the verge of ripening.

Below: a view of the Chin Swee tunnel as we cross Chin Swee Road (what we told taxi drivers, because nobody knew where Jalan Minyak was) towards Pearl Hill. I remember standing on the brand-new, gravelly road on the day the tunnel opened with Auntie Ah Tiu, my neighbour who indulged my Duplo fantasies. I also remember waving to a passing bus full of friendly old folks who waved back, as we waited in vain for the President to drive by.

Above: Pearl Bank Apartments - it took me several years to learn that people actually lived there.

I had my first pre-school experience at Lower Delta Road, not very far from my office in Grange Road today. Some mornings my grandfather would carry me in his arms to the bus stop along Havelock Road, where a handful of buses took me to school. If it rained my grandmother was on hand with an umbrella. Today, the path all the way to Block 6 is completely sheltered, and the steep, uncertain steps repaved. But nothing compared to the shelter of childhood days, as eternal as they were ethereal.

Ten Trail Thrills on Gunung Lambak

After the unsuccessful attempt at climbing Gunung Arong about a month ago, we spared no efforts in ensuring our trip upcountry would not be in vain once more. Our destination this time was the town of Kluang, 110 kilometres north of Johor Bahru and an hour and a half's journey in smooth traffic conditions using the North-South Highway along the west coast.

Below: not in vain, posing atop Gunung Milestone

Kluang was established in 1915 as an administrative centre for the central Johor region. Rail tracks were laid linking the town northwards to Kuala Lumpur, administrative capital of the Federated Malay States and southwards to the bustling port-city of Singapore. Trains a century ago would have transported both workers and produce to and from the oil palm and rubber estates in the area. Today, they bring in tourists from both Singapore and other parts of Malaysia keen to get a glimpse of small-town Malaysia.

We opted for the familiar, scenic, albeit longer and roundabout, eastern approach which we used the last time round to get to Mersing. A quick breakfast at the famed Kluang Railway Coffee, where the caffeine junkies in our midst raved about the unique flavoured of the coffee on offer, primed us for the planned ascent of the 510-metre Gunung Lambak. We share ten moments which made the experience a memorable one.

1. Values in Action, Kluang

We started our hike at about the same time as Mr Zhong, who lives in Kluang. As we paused by the information board at the trail head to size the hill up, Mr Zhong, tongs and plastic bag in hand, strode in purposefully and started picking up every piece of litter within sight. And his keen eyes missed nothing. He does this every day, all the way up to 半山 (halfway up the hill), which we took some huffing and puffing to reach. We have to set a good example for our young, he declared, we have to be responsible for our own immediate environment. He declined when asked if we could take a photograph of him.

2. Gunung Milestone

Mary and I may have made a mountain of a molehill nearly five weeks ago, but there is no underplaying the achievement of making it up Gunung Lambak after a three-hour slog. It was our first successful ascent as a group, and for Mary and I our first as a couple. (Mary requested that I qualify this: that this is the first hill/mountain we have climbed on foot from start to end.) There is hope for December, when Mary and I will attempt the volcanoes of El Salvador and Guatemala.

3. Trail thrills

Mercifully, much of the trail to the summit passed under forest shade. The quickest, most direct trail up started as an innocuous concrete path. This gave out after ten minutes, after which it became an unbroken upward slog on steps cut into stone and earth, two brief intervening rest points notwithstanding. On the lower flanks of the hill some of these were still buttressed by creaking wooden planks and hemmed in by shaky iron hand-rails. As the terrain steepened surer ground grew narrower and we had to scramble over looser soil on some stretches. Ropes were installed alongside the trail, so that both hands and legs were required to haul ourselves summitwards.

At the top, amidst the buzzing of dragonflies in the mid-day Malayan sun, we basked in our own self-declared glory. There was to be no visual reward for our iron-willed tenacity, no inspiring vistas of shadowy serrated ridges on the horizons. There was only the pompous self-congratulation of the deluded masochist, the inflated satisfaction of taking in the one clear vantage point to the west, marred as it was by poor visibility - those faint bluish hills which we claim as a prize for our unnecessary toil.

4. Nature's embroidery

The steep terrain gave us many opportunities, as we panted between bouts of grueling exertion, to admire the living raiment of green and brown which clothed the hillside - a sylvan latticework of sprawling root and trailing branch, testimony of the asymmetrical beauty of Nature.

5. Comic camaraderie

There was no lack of laughter all along the way, as we battled both fatigue and gravity. We had all our travel companions to thank for this. Mary was our walking jukebox. It being National Day back home too, she proffered a looping medley of incomplete verses from Home, Count on me Singapore and One people one nation one Singapore. And then we had the long-running incentive wrangle between Allan and Cindy, born of a case of contentious orthography - Allan spelt carrot, Cindy spelt carat. No prizes for guessing who prevailed.

6. The delusion of distance

Are we there yet? The eternally unanswerable, almost existential, question on many hikers' minds. Jayson and I attempted to do so, nonetheless, when Cindy asked. Our standard responses of ten minutes more and Jayson's almost there drew more questions however, most of it almost vitriolic.

Below: the only pH scale which matters, ranging from "almost there" on one end to "ten minutes" more on the other.

7. Home abroad

There is nothing like meeting a compatriot when you least expect it. While Lambak is a popular destination for Singaporean hikers, we hardly expected to meet a fellow Singaporean at the summit at nearly three in the afternoon. Our compatriot (we chatted happily but didn't ask his name), who arrived ahead of his companions, hailed from Bedok and bussed it from Singapore via Larkin to Kluang. Dressed simply in a sleeveless 42.195km Finisher T-shirt, shorts and running shoes, he - glistening arms and toned calves all - easily outshone us with our long sleeves, camouflage long trousers, mosquito patches and cans of Off repellant.

On the way down we entered into another conversation with a white-haired (very sprightly) elderly Malaysian Chinese man who, surprisingly, wished us Happy National Day on our way down. It could be that he had a long memory, although later he shared that he learnt this off the Singaporean channels on air locally. As a Singaporean and a historian, it was a poignant moment. Our circumstances, history and citizenship could have been very different. There is no denying the shared heritage between both our countries. It is the political lines on a map which matter most, but at the same time they hardly do, too.

8. Roots

As we neared the summit, I urged my companions not to 功亏一篑 (a Chinese proverb that means to fall short of success for want of a final effort). You pass your Chinese, Cindy exclaimed in response. Perhaps it was uttered more in disbelief than in praise. Earlier, Mr Zhong had made a similar remark. 你的中文讲的不错 (literally translated as your spoken Chinese is not bad). I was pleased, of course. And needless to say, I was also aware of my own fluency, or lack thereof, in Chinese.

It encapsulates the very different directions taken by the plural societies left behind by the British on both sides of the Straits of Johor. In Singapore a common multiethnic political identity sometimes loosely masquerades as a common cultural identity, albeit acknowledged as nascent and tenuous. On the other hand, lacking Singapore's enforceable centralism, Malaysian communities have been refracted through a very different political prism into a wider spectrum ranging from the cosmopolitan to the insular.

Here, Robert Kaplan's description of both the Malaysian and Singaporean Chinese communities in his recent Asia's Cauldron (although doubtless a sweeping generalisation) deserves some consideration. According to Kaplan, compared to the many Chinese communities the world over, amongst them China's post-Maoist communities, Singapore's Westernised Chinese and Philippines's Chinese mestizos, the Malaysian Chinese have managed most successfully to retain their culture.

Here at the foot of Gunung Lambak was the classic post-colonial encounter, an incongruence further emphasized when Mary felt compelled to confirm: 他的中文已经算是很烂了 (his actually isn't considered fluent at all).

Below: smugness at my own command of Chinese, actually a makeshift shopfront at the trail head selling snacks and drinks.

9. Climate change

God is good. Prayer is potent. Ours for good weather was heeded emphatically. All day, it was neither too sunny to torment nor too cloudy to disappoint. The turn in the weather was perfectly timed too - claps of thunder just as we freshened up post-hike.

10. Highway to civilisation

My favourite part of the whole experience was going up Lambak, but the most pleasurable sentiment came from finally getting into the car and heading back to civilisation. This came from the certain knowledge of food in hunger and rest in weariness, and all in good company. As I pondered these thoughts on the way out in the car, I quipped that wah eh kah nng liao (in Hokkien, my legs are numb).

Allan's pithy, almost emotionless, response? Wah eh kah zee liao (my legs are broken).

Pedalled Thoughts

We have all been told the world is shrinking, a phenomenon made possible by such developments as high-speed rails, undersea cables and satellite communications. Consequently, we are made more mobile. But what if all this is simply an illusion? A phantom comfort, born of an supreme, unshakeable complacency in both technology and in our right to them? These well-peddled thoughts I entertained on Monday night as Mary and I pedalled in the dark, our bums and our thighs burning from long sedentary years away from the bicycle.

Below: a well-taken photograph is a confidence trick.

On the unfathomably endless distance between Jalan Kayu and Ang Mo Kio, the fallacy of a shrinking world seemed to have been immeasurably stretched. Our excellent road networks and fuel-efficient vehicles have made for effortless commuting. But the straightforward nature of it all also translates into mindless commuting, a state of strained passivity devoid of sentiment.

On the inconsolably empty distance between Jalan Kayu and Ang Mo Kio, we took an exquisite, harrowed pleasure at each inch swallowed up by our laboured pedalling. We felt a sense of Tolstoyan accomplishment, at how the pulses which run from our sinews through the chains and into the paved earth turn into miles. Each mile covered on naked muscle made our world that night that one extra mile bigger.

In the end, I also succeeded exceedingly in bolstering my reputation (in Mary's eyes) as a crack(ed) assessor of distance. What was (wildly optimistically) intended as a two-hour return ride in the end took us over twice as long. It was a delay we never begrudged though, aching legs aside. Our ride took us all the way to the pretty surroundings of Sengkang Riverside Park.

We rode north along Ang Mo Kio Avenue 6 towards my Anderson Junior College, my alma mater, then turned east along the mostly featureless stretch along Ang Mo Kio Avenue 5. A left turn to Yio Chu Kang Road and a traffic crossing then brought us to the path which followed the serene green waters of Sungai Punggol north-eastwards past Kampong Lorong Buangkok, the last such settlement on the mainland.

Below: Eastword ho (seh)! (From top to bottom: the lily pond at Ang Mo Kio Garden West, convenient pit-stops, this time outside Nanyang Polytechnic, and the steps along Yio Chu Kang Road leading down to the Sungai Punggol riverside path.

Sengkang Riverside Park was unlike most other parks in Singapore, for two reasons - how naturally it blended in with its riverside location and how spacious it felt. The park straddled both banks of Sungai Punggol. A bridge, punctuated in its centre by two viewing platforms, linked both sides. There, in the middle of the river, we stopped, rested and watched the world go by.

Below: Evening come, evening calm. We really needed the lifebuoy by then.

The reeds swayed in the gentle breeze. The clouds drifted across mirrored sky. A yellow-vented bulbul flitted in between the shrubbery, then another. Groups of foreign workers, out on a day off from the many construction sites in the vicinity, posed for selfies against the suburban, riverine backdrop and with our bicycles. Children amused themselves and chased each other around the round orange seats and in the giant mangosteen gazebo. We fixed our eyes on the water and hoped for otters.

Below: my yellow-vented bulbul centrefold, and then the hint of an otter.

We were very grateful that Jalan Kayu wasn't far off from where we were. Four pratas, one maggi goreng, one iced teh tarik, one teh halia and one lime juice later, the decision we postponed all dinner came back to haunt us.

Below: much as this looked like just reward for our toil, it wasn't the end of our day.

On the regrettably endless distance between Jalan Kayu and Ang Mo Kio, we did Robert Frost proud.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Lights We Cherish

After having consecutively written off two Saturdays because of work and national commitments, we were really looking forward to this weekend. We clambered out of bed at half past two in the afternoon, and decided we should be tourists for the rest of the day. That meant we only left the house at close to six in the evening.

A week before we set aside the evening to catch the fireworks from the third National Education Show, which is actually a full-dress rehearsal for the National Day Parade (NDP) for Primary Five students. But as we only finished lunch at a quarter to five, we cancelled our booking made the previous week for dinner at Southcoast, an Australian pizzeria close to Marina Bay Sands from where we could watch the fireworks as we munch on dinner. We arrived in town close to seven, and took a saunter towards Esplanade Bridge, camera in hand and tripod slung across my back. A pleasant breeze and the mellow evening light combined to produce a cool, untropical evening.

As the speakers from the celebrations at the nearby Floating Platform boomed, the people who had made it possible rested, ate and got ready for the logistical whirlwood that would descend upon all once the stands disbursed their crowds. Bus drivers picnicked and caught up with each other. National Servicemen returned to their assigned positions as marshalls and reminded each other of their instructions. Policemen with their buzzing walkie-talkies patrolled the broadwalk where another crowd was steadily building in anticipation of the colour that would fill the skies at the end of the Parade.

For Mary and I it was a case of thoughtfully reacquainting ourselves with a thoughtless familiarity on a stroll we have taken so unthinkingly so often before - the parkside path along Connaught Drive on the fringes of the Padang, past the Tan Kim Seng fountain and its weathered classicity, the Cenotaph in its inviolate ivory and on the lawn next to it, with each step towards the Esplanade Bridge and its dancing evening lights on the river, a splendid view of the Singapore skyline emerging like steel shoots out of the low canopy. These are vistas forgotten in the purposeful haste with which we lead our lives, revealed in its stark glory against the night.

Below: City lights. City we love, lights we cherish.

All along Esplanade Bridge people waited. An army of photographers had already been encamped all along its length. Tripods had been set up near the rails, on the parapet between families and even on the verge dividing the walkway from the road. We managed to secure a spot close to the Esplanade itself. It didn't proffer the best view, but then again nowhere did. Another bridge was being constructed right in front of it.

Below: mind the gap; lights on water atop the Floating Platform.

There we waited for time to stop, as it does five times every year at eight in the evening when independent Singapore's birthday lights explode in the sky. Against the red-green afterglow the angular silhouette of the crane on the unfinished bridge before us cut a sharp contrast, a reminder that we can never finish writing the story that is Singapore. And that when time moves again at ten past eight we move again. We build again. We toil again. And then come August once more we wait again. Not just for the NDP fireworks, but for the lights in our own hearts. For the lights in our lives. The lights we celebrate. The lights we cherish.

Above: Not the best pictures, but certainly the best fireworks display on our little island.

State of Johor, state of Johor

On our Labour Day holiday a couple of months ago, a group of us from church decided to take a road trip to Johor. Some of us like to drive north, some of us just like to drive, some like to hike, and all of us wanted a break. The date was set for 5 July. The preparations intensified as it drew closer - supplies were purchased, maps acquired, tyre pressures checked and partners assured.

An early start meant meeting at Woodlands Centre at about 5.30 in the morning, and by then the Causeway was already starting to get clogged up. Breakfast we took at Taman Sentosa on the other side of the Straits of Johor in a familiar setting amidst Singaporean number plates and accents. At about 7.30 we began our journey to the east coast.

Our first destination was Hutan Lipur (Recreation Forest) Gunung Arong, to scale the 274 metre hill that lends it name to the reserve. It was a pleasant two-hour drive on Highway 3 all the way to Mersing. For long stretches, we saw little else but oil palm and rubber plantations - the wealth of the ersatz British Empire and of the State of Johor. We also passed several unused pillboxes, reminders of the feeble attempt by the British at imperial defence over seventy years ago. To the north, on our left, hovered the hint of greater adventure in the shape of the distant southernmost peaks of the Titiwangsa range.

Below: Palm riches along Highway 3.

As we searched for the trailhead once past Mersing, a right turn brought us to the tranquil beach of Tanjong Resang. We arrived at low tide to a gloriously empty stretch of sand. Eastwards on the horizon stood the faint silhouettes of the Seribuat islands. Jayson, after a brief survey, decided to bring his Subaru Forrester down to the beach. Allan followed and coaxed his own car down the same way. Soon we had two cars cruising along the coast and revelling in the wide open space before us.

Below: posing with our tank, Jayson humours us.

Below: Rally at Tanjong Resang.

Later we resumed the search for the trailhead and retraced our way to the highway. We found the visitor centre shortly after, only to learn very belatedly that the gates to the reserve were closing in an hour (noon) and that we needed a permit to actually enter it (no mention of it in the online accounts we read of people making the climb previously though). This permit could, apparently, be obtained either at Johor Bahru or Mersing, and on Friday, Saturday and Sunday the relevant office closes at noon. We were told of another closer option - that of getting to the top of the hill from Tanjong Resang where we gamboled earlier, and where a similar permit can be provided by a nearby resort. There remained the small issue of finding the trailhead, which we failed to earlier. And so Gunung Arong had to wait. We adjourned to Mersing for lunch, and decided to head back towards Kota Tinggi after that.

Mary and I had long known about the waterfall at Kota Tinggi, amongst the closest to Singapore that we could get to. Our lack of familiarity with Johor and the paucity of transport conspired to put off a visit until that weekend. There was a water theme park feel to the whole place, with weirs built across the stream to create wading pools and fibreglass slides installed along the concrete banks for human tubers (stuffed in a float ring this is what people generally look like) on rubber tubes. The main falls, however, remain blissfully unmolested.

We also saw little of the attraction's fabled weekend clutter, where both throng and trash were concerned. On a quiet Ramadan afternoon we could still manage photographs of the falls without people, courtesy of some creative positioning and the grace of our fellow visitors who lent us their spot in the sun for the half-minute we needed for our vanity.

Below: reliving our childhoods, note where it says Awas.

Below: the main falls from the top.

Rain started to fall when we drove out of the waterfall carpark and back towards Johor Bahru. As a grim grey evening descended, it was almost natural to recall that the thick jungle and tall hills all around were the scenes of the most recent conflicts in our short history. The images of the highway pillboxes earlier in the day returned to my mind, as did the single-minded fortitude of the Japanese soldiers who advanced so rapidly over such terrain all the way from northeastern Malaya. Later on, I was also reminded that Kota Tinggi witnessed fighting during the Konfrontasi too. The 8 1SIR soldiers who were ambushed whilst on patrol duties lost their lives just north of the waterfall.

Back in JB, we re-learnt a sobering truth over dinner at the Aeon Shopping Centre in Tebrau City. Security warnings aside (these were of course legion), we were turned away from a near-empty Manhattan Fish Market and waited for an hour for our order at Nando's despite being amongst the earliest to arrive.

There is a State of Johor. And then there is a state of Johor. It is a beautiful place, beyond the alarm which the name of its capital raises amongst some Singaporeans. We will visit again, of course. But we won't linger in JB.