Walking Myself Home
Notes on a 11 km walk from Armenian Street → Buona Vista on a Saturday evening in mid-March
5.56 p.m.
There’s a Peranakan block party happening on Armenian Street.
Amidst the fragrant blue pea and kaffir lime box planters, everyone is in their batik best. In the Peranakan Museum, teenagers in identical wolf-cuts don black collared shirts emblazoned with rusty red phoenixes. They tap-tap out personalised pantuns on outsized, rusty typewriters, and hawk delicate, rainbow crochet kueh charms.
Outside, there are real snacks to be had, hot and oily, from the Old Chang Kee truck. Proud makciks weave through the crowds in their nyonya kebayas and dainty slippers, floral fans on active duty. An eclectic choir of grey-haired ladies, ponytailed youths and jovial uncles sway with joy on stage. The crowd feels it. We sway with them.
I meander behind my sister, brother-in-law and five-year old nephew. They naturally drift to events that other families with young children drift to, like the kebaya dress-up stations and live cooking demonstrations. I brush past many more sticky bodies than I would like. Love is sacrifice. It’s not long before I peel away to start my solo journey.
6 p.m.
There’s been too much cluttering up my mind lately. I make it my mission to slow down and pay attention, walking pace be damned. The neighbouring Armenian church beckons me in, its mysterious gravel pathway bordered with stones. A triptych of the Stations of the Cross emerges from the lawn to my left — three dark bronze Jesuses bearing the cross progressively stumble and sink beneath the earth. They sink and imprint into me, too. I meander through the graveyard of blurred and chipped headstones, stop by the Armenian Genocide Memorial in the middle of the yard. It’s a khachkar or carved stone cross, a memorial for Armenian communities scattered across the globe during the Ottoman empire. The cross looks like a sword.
6.15 p.m.
Red flowers bloom above the red gate of the red brick Central Fire Station on Hill Street. It has sea-glass green windows. I pad past to the open green field behind, where domestic helpers gather for picnics on Sundays. There’s an entrance to Fort Canning – mysterious hill of ancient Malay kings and military operations past — hidden in the trees. I never noticed the stairs before. Through the generous green of the Fort Canning periphery, I spy two adults on a seesaw.
6.43 p.m.
There’s a kungfu class going on, from what I can see through green floral wall air vents of the Teo Yeonh Huai Kuan on River Valley Road — three blue-clothed students and a shiny-headed master. Chaoyang pioneers started the clansmen association 100 years ago.
I pass a lady in yoga pants and top, hair in claw clip, Nike slides, walking three pomeranians and cradling a maltipoo in her arms. She’s the first of several dog owners I meet holding her pet paws up, as they teeter down stairs too steep for stumpy legs.
7.10 p.m.
Getting past the first five kilometres is always the hardest. I’m enjoying all the sights and sounds, but also annoyed that I’m still hovering around the 4 km mark. Only one hour has passed. River Valley Road is never ending. The arches of my feet hurt and my knee is still stiff from last week’s workouts. A loud mother and child interrupt the silence behind me and I walk faster in the hope of outpacing them. They stay persistently on my tail for a while, and I finally leave them behind at a Mandarin tuition centre. I stop for dinner – hearty mushroom curry and cauliflower for healthy, fibrous fuel — and a pee and water break.
7.45 p.m.
Back on the road. I step on something soft, brown and yielding. I can’t tell if it's poop or something else. I wipe my new shoes off in the grass in vain. Jervois Road leads me past vast bungalows on one side, and a river and starry windows of the city on my left. I feel like I’m in a slice-of-life Japanese anime, traversing through a beautiful ordinary evening. A weed pushes through the drain grilles at the side of the road. I turn into Kay Siang Road, where bungalows turn into the towering 810-unit Sky Parc at Dawson housing estate. It follows me, side by side, for quite a distance.
8.15 p.m.
At the 6.3 km mark, Kay Siang Road turns into Margaret Drive. They are a conjoined road sign — the first I’ve ever seen. I am finally building momentum. More than half-way through, I feel like I can fly. My aching arches have been left a few kilometres behind me on the trail and I even do little jogs across traffic lights and up overhead bridges. The wind blows at my back, and I switch my phone to aeroplane mode. To save battery, and to take flight.
8.30 p.m.
I pass a bustling basketball court full of teenage boys. Overwhelmingly sweaty, smelly ones. I pick up the pace.
My route takes me through a pitch dark shortcut via the Railway Corridor. I chance it, and pass Singapore Art Week signs of art I cannot see in the gloom. The path opens up onto the 1930s black and white colonial homes of Wessex Estate. Their apartment blocks are named after major British military feats and battles — I pass one named Gaza. The windows are open upstairs. Piano sounds and voices drift out, and I see large abstract art on the walls.
8.55 p.m.
The buildings ahead turn modern and undulating. Futuristic neon green lights juxtapose with a dead tree. I’m at Minas Morgul, or the Science Park, which is much friendlier in the daytime.
Completely unplanned, my path takes me directly past the government client office I did several consulting projects at. Formerly called the Sandcrawler and owned by LucasArts, it has a leafy ground floor garden with ponds, stone paths and previously, a Yoda statue. It’s dark and I almost trip on the gap between concrete slab steps. I shine my phone torch on pebbled paths I’ve never noticed, that lead confusingly in a loop like a lesson that a Jedi needs to learn. After several circuits, I’m finally out of the maze and back on the street.
9.10 p.m.
At one north, I pass one of the apartment buildings I visited when house-hunting three years ago, again unplanned. Outside one of the units, there’s a pile of white canvas school shoes and blaring music. The tinkling of the door bell of the mini mart, a bike rider passing though.
9.25 p.m.
I finish my 11th kilometre directly outside my current client’s office at Elementum. All the past, possible, present lives. I step into the MRT, and I’m off and away again, rattling along the passage of time.