old tampines road

do you know how refreshing a coke is?

especially when you drank it after so many years!

marathon man told the waitress "give me a diet coke." "what?" "diet coke."

"what? what coke? zero?"

"ok, ok.... zero lah."

then he realized, diet coke may be out of date already, the latest coke is zero.

after an exhausting jog under the mid-day sun, he stumbled into this kopitiam at the junction between tampines rd and old tampines road. the kopitiam was quite full, lorry drivers and what-not stopped by for their meals and some just to quench their thirst. the mixed-rice stall was doing quite good business. after his drink, he continued his jog, into old tampines road. not so long ago he was here, but did only a small portion of it. this time he wanted to find out what's at the other end of the road.

the image of a couple came to his mind. the couple were walking infront of him, at the big, long bend of the old tampines road that meets up with tampines road... and marathon man jogged pass them. yap, that was what happened the last time he made his journey here, and somehow this image just got stuck with him. or was it another place, another time? he began to doubt his memory. this road looked like leading to nowhere, so why the couple chose to have their midday walk in this out-of-the-world kind of place? were they like marathon man, doing things defying normal logic?

this time, the bend seemed longer. much longer. after the canopy-covered bend, he strode into a straight boulavard, with a double carriage-way, trees lining both sides, and young trees in the divider path, with the payar lepar airstrip on his left, and a jungle on his right. before the road met kpe, there's this little old housing estate in jalan terap.... 20 or so double-story semi-d's. other than the traffic noise from kpe and tampines road, this island estate was like tampines quarry park lake, existed on its own, isolated from the rest of singapore.

marathon man had a full day. and his dream that nite - the subdue feelings of keep getting into some sort of sleep, sweet-dream kind of sleep..... that's because marathon man was having some flu-like(not swine flu?) kind of tireness......